Jett Luchanko has finished his first full season playing for the Ontario Hockey League’s Guelph Storm since being drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers 13th overall last June. But that doesn’t mean he’s done playing hockey until the fall and we see the Flyers’ development camp start to rev up again. There’s still hockey to play.
The Guelph Storm had a bad year. Last in the OHL’s Western Conference and only the Peterborough Petes had a worse record in the entire league. On the season, Guelph earned a 21-38-5-4 record and only got worse after the trade deadline where they sent away any notable older player as they continue rebuilding — infamously, they did not trade Luchanko to a better playing environment for the rest of the season and for him to get a chance to play in the playoffs
As for Luchanko, he was on track to have a stellar year of production but due to just general lack of talent around him, he suffered a couple stretches with zero points after that trade deadline. From Feb. 28 to March 18, Luchanko earned just three points in nine games. Now, the two games since then he has scored four points so he clearly just had a bad stretch. Overall, Luchanko has scored 21 goals and 56 points in 45 games. Somewhat disappointing but if you just watch him play and how many scoring chances he creates for his lackluster teammates, the point total reflects his scoring environment more than the player himself.
All of this, of course, after Luchanko made the Flyers’ roster out of training camp and played four NHL games and hung around for some more, taking in NHL practices and the like.
But now his junior season is done. The Storm did not make the OHL playoffs (obviously) and their regular season finished with a 2-0 win Sunday afternoon over the Kitchener Rangers. This leads us to a big question: Where and when will Jett Luchanko next play hockey?
The Flyers are no doubt going to bring him down to Pennsylvania and get him on the ice to see what he can do after several months in juniors, but where will he play?
If it’s the Flyers
That is the big decision. Like we said, Luchanko is almost guaranteed to be on his way down south from Guelph and now it’s just up to the Flyers front office to decide where he will lace up.
Let’s go over the hypothetical situation that Luchanko is instantly brought up to the NHL and is in the Flyers’ lineup. Philadelphia has 10 games remaining in this slog of a season. As we all have become so aware of, having played four games already, Luchanko can play in five more before the first year of his entry-level contract is burned and therefore shortens the time the Flyers have one of their best prospects for very cheap.
That’s the cap management part of it. But what about the actual roster moves? If the Flyers do have Luchanko in the NHL, it is our understanding that transaction would count as the fourth and final call-up the Flyers are allowed after the trade deadline. They have already used their first three on Emil Andrae, Rodrigo Abols, and Olle Lycksell immediately after they traded away all those veteran players on March 7.
Of course, teams are still allowed to recall players from the AHL on an emergency basis if they do not have 12 forwards, six defensemen, or two healthy goaltenders available for a game. The Flyers have exactly that right now with Garnet Hathaway and Rasmus Ristolainen out with injuries. If one more injury takes place, they would be able to recall a player without it counting as one of the four allotted moves.
If they do put Luchanko right away in the NHL, that would mean no late-season look for newly acquired 22-year-old Nikita Grebenkin, or rewarding any other young Phantoms with an NHL debut. But, it would at least be an easy placement in the lineup. Nic Deslauriers would almost certainly be the player being a healthy scratch and Luchanko would be able to be one of the Flyers’ top-nine centers as Abols remains on the fourth line.
The fact that it would be irresponsible to have Luchanko play in all the remaining games and burn a year of his ELC in a lost season, and that it would lock them in to not getting a big-league appearance for the much-older Grebenkin (or anyone else); we can’t see this happening.
If it’s the Phantoms
Now that we got that hypothetical situation out of the way, we can get to what is most likely going to happen, in our opinion.
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms have nine more games in the regular season and those mean so much more to them than any game for the Flyers. The Phantoms are currently pushing hard for the playoffs, in a decent position with a 31-25-5-2 record, but could always use some more firepower to make a real effort and adding Luchanko certainly does that.
Regardless of the Phantoms’ playoffs and overall team success, having 18-year-old Luchanko play a couple steps above the OHL, but not instantly thrown into the fires of the NHL, should be very good for his development. To not just get a brief cameo, and to get at least several games of AHL experience, is even more of a benefit.
Especially considering that Luchanko is not able to be in the AHL next season and it’s OHL or NHL, throwing in this stint with the Phantoms just to see what he can do at that level, can only do some good.
But maybe, there is a middle between these two options? It doesn’t need to be all NHL or all AHL.
Maybe both?
Let’s just peer into a crystal ball and try to see what might play out for the teenaged center for the rest of the season.
Luchanko starts with the Phantoms, gets in some AHL practices and plays a few games just to stay warm and see what he could be like with potentially some future Flyers teammates like the aforementioned Grebenkin. And then, after the Flyers’ April 5 game in Montreal against the Canadiens, they recall Luchanko to play the final five games of the season. Thanks to some basic math, that would mean nine games played and keeping his three-year, entry-level contract in tact. And then he can go back to the Phantoms, since they are playing the weekend following the last game of the Flyers’ season.
Going back and forth isn’t the most ideal, but to make all the numbers work for everyone, it feels like a possible scenario that could play out.
Of course, this is all just educated guesses and the Flyers might think that having Luchanko play competitive hockey down in Allentown could benefit him more than playing some NHL minutes on a team destined to be near the bottom of the standings.
No matter what, adding Luchanko to this situation is no doubt going to give us a little bit more to look forward to and reasons to watch the rest of this season as we wait for the good teams to make the playoffs and the Flyers to start dreaming about 2025 NHL Draft prospects.