{"id":214686,"date":"2025-10-15T11:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/214686\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T11:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T11:25:11","slug":"east-notes-luchanko-benson-slavin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/214686\/","title":{"rendered":"East Notes: Luchanko, Benson, Slavin"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to a new article from Anthony Di Marco of the Daily Faceoff<\/a>, the Philadelphia Flyers aren\u2019t expected to retain Jett Luchanko<\/a> for the duration of the season if he doesn\u2019t rise out of a fourth-line role. While Philadelphia\u2019s front office believes Luchanko could \u201chold his own\u201d in a bottom-six role, they will need to see a breakout from him if they\u2019re to keep him beyond the nine-game threshold, which would burn the first year off of his entry-level contract.<\/p>\n

The breakout the Flyers were expecting to see hasn\u2019t come yet. The former 13th overall pick of the 2024 NHL Draft has gone scoreless through his first two games of the season, averaging 8:15 of ice time. Still, it\u2019s difficult to see a pathway upward for Luchanko even if he does perform better, especially if they\u2019re adamant on keeping him at the center position.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s little chance of the Flyers breaking up the line of Tyson Foerster<\/a>, Noah Cates<\/a>, and Bobby Brink<\/a>, which has become a solid identity line for the team. The Flyers could conceivably move Trevor Zegras<\/a> back to the wing, though they were steadfast in their belief that he could be a center when they acquired him this past summer. Further, given his defensive value and play in the faceoff dot, they\u2019re unlikely to isolate Sean Couturier<\/a> to fourth-line minutes.<\/p>\n

Given the situation in front of him and the minimal time to accomplish such a task, it\u2019s more than likely that Philadelphia will reassign Luchanko back to the OHL\u2019s Guelph Storm in the next week or two. Unfortunately, despite his unenviable situation, he wouldn\u2019t be entering a better situation in Guelph. Although he\u2019d command far more playing time, the Storm aren\u2019t expected to be a competitive team this season.<\/p>\n

Other notes from the Eastern Conference:<\/p>\n

Although he wasn\u2019t put on the team\u2019s injured reserve to start the season, Zach Benson<\/a> has yet to make his debut with the Buffalo Sabres this year. That\u2019s expected to change tomorrow. According to Bill Hoppe of the Times Herald<\/a>, Benson is likely to enter the lineup tomorrow night against the Ottawa Senators. Unfortunately, unless he has found another offensive level to his game, Benson shouldn\u2019t be expected to help with the Sabres\u2019 offensive woes to begin the campaign. Through his first two years, he\u2019s scored 21 goals and 58 points in 146 games, averaging 14:40 of ice time.
\nYesterday, the Carolina Hurricanes announced<\/a> that defenseman Jaccob Slavin<\/a> is suffering from a lower-body injury, but were relatively vague regarding the severity. Today, in a small update<\/a>, head coach Rod Brind\u2019Amour<\/a> said, \u201cHe went for some more testing. I think we\u2019re just going to keep him out for a while. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s super serious, but he doesn\u2019t quite feel right. So, for right now, he\u2019s not on this trip.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to a new article from Anthony Di Marco of the Daily Faceoff, the Philadelphia Flyers aren\u2019t expected…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":214687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[741,49,48,748,5718,36387,74218,448,752,82,96713],"class_list":{"0":"post-214686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-buffalo-sabres","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-carolina-hurricanes","12":"tag-injury","13":"tag-jaccob-slavin","14":"tag-jett-luchanko","15":"tag-nhl","16":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-zach-benson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/214687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}