{"id":87007,"date":"2025-08-16T10:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-16T10:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/87007\/"},"modified":"2025-08-16T10:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T10:27:10","slug":"honorable-mentions-that-missed-the-cut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/87007\/","title":{"rendered":"Honorable mentions that missed the cut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since we reintroduced our annual Top 25 Under 25 series<\/a> earlier this week, we\u2019ve been working our way through a bit of housekeeping related to the series, and we\u2019re closing out the week here with the last of that. Something that\u2019s become readily apparent through the curation of this list is the true wealth of talent that the Flyers have up and down their prospect pool \u2014 so much that it made whittling our lists down to just 25 worthy players a truly difficult task. So, in the interest of spreading out the love just a little bit more, before we move into the bulk of the main list next week, we\u2019ll give a nod to a few of the players who came close to cracking it, but just came up a little short. <\/p>\n

Karsen Dorwart, C<\/p>\n

Signed by the Flyers at the end of last season, after he wrapped up a very successful third season at Michigan State (which saw him put up a tidy 31 points over 35 games played), he got in for five games at the end of the NHL season, playing down centering their fourth line. And while Dorwart remains in the conversation to earn that spot with the big club out of training camp, he still remains something of an unknown within the rest of the prospect pool. College free agent signings don\u2019t have the same shiny new toy luster and many of the recent draft picks, and combined with the lingering uncertainty of what he is as a player and the level he\u2019s best suited at, it\u2019s a recipe for slipping down these rankings (but there\u2019s certainly room for upward movement in our next installment, if he impresses in these longer looks at him).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Matthew Gard, C<\/p>\n

Speaking of that shiny new toy syndrome, Gard is a player that one might have expected would see a bump in his ranking because of it (and, in fairness, did see it in some of our individual rankings), but he didn\u2019t get it to the same degree as some of the other players drafted near him this time around. And it does make some sense \u2014 there\u2019s a lot of value in the overall steadiness and projectability of his game, but he also didn\u2019t pop quite as much in development camp, nor was he present at the World Junior Summer Showcase like players like Jack Murtagh and Shane Vansaghi, so that momentum allowed them to create a bit of separation on a player like Gard. A good draft+1 season, though, will surely go a long way in building his stock back up again. Maybe we\u2019ll see him fare a little better next time around. <\/p>\n

Alex Ciernik<\/p>\n

On the flip side, we have Ciernik, who dropped off of our list after our last installment (where he ranked 20th). But this, in truth, doesn\u2019t really have anything to do with Ciernik himself, necessarily. That is, he\u2019s at a good place with his game and in his development \u2014 he was able to stay healthy for the most part, and got acclimated nicely to the Allsvenskan, and is now poised to take a step up in competition, as he moves over to play in Liiga this coming season \u2014 and even though it\u2019s been a bit of a wildly up and down path so far, he\u2019s getting things nicely back on track. This drop-off in ranking is just a product of having such a large pool of talented prospects to choose from, and such a tight mix as we get down into the bottoms of the rankings. So it goes. <\/p>\n

Heikki Ruohonen, C<\/p>\n

It\u2019s another year of Ruohonen coming close to cracking our main ranking, but not quite getting there. To his credit, though, he\u2019s doing well to build his game up, particularly in the biggest moments. That is, he had solid enough season in the USHL (albeit in a league which hasn\u2019t been as competitive as in years past), but he really stepped up in his time spent with the Finnish national team, first at last year\u2019s World Junior Championship, and more recently in his return to their Summer Showcase. He\u2019s primed for a big season ahead, as he makes the jump to the NCAA level in the fall with a year of adjustment to the North American game already under his belt and also looks to get a major role on Finland\u2019s World Junior team once again, leaving lots of room for upward movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alexis Gendron, <\/p>\n

Having just wrapped up his proper rookie season in the AHL with the Phantoms, and becoming just the third of their players to score 20 goals in their rookie season since the team relocated to the Lehigh Valley in the process, Gendron is undeniably a prospect whose stock is on the rise. He tapped into a new level of consistency in his game, a new level of maturity in his play away from the puck, and stepped up as one of few legitimate game breakers that the team had in their mix. But for those who heavily weigh projectability in their rankings, Gendron may have been a challenging player to rank \u2014 though his game is trending up towards being a legitimate NHL option, he\u2019s moving into a crowded group of undersized skilled forwards projecting into the top-9, and the path for him to get to one of those spots feels a bit uncertain. All the same, he\u2019s an intriguing player primed to have a big season under the Phantoms\u2019 new coaching staff. <\/p>\n

And that just about wraps up our loose ends! Which leaves us just with the main list to get to, at long last. We\u2019ll see you back here on Monday to unveil who cracked our list in the 25th spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Since we reintroduced our annual Top 25 Under 25 series earlier this week, we\u2019ve been working our way…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-87007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}