The Philadelphia Flyers still hold the sixth pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, but this expert’s latest mock draft says that’s not such a bad thing after all.
Much of the dialogue to this point has centered around which players the Flyers are interested in, where those players will fall in the draft, and which teams are jockeying for their services.
Philadelphia figures to be one of the teams most locked onto a center, even despite their public comments regarding their willingness to take a winger or a defender.
Fortunately for the Flyers, momentum is starting to pick up around the fall of one of the very best centers in the draft class in James Hagens.
In his latest mock draft for The Athletic, prospects expert Scott Wheeler predicts Hagens will fall right into the Flyers’ laps at No. 6, with Matthew Schaefer, Michael Misa, Anton Frondell, Caleb Desnoyers, and Porter Martone getting drafted ahead of him.
“If Hagens gets here, I think the Flyers like him and would consider taking him. Same goes for Desnoyers, whose well-rounded game and smarts could really support and complement Matvei Michkov. But Desnoyers isn’t going to be there,” Wheeler wrote. “If Hagens isn’t, I think they lean [Brady Martin] over Jake O’Brien here in terms of the other centers (though they did take O’Brien to dinner in Buffalo). The pull of a center, and a player like Martin, is real in this range.”
The Utah Mammoth, who pick fourth, are said to be high on Martin as well and could consider taking him inside the top five. Perhaps Utah and Philadelphia are playing a game of chicken with the draft’s most violent forward prospect.
NHL Scouting Combine: Flyers Draft Board, Targets Taking ShapeThe Philadelphia Flyers, as expected, had a hectic week meeting with various top prospects at the NHL Scouting Combine. Such is life as a team with three first-round picks in the 2025 NHL Draft.
That said, Hagens is an undeniable talent who continues to draw comparisons to New Jersey Devils superstar Jack Hughes, who’s already come within one point of a 100-point season early in his NHL career.
Pairing the 18-year-old Boston College talisman with Matvei Michkov will set the Flyers up for offensive success for two decades, and the remainder of the grueling rebuild would then center on adding cornerstone pieces around those two.
Defenseman Jackson Smith, a potential top-10 pick, could be a trade-up candidate for the Flyers if management and scouts think he can be one of those pieces. On the right side of the defense, the Flyers have Jamie Drysdale, Oliver Bonk, Spencer Gill, and Helge Grans, so they have no need to force an early pick at this position.
Plus, who knows what the future holds for Rasmus Ristolainen?
Wheeler had other surprises in store for the Flyers in his latest mock draft (be sure to check those out), but landing Hagens would assuredly be the best-case scenario for the Flyers, who finished higher in the standings than many fans would have liked on the heels of that dreary ending to the 2024-25 season.
And that dream scenario seems to be gaining real momentum with the 2025 NHL Draft less than three weeks away.
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