Meltzer’s 2025 Mock Draft: Flyers First-Round Selections

I am in the process of creating a 2025 mock draft for the Flyers’ official website. Throughout the month of June, the Flyers media team will have an array of features across all parts of the team’s social media, podcasts (Flyers Daily and Prospect Pipeline) and the website itself. I have done a preliminary version of the annual mock Draft. Various spots are not finalized yet in my mind, but I feel like it’s coming together. For an mock draft on HHS, see one one that Jess Rubenstein assembled (picks 1 to 28, sectioned off in five parts so far).

Methodology

When I do a mock draft, I use a uniform method: Best available player, regardless of position and independent of whether a club has multiple picks in the first round. However, there is a bit of positional bias in the actual NHL Draft: centers, defense, wingers, and goaltenders in that first-round preference order. This changes if a club is especially high on a certain winger. Alternatively, but infrequently, a team with a late-first round pick projects a teenage goalie prospect as a future impact starter. I actually do have one goaltender in my 2025 mock.

Additionally, I try not to look too much at current organizational depth charts for the best fit. There are some organizations that weigh the internal depth factor a little more heavily than others. However, some are pretty strict about “best available player in Round One, positional and depth selections later.” For uniformity’s sake, I stuck only with taking the best available.

Finally, I think it’s very important not to have “home town” bias: manipulating the picks so that one’s team of personal rooting interest is guaranteed to pick a certain favored prospect. If anything, I sometimes try to have scenarios in which a player I particularly like is off the board before the Philadelphia Flyers’ selection comes up.

For example, in 2018, I hoped Joel Farabee (then with the USNTDP) would be on the board at 14th overall. That happened in reality. However, in my mock, I had Dallas taking Farabee just before Philly’s first pick. As a result, I selected K’Andre Miller for the Flyers. Last year, I had the Flyers take Finnish center Konsta Helenius with the 12th pick. Actual Philadelphia pick Jett Luchanko went 20th to the New York Islanders in my mock for the Flyers’ site.

The 2025 Draft crop

The 2025 Draft is one year where I think there could be a higher-than-average volume of seemingly off-the-board selections made in the top half of the first round. Beyond Matthew Schaefer and Michael Misa going first and second overall (in either order, but the pundit consensus has Schaefer first), I think the actual Draft selection order could vary significantly from the most common top-five, top-eight and top-10 lists.

After the Flyers had their introductory press conference for new head coach Rick Tocchet, the team had breakout interview scrums with Tocchet, general manager Daniel Briere and president of hockey operations Keith Jones. I asked Jones about this year’s Draft. He indicated that he doesn’t think this year’s Draft is one in which moving up is necessary.

He identified Schaer as a special talent (potential franchise defenseman) and said he more or less sees parity, when all facets of the game are weighed, from second to around eight overall. Several of the listed centers may end being wingers as pros. This is not at all uncommon. Less common is the wing-to-center switch. I asked Jones if Misa is someone who could end up being a winger (which some pundits believe) and he just said, “Maybe.” Specific to the Flyers, Jones said he’s perfectly comfortable staying at sixth overall.

“The math works out, any way you want to arrange that, there should be a couple guys we like at the six spot, so we’ll have a choice,” Jones said.

Is that a smokescreen? It could be. I don’t think it’s impossible that the Flyers could try to move up. They apparently did so a year ago with an interest in moving up to fourth (Columbus’s spot) to select Ivan Demidov. That did not pan out, of course. Montreal took Demidov fifth overall. The Flyers traded down from 12th (Minnesota used the pick on Zeev Buium) to 13th (Luchanko).

The likeliest scenario is the Flyers standing pat at sixth rather than packaging the sixth pick and a later selection (22nd or the 31st/32nd) to try to move up. San Jose is open for business on the second overall pick, but they are looking for NHL roster help more than multiple assets for agreeing to move down four spots. Could the Flyers move down a bit? Maybe, but they are already flush with assets. I think they stay at number six when all is said and done.

However, it’s a different story for the 22nd overall pick (originally belonging to Colorado) and the 31st/32nd section. Those I could absolutely see Briere dangling as trade bait. Ditto the four picks the Flyers hold in the second round. At the very least, I’d expect that the Flyers will at least try to spread the assets across the next few drafts.

Mock Draft: Flyers take Anton Frondell with the 6th pick

In my upcoming mock draft, the first five picks play out like this:

1. Islanders: Schaefer
2. Sharks: Misa
3. Blackhawks: Porter Martone
4. Mammoth: James Hagens
5. Predators: Caleb Desnoyers

In the sixth spot, I think it’s possible the Flyers go against the pundit grain. However, I’ll stick with the most commonly seen group and go with Frondell. I’d also happily take Desnoyers if available and be comfortable with Jake O’Brien. If Martone were to slip out of the top five (I don’t think he will), that would be my choice. I think he’s a future 1st-line winger in the NHL.

Frondell could play center or left wing as a pro in North America, so there’s a versatility factor. He’s a smart player who has already had some success against adult pros (minor league, but pros nonetheless) in Sweden. He didn’t have a great Under-18 Worlds for Sweden, but that doesn’t overly concern me. It might drop him out of the top five. Frondell, however, is one of the best pure shooters in the Draft. He’s also a well-rounded young player.

Players I wouldn’t take at 6th: Roger McQueen (great tools, too much projection and injury fear), Brady Martin (I see him more as a nice middle-six winger than top-six center), Radim Mrkta (great tools, huge frame, but raw and entails risk as a possible top-three D).

Mock Draft: Flyers Take Bill Zonnon at 22nd

There a group of about seven or eight players I think could be nice selections when the 22nd overall pick comes up. Bob McKenzie has Rouyn-Noranda (QMJHL) winger Zonnon just out of the first-round range and McKeen’s has him at the tail end of the first round. However, I’d be comfortable with the player anywhere in the latter one-third of the first round.

Zonnon always seems to be involved in the play. The puck finds him. He’s very good with the puck on his stick and has quickness when he finds a seam.

Mock Draft: Flyers Take Joshua Ravensbergen 31st/3nd

The Prince George (WHL) netminder is the consensus top goaltender available in this year’s Draft. Whether the Edmonton-originated pick falls with the penultimate or final pick of the first round, I’d be fine with the Flyers using their third pick of the Draft on the goaltender. However, in my mock, Cameron Reid (defenseman, Kitchener, OHL) nearly dropped to the end of the top round. If someone in that range falls, I’d be fine with changing course.

It does not matter that the Flyers have Carson Bjarnason (2023 second round) and Yegor Zavragin (2003 third round) in the farm system. Longtime readers know my “Mitch Hedberg baked potato” theory on goalie drafting. Maybe you don’t want one right now. By the time it’s finished cooking, who knows? Ravensbergen is projectable as a future NHL goalie, and quite possibly, a really good one.