Why the Philadelphia Flyers bet on Jett Luchanko
With the 13th selection in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft, the Philadelphia Flyers selected Jett Luchanko from the Guelph (don’t call them ass) Storm. In the eyes of the public, this was a reach. We don’t need to run from that. But more functionally, it was a disagreement among scouts.
If you read enough public lists, you’ll find that different people have different estimations all of the time. Corey Pronman ranked Ivan Demidov well out of the top 5 and believed Berkly Catton, among others, were better forwards. That’s far from a shot at Corey. Scouching had second round pick Teddy Stiga in his top 10. Scott Wheeler (and myself) had Cole Eiserman, eventual 20th overall selection, as a top 6 pick in this class.
It’s worth pointing out that when two scouts agree in the public sphere with nothing on the line, it’s a disagreement. When team scouts disagree with public scouts, it’s a reach.
I don’t think we should confer infallibility to team scouts. QUITE the opposite, in fact. But we probably shouldn’t confer infallibility to the public, either. This is a disagreement.
The public does a better job, though also arguably have a bigger platform, to express their side.
Teams, often because they don’t have scouts submit public articles after they get done evaluating a player, are left to give you the basics and the bottom line. But that’s hard to turn into an effective case for why they were higher on a player than the consensus.
The Flyers were higher on Luchanko than the consensus. Were they right? Were they wrong?
In order to possibly begin to tell that, it would help to know WHY they’re higher on Luchanko than the consensus was. What were the reasons?
That’s what we’ll be focusing on today. I’ll attempt to explain what, frankly, I would have liked to hear the Flyers explain better.
Why did it happen? Why did the Flyers bet on Jett Luchanko? If, at the end, you still disagree, then now we all know what we’re disagreeing with specifically. That’s my goal here.
Without further ado, let’s look into the first trait that the Flyers saw that propelled Luchanko to a higher spot on their board than most.
The athleticism:
Jett Luchanko is probably one of the most naturally gifted athletes the Flyers have ever drafted. You’ll doubtlessly find a couple other athletes with his level of natural explosiveness who the Flyers drafted, but it won’t take more than a hand to count them. I realize this sounds like over-the-top effusive praise, but it’s not without legitimate evidence.
Here are some of his testing results at the NHL Combine:
Grip strength (left hand): 172 pounds
- #1 in the Combine
- #2 was Cayden Lindstrom
Grip strength (right hand): 175 pounds
- #1 in the Combine
- #2 was Cayden Lindstrom
Vertical jump: 24.6 inches.
- #2 in the Combine to EJ Emery
No arm jump: 21.1 inches.
- #4 in the Combine.
Squat jump: 18 inches.
- #8 in the Combine
Pro Agility (going to the right): 4.23 seconds
- #2 in the Combine.
Mean Power Output (on Wingate bike): 12.9 Watts/KG
- #1 in the Combine.
And in case you thought it was JUST the NHL Combine? Since everyone wanted to get in their Mike Mamula jokes? Oh, don’t worry, there’s more.
Here is the athletic testing at the CHL Top Prospects Game, and how he performed there. This is on-ice testing.
30M Forward Skate: 4.098 seconds
- 4th among those tested.
30M Forward Skate (with puck): 3.985 seconds.
- 3rd
30M Backwards Skate (with puck): 4.625 seconds
- T-3rd.
Transition Ability (with puck): 13.918 seconds.
- 2nd.
Reaction time: 9.717 seconds.
- 3rd.
Reaction time (with Puck): 9.959 seconds
- 1st.
Overall testing scores (average of all results):
- Jett Luchanko
- Sam Dickinson
- Carson Wetsch
- Beckett Sennecke
- Charlie Elick
Luchanko dominated both on-ice and off-ice athletic testing. He was surpassing the work of freakish athletes in this draft like Sam Dickinson and Cayden Lindstrom. He may be 5’11” but that height is extremely misleading. He’s closer to a smooth skating power forward than an undersized player who needs to be the smartest or most skilled player to succeed.
He’s an incredible explosive athlete, and it has actual consequences to how he plays hockey that we’ll get into later. There’s a ton of burst in his skating, and a lot of genuine power in his puck game.
The game is easier when you’re this athletic. Developing a player with this kind of physical ability is easier, because they don’t need to master advanced concepts in order to go further than their peers. Simply having any kind of clue how the game is played with a strong enough base of mechanical skill? That’s more than enough for these kinds of athletes.
The modeling:
I’m going to assume that the Flyers aren’t totally ignorant to prospect modeling, whether it be NHL equivalency or anything of the sort. It’s a tool, and they’re a billion dollar company, so they surely have access to things more complex than this.
In the case of Luchanko, you don’t see anything absurd like a 99 percent likelihood of becoming a star producer in the NHL. Those types of anomalies don’t come around every year.
Outside of the anomalies, one of the things I like to do is dig into the stars in these models who did hit. Does the prospect resemble their game? Is this an actionable development plan, or did an apple just happen to produce like an orange in junior leagues?
The good news is that a lot of the star-producing comparables to Luchanko feel actionable. Exceptionally athletic centers like Dylan Larkin. Two-way playmakers like Robert Thomas. Those are the ones who feel most actionable.
Blake Wheeler is a much different size than Luchanko, but thanks in part to that athleticism, you’ll find that their games are less different than you think. Even Anze Kopitar. At first blush, you’ll notice these players are totally different sizes. But again, Luchanko is so athletic that Kopitar doesn’t feel like a total alien in terms of playstyle.
They’re not all 1 for 1 fits. Jonathan Toews and Jarome Iginla are hardly actionable development paths for Lucahnko, but a lot of the comparables featured here are.
There’s a heavy emphasis in this dataset on two-way playmaking centers, bonus points if they’re extremely athletic.
So the “star probability” is higher than 21% when you account for who Luchanko actually plays like and who he doesn’t in terms of the modeling.
For the purposes of a comprehensive analysis, let’s look at the primary players that the Flyers overlooked. That being two prospects I adore in Zeev Buium and Konsta Helenius. You’ll notice that, at first blush, the two of them seem like much better bets to make than Lucahnko.
But if you dig into the comparables, there aren’t actually a whole lot of highly encouraging comparables that you can make. It just so happens that the low sample size of players who profiled like this have had good NHL careers.
In the case of Helenius, this is especially pronounced. The three most actionable comps are William Nylander, Arturri Lehkonen, and a Hockey Hall of Famer from the 90s. So of the two, Nylander and Lehkonen? Helenius looks a lot more like Lehkonen than Nylander.
With Buium, he looks a lot like York. So it’s no surprise to hear the Flyers liked him a lot. But you see why that might be a little less tempting when they already have York? The most encouraging comparable is Evan Bouchard, but Buium and Bouchard aren’t similar at all.
Here, you have a situation where the surface level analysis certainly favors two prospects over the one they chose. But digging deeper into the comparables, an argument for Luchanko begins to emerge.
The Team:
Guelph Storm fans were very upset at me for pointing this out on social media, but the team that Luchanko played for this season was nothing short of a dumpster fire.
This was actually a somewhat common occurrence. And it spilled into various aspects of his game. I’m going to point them out here, so I don’t have to refer back to his team all the time when I’m talking about his actual game.
- He rarely had the puck inside the offensive zone unless he was single handedly willing it there.
- He rarely received a pass with speed to propel him through the neutral zone, making his actual reps in transition extremely limited.
The first element was something that Luchanko actually fought through fairly well. When he got the puck in the offensive zone, he did a good job of doing damage once that happened. He created a lot of netfront scoring chances for himself, and he set up a ton of scoring chances for his teammates.
All of those scoring chances, however, likely would have resulted in more points if he wasn’t playing largely with teammates who shanked simple passes. An unnervingly frequent occurrence. They also would have resulted in even more scoring chance creation due to him simply having the puck in the offensive zone more than he did.
The real damage, however, was done in transition. Luchanko simply could not receive any kind of breakout pass that allowed him to carry the puck through the middle with speed. There was a desire to, on his part. He was in the 80th percentile in terms of choosing to attempt a controlled entry over a dump-in. He was in the 60th percentile in attempting a controlled breakout rather than a dump-out.
For one thing, if those decisions were easier, and he had less occasions in which he was spending his entire shift in the defensive zone? Both of those numbers would be higher. But actually, they’re quite high to begin with.
There was certainly an efficacy, too. He was in the 91st percentile for transition efficiency, or the success rate of his controlled exits and entries.
He was both willing and able to take over games in transition, but he simply didn’t receive many opportunities because his teammates weren’t actually capable of hitting the centerman with a pass in stride as he flew through the middle of the ice.
For both of these reasons, there’s strong reason to believe that Luchanko’s production would actually have looked better than it did if he simply had more to work with. That means his baseline modeling looks better, and let’s be honest, it means he gets a little more love from the public scouts who are like everyone else and want to see pucks end up in the net.
In-zone playmaking:
This is probably the hallmark of Luchanko’s game. He’s a savvy distributor whose facilitation abilities are augmented by his ability to win puck battles and escape the boards once he wins that puck.
His athleticism shines through here. First, there’s the speed that he brings, allowing him to be first on nearly every retrieval he chases. It isn’t just long speed, either. His acceleration is the true winner of the day in these situations. He can get to that lofty top speed in just a couple strides. It’s a function of his general explosiveness, and why It matters how high he jumped at the Combine.
Once he gets to the puck, typically before his opponent, that freakish grip strength lends itself well to a battle of jousting sticks. He just has a knack for coming out with the puck, even when he’s outnumbered.
This is typically where the bottom-6ers separate themselves from the guys with upside. All kinds of players can leverage winning the puck on retrievals into an NHL career. It’s the players who can escape the corner and make plays out of that position who have a shot at becoming stars in the NHL, and a reasonable path to an NHL top 6.
The good news is I quite enjoy watching Luchanko do this.
He has the skating ability to explode out of the corner and claim space in open ice. That grip strength shows up when opposing players manage to get their sticks in his path. He typically barrels right through that stick, and any marginal contact he may endure.
Jett Luchanko Highlights:
Once he’s beaten that pressure along the wall, the defense is naturally going to scramble with players who aren’t prepared to defend a situation that arose so dynamically.
Luchanko is extremely good at recognizing and exploiting these holes. He’s not the type to force a perfect pass. Like another prospect I love, recent Sabres draftee Konsta Helenius, Luchanko wins through attrition.
Once he sets up a scoring chance, his feet are already in motion and he’s chasing down a retrieval.
As we discussed, Luchanko typically wins these pursuits and that results in another puck touch.
That puck touch becomes another scoring chance assist.
He’ll repeat this process two or three times in a shift, and no defensive zone coverage is built to ensure this kind of sustained pressure.
The breakdown will occur, and when it does, that’s when you see a couple “knockout punches” out of him. He has a tremendous eye for seam passes, and he has the touch to execute what his eyes perceive.
Scouts and NHL teams talk a lot about “work rate,” and they never really explain how it has any functional value whatsoever.
But this is a good example of the value of work rate. If you aren’t Patrick Kane, you probably don’t have the vision to find 1 pass with 1 puck touch that will result in a goal.
So you shouldn’t really try!
A lot of playmakers, even the very best of them, survive off of frequent puck touches. Mitch Marner and Robert Thomas win because they get the puck a lot.
Jett assures himself extra playmaking opportunities because of his ability to retrieve pucks.
Raw transition game:
I’m very rarely impressed by a player’s game speed. I recognize it. Sure, he’s fast. It doesn’t usually register as something that creates problems in the NHL.
There are a few exceptions, and you can probably guess them. Nathan MacKinnon, Brayden Point, Jack Eichel, Connor McDavid, Nikolaj Ehlers, Dylan Larkin.
That’s probably not a perfect description of the 6 fastest skaters in the league, but it’s the guys who I watch barrel through the neutral zone in a straight line and say: “Yup. That’s a problem.”
Jett Luchanko has this quality. To be clear, McDavid and MacKinnon especially have many qualities besides this one!
And Luchanko doesn’t have the top speed of either of those two. But there’s a difference between true top speed and “game speed,” where I’m concerned.
If you give Owen Tippett a full sheet of ice during 3 on 3 OT to go from 1 end to the other? He can break 24mph. That doesn’t mean he’s functionally as fast as MacKinnon.
Luchanko has well above average top speed. But the crown jewel of his skating is his ability to explode out of turns and to accelerate in no more than three strides.
That’s exactly the kind of skating profile you dream of in a centerman.
Luchanko is a player who should cause tremendous concern in the opposing team whenever he has the puck with a runway.
Defensemen at the CHL level almost invariably don’t bother to try and gap him up at the blueline. They won’t dare attempt to deny him entry, because that’s a good way to let him behind the defense.
At the CHL level, this is sometimes taken to an extreme where defensemen will back up all the way to the hash marks when he gains the blueline.
That’s a green light to shoot which he hasn’t recognized yet, but we’ll get into that later.
The reason I use the word “raw” to describe his transition game is because there are a lot of details which the league’s best transition players have mastered which he has not.
Players like Jack Hughes, Mat Barzal, Connor Bedard, Artemi Panarin, and Elias Pettersson don’t necessarily thrive in transition because of their speed. Some, but not all of that list isn’t even fast to begin with.
What they have in common is an ability to shift their weight to convey false intentions to the defender in front of them, and then explode in the opposite direction.
Besides those feints of direction changes, the most savvy transition players can play with their pace.
Players like Nikita Kucherov and Leon Draisaitl have practically made a career out of weaponizing this specifically. These kinds of timing wizards will stop in front of an opposing player and mesmerize them while they either make their play right in front of a paralyzed defender or make them look silly if they close the gap.
These two finer details elude Luchanko to varying degrees.
You don’t see a lot of that second category. He isn’t faking defenders out of their skates with subtle weight shifts and driving right by them. He’s shown it a few times. He has a couple of extremely creative dangles, but this isn’t something that appears frequently in his game.
The third category, however, I think he has more of a natural grasp for. It’s not where it needs to be, but it seems more straight forward for development purposes.
Luchanko realizes when he has room in front of the defender and slows up on a fairly consistent basis. A lot of his flashes of dynamic puck skill come off a subtle delay in his entry.
It’s not hard to see where he further develops that change-of-pace game to become a true transition monster. And going back to his team, you wonder if he’d be further along in these finer aspects if he had more opportunities to play in transition.
Functional Skill:
Luchanko will occasionally attempt a high-difficulty dangle, and he’ll even succeed a relatively high percentage of the time. But the foundation of Luchanko’s skill game is definitely not based in deceiving defenders with unbelievable magic hands.
In this way, Luchanko reminds me a little of NHL Seth Jarvis. I add that ‘NHL’ caveat carefully. Jarvis was a puck magician as a junior player. His dangle highlights were truly ridiculous. Turning unnecessary dangles into more simple carrying techniques like putting pucks into unoccupied sticks or using his body to fend off opposing sticks was something that he needed to develop.
Jarvis learned a lot from Sebastian Aho, and described it like this in an interview with 32 Thoughts: “He doesn’t stickhandle as much as people think he does. It’s just carrying the puck and knocking sticks away. That was something I really focused on, being able to go through traffic and not try to dangle everybody. Just place pucks, knock sticks and be able to maneuver my way without having to overcomplicate it.”
Jett Luchanko has a natural sense for that kind of functional skill.
He probably exaggerates it too much. He relies a little too much on his speed and being able to chase down pucks no matter how far he places it from his own stick. But the template is ideal for him. He doesn’t have the silky smooth hands of Matvei Michkov. He has exceptional mobility and that grip strength translates to an extremely heavy stick that he can use to fight through traffic, so he should weaponize those traits.
In that way, he would be best served to heed what Jarvis talked about later in the same interview about modulating his pace instead of going immediately to his speed as a first resort:
“I like to use my speed,” he said. “I like to skate a million miles an hour, but being able to change it up and not have to skate as hard — add a little more deceptive skating — I think you see guys like (Jack Hughes), who kind of float through the zone, they’re not always going as fast as they can, they kind of turn it on and beat guys…It’s been so embedded in me, just skate as hard as you can, whenever. It’s been a challenge (to try and change), but it’s been fun.”
This would probably also help with when Luchanko does occasionally get a puck late in games or late in shifts, and he just doesn’t have the same burst that you saw earlier in the same game. The downside to being such an explosive athlete is that no matter how much you work on your cardio, your muscles are doomed to build up lactic acid faster than other players. The way to prevent this from becoming an issue is by turning on the jets more judiciously.
Luchanko has what hockey men might call “hard skill.”
That isn’t a bad thing, and it can serve him very well in the NHL. If he just picks up the more basic elements of the “softer skill” that sometimes gets villainized in hockey, he can mold himself into a weapon.
This is what they’re betting on. They’re betting on an athlete who has shown great vision and a strong base of puck skill to become a two-way playmaking top 6 centerman.
They’re betting that we’ve seen this movie before, and that Luchanko is just another young prospect who only received a real opportunity this season like Larkin and Thomas before him.
For my money, it’s very possible that they’re being too clever by half and outsmarting themselves. But the logic is there, and this is far from a bet that teams never win out on.
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Great X and O along with a ton of testing info, but that doesn’t explain why they didn’t trade back further and get more capital to go along with this guy.
It’s weird to read a profile of a hockey player written by someone so obviously influenced by soccer writing.