Is a bag of chips a meal? No! Will it fill you up if you’ve been in a car for six hours, as it’s late at night and you just need food in you? Absolutely! That’s the feeling around preseason or exhibition hockey. The Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers played the first game of the 2025 Rookie Series in Allentown, and everyone has been starving for hockey.
The games don’t count in the standings, and nobody earns points despite the game going to overtime. Yet the games matter, especially for the rebuilding Flyers system. It’s a small sample that provides a lot of insight.
1. The Flyers Have Promise, it won’t Matter Without Reliable Goaltending
The Flyers, for the most part, outplayed the Rangers in Friday night’s game. They controlled the puck and had the better movement in the offensive zone. It didn’t matter early on as they trailed 2-0.
Carson Bjarnason allowed two goals on the first four shot he face. He settled down after that but it’s a reminder of the Flyers issues. Goaltending has been a weakness and remains one. They have a great young forward unit and a promising defense. It won’t matter if they don’t find stability in the goal.
Bjarnason, drafted in the 2023 second round, has promise but is inconsistent. Friday’s game showed some of that. Meanwhile, 20-year-old Russian goalie Yegor Zavragin (2023 third-round pick) is still overseas. He’s off to a great start in his pre-NHL career but is still a few years away.
The good thing about Friday: Bjarnason stepped up after the first period. He stopped 19 of the next 20 shots to help the Flyers win the game. He’s a 20-year-old goaltender, and the position, aside from being unpredictable, takes time to develop. It’s why his performance can’t be a judgment of his play moving forward. He’s one to watch.
2. Rangers Have a Two-Way Find in Morrow
Everyone knows that K’Andre Miller was traded this summer. Few know about the return the Rangers received. One of the players they got back was 22-year-old defenseman Scott Morrow. The Carolina Hurricanes saw him as expendable, the Rangers saw him as a much-needed part of their blue line for next season and the years to come.
Morrow assisted on the first two goals for the Rangers and was the key defenseman at the point for the team in the game. He also helped set the tone on the other end by playing the shooting lanes and limiting the Flyers from finding good looks on the net. The Rangers defensive unit blocked plenty of shots in the game but Morrow was the standout.
The Rangers have a top-of-the-league two-way defenseman in Adam Fox. The problem is they lack a two-way presence on defense after that. Morrow is the answer and, more importantly, will add depth to the unit next season.
3. Nikita Grebenkin: One big moment
Nikita Grebenkin is often overlooked in the Flyers prospect pool. He was one of the players they received at the trade deadline and is emerging as an elite forward. He’s still learning the North American game, and the Russian is acclimating to Lehigh Valley (and Pennsylvania) altogether. However, he’s starting to look like the wild card in the Flyers system as a bigger forward with skill.
Despite his size, Grebenkin was invisible for most of the game. His impact wasn’t felt as he wasn’t controlling the puck or showing off that good shot. The reality is that Grebenkin needs space to operate and find open looks.
That’s what he got in overtime. With the 3-on-3 play, he controlled the puck from the high slot and sniped it to the back of the net to give the Flyers the 4-3 victory. The most likely scenario is that Grebenkin spends most of this season at the AHL level. That said, there’s a chance he’s on the NHL team by midseason, especially if Lehigh Valley Phantoms coach John Snowden keeps playing him in situations where he can make an impact (which Rick Tocchet will presumably do as well if he’s called up).
4. AHL coaches ran the game… And it showed (in a positive way)
The fascination with Snowden as the new Phantoms coach is how fast he operates. He understands the game and has an answer for everything (plus, a vision for how the team should win games). In the first period, he looked like he was trying to find his footing along with the young Flyers skaters.
On the other bench was Grant Potulny, a young coach who is entering his second season behind the bench for the Hartford Wolf Pack. He experienced the highs and lows, plus the growing pains that come from being behind the bench in the AHL. He had the Rangers prepared for the recent game from the opening puck drop. The Rangers were in the right positions in their end and blocking shots, while the Flyers allowed two goals on the dangerous ice.
But what stands out about Snowden is his ability to make adjustments and learn on the fly. The Flyers settled down and adapted to make the game a more physical one and ultimately came out on top. It’s why there’s optimism about the rebuild and what the Flyers are doing. Seeing Tocchet make adjustments is one thing but to see a mirror image (albeit a lot younger and still learning) is another.
5. Other notes from Game One of the Rookie Series
It’s hard to read too much into one game, a game that doesn’t count in the standings, nonetheless. I was sitting next to Wayne Fish in the pressbox, a writer who has covered the Flyers since the mid 1970s. If his interest was minimal, it’s hard to take the game seriously.
That said, it’s the excitement of hockey being back in the air. The weather is cooling, and the preseason action is officially underway. The fans are starved for hockey, the goals, the fights, the hard hits, the sounds and energy of the game, and they got all of it at the PPL Center on Friday night.
As for me, this felt like the first day of school as a freshman surrounded by seniors. Fish was one of the many Philadelphia beat writers who made the trip to this game, and there’s a nervous energy that comes with covering a game, with prospects who are sure to make an impact, for the first time. Being surrounded by established writers makes any younger one shy, which is fitting since this is how the rookies feel, even if they won’t admit it.
The good thing is that once the game started, everyone settled down. The kids were waiting all summer to hit the ice in a competitive form, and they finally did on Friday night. The better news is they’ll be back at it tomorrow at 5 PM Eastern time, and by then, it will just be business as usual.
Most likely Schneider/Borgen will be paired together, however, if Morrow is showing that much promise on both ends of the ice, maybe a Schneider/Morrow pairing could be something for the Rangers to explore since both are solid up and coming two way defensemen, whose strengths are opposite each other (Morrow being the more offensively talented of the 2… not to take away from Schneider who is pretty good himself, and Schneider being the stronger of the 2 defensively). The kicker being, both are mobile defensemen who can play with the puck. This would leave Soucy/Borgen to be the shutdown 3rd pair.