Porter Martone's commitment to the NCAA's Michigan State means one less winger is battling for a roster spot with the Philadelphia Flyers this fall.
By extension, those players likely to make the NHL roster and those likely to be on the bubble have become increasingly clear.
Rookie forwards Alex Bump and Nikita Grebenkin are both expected to vie for a roster spot, and Bump has already drawn plaudits from Flyers AGM Brent Flahr, as is tradition, ahead of his first NHL training camp.
Grebenkin already garnered seven games of NHL experience playing for former Flyers head coach Craig Berube and the Toronto Maple Leafs last season, and impressed in his brief stint with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms after arriving in March.
From there, the Flyers' dire salary cap situation muddies things, but assuming new head coach Rick Tocchet isn't willing to make Nicolas Deslauriers an every-night player to start the season, and assuming Tyson Foerster isn't ready to play, there's one more opening at the forward position.
Deslauriers is a pure winger, so the Flyers may favor a player who can play center to round out the roster. Names like Karsen Dorwart and Rodrigo Abols come to mind, but with his size and experience, the latter is more likely to steal a roster spot.
Or, with the consideration of adding some speed to the bottom-six, it would be foolish to count out veteran sparkplug Anthony Richard.
I think 2024 first-round pick Jett Luchanko will have a real opportunity to compete and play in preseason games, but it was quite apparent in his NHL stint with the Flyers last season that this level of competition was too much for him at this point in his development.
The addition of Christian Dvorak in free agency effectively nuked Luchanko's chances of making the NHL roster outright, and the Trevor Zegras experiment at center, if it goes awry, won't have its plug pulled until later in the season.
Luchanko doesn't have that kind of time, and he didn't exactly set the OHL ablaze in his D+1 season last year. The 18-year-old center deserves to have a full training camp with the Guelph Storm and go from there.
Bump is as sure as sure can be at this stage, so long as he doesn't completely tank in training camp and the preseason.
Martone, who turns 19 in October, would have been Bump and Grebenkin's greatest threat to an NHL roster spot, but by going to Michigan State, the 2025 No. 6 pick won't even be competing for that privilege.
What happens this time next year, though, could be a different story.
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