Jett Luchanko

How Jett Luchanko can become a steal for the Philadelphia Flyers

While I was gauging public opinion on what I should write next, Jett Luchanko was a common name that came up. It makes sense. The most recent Flyers’ first round selection is easily in the top 3 of most interesting Flyers, for better or worse.

There was even interest in a very specific angle of the piece, best expressed through this title:

I took a few days off of hockey writing since then. A combination of other writing projects and, simply, life took precedent. But I have been thinking about what I’d say in this piece that I didn’t say in my original deep dive on Luchanko.

Why the Philadelphia Flyers bet on Jett Luchanko

I could indeed go into greater detail about the depths of terrorism that Guelph represented. As far as support was concerned, Luchanko had somewhere in the range of little to none. I do think that’s part of the story, but frankly, I don’t think it’s everything.

If we’re being real, plenty of future top-line NHLers are so fantastic that they can just simply carry junior teams by their draft season because they play the game on an entirely different level. Luchanko isn’t there.

Frankly, I didn’t think I could write an entire piece on how Guelph terrorism could create a steal… much less a steal of the draft… at 13th (and effectively 12th.)

But there was something else I couldn’t stop thinking about. It’s something I mentioned before, but not something I went into great detail with.

Jett Luchanko’s birthday is August 21st. He still hasn’t turned 18 yet. He is almost a full year younger than Zeev Buium. So much so that I decided to post a micro-stat comparison of draft-1 Buium and draft year Luchanko on X. They are much more similar than different.

There are very few prospects who show enough upside to be selected in the top 13 and have birthdays within a week of Luchanko’s.

This season, only Cole Eiserman… who went 20th but I maintain should have gone in the top 13… matches this criteria.

In the 2023 Draft, there were zero players selected in the top 13 with an August birthday. May was the latest birth month to appear in that range. (Zach Benson and Connor Bedard.)

Hilariously enough, a generational talent was one of the two youngest players selected. 2023 was an anomaly and I won’t spend too much time on it!

In the 2022 Draft, there were zero players selected in the top 13 with an August birthday. June and July were latest birth months to appear. (Kevin Korchinski and Denton Mateychuk.)

At this point, I think Korchinski and Mateychuk are both highly regarded prospects. I personally think Mateychuk has surpassed Jiricek as a talent, even though Columbus clearly didn’t see it that way at the time when they selected Jiricek 6th and Mateychuk at 12th.

Korchinski’s on-ice results, when accounting for the Blackhawks of it all, were quite good and I think he’s probably the second best defenseman in his draft as of this moment. Second to Simon Nemec.

In the 2021 Draft, there was one player selected in the top 13 with an August (or later) birthday, and that was Luke Hughes at 4th overall.

Luke Hughes was born on September 9th of 2003, truly only a few days from eligibility for the 2022 Draft.

Now, given his last name, you would think that Luke Hughes was selected here because of his last name. He was the third drafted Hughes brother, and the other two were freak talents from day 1 who profiled as anomalies that were built to be stars in the NHL.

But Luke didn’t look like that at all in his draft season. In his draft year, he looked more like Sam Dickinson than Quinn Hughes.

The scoring output was eerily similar. They both posted excellent micro-stat results even while they weren’t really scoring exceptionally. Hughes didn’t really look the part of an offensive weapon in his draft year.

Elite Prospects had his skating graded as a 7, which frankly was probably low-balling him based on a couple of inefficiencies that he fixed as he aged.

His shooting was graded as a 4, and his passing was graded as a 6. His hockey sense was graded as a 6, but given their scouting report, I struggle to understand why, unless they were really banking on future projection in a way that they’ve since stopped doing.

“What this chart doesn’t quite capture is Hughes’ excesses as a puck carrier and how they sometimes come back to haunt him. It seems at times as if Hughes just kind of wings it. He doesn’t scan for incoming threats, skates away from supporting teammates, and dead-ends the puck into the opposition’s hands.”

“He distributes well enough, too, even if he’s not exceptionally deceptive or manipulative as a playmaker.”

“It’s just that once he beats someone, he doesn’t know what to do with the puck.”

This doesn’t sound like a player they regard as exceptionally intelligent, but it’s worth noting that this sounds like an extremely young player who had yet to adjust his mindset. These adjustments occurred, though.

Now, Hughes looks like a future top-pair defender every day of the week. Even if the Elite Prospects assessment of him, back then, was a top-4 defender with offensive inclinations.

When you get past the las name, you discover that this was a bet on raw athleticism combining with an anomalous amount of open runway due to his age.

How utterly unlike anyone we know.

In the 2020 NHL Draft, 1 player was selected with an August birthdate: Quinton Byfield at #2 overall. Another player was selected with a July birthdate: Jake Sanderson at #5 overall.

Byfield and Luchanko have very few things in common besides being freak athletes with August birthdates. I’m not going to pretend that they do have much in common. Byfield’s CHL career leading up to being drafted was a little bit absurd, and he always profiled as a future star.

Jake Sanderson, however? That’s much more interesting!

Sanderson didn’t have the offensive chops that were seemingly worthy of a top 5 selection. What he was always, however? An athletic specimen with a ton of developmental runway and a strong base of hockey sense. He never seemed like the next coming of Cale Makar, but he was clearly an exceptional hockey player as long as you didn’t get too caught up in the flash.

He’s substance over style, and that can lead to big misses when you pair that with a young athlete who develops faster than his peers.

Scott Wheeler had an interesting breakdown of the Sanderson pick that… honestly… I feel has some rhymes to the Jett Luchanko selection. This is an excerpt of him breaking down players he was wrong about.

He ranked Sanderson 17th in his draft year.

The thing about my Sanderson ranking is that I feel the same way about it now as I did then more or less. My last sentence on Sanderson in my final draft ranking for 2020 was the following: “If the first nine players on my board are gone, I wouldn’t scoff at taking Sanderson as high as 10th-overall in this draft.” My problem with the Senators selecting Sanderson fifth had nothing to do with who he was as a player. I’ve written and spoken glowingly about Sanderson’s game. The raw tools, the athleticism, the skating, the positioning, the timing, the reads, the decision making, all of it. He has also grown two inches since the draft while continuing to add muscle to an already-muscular frame. My problem with the Senators selecting Sanderson No. 5 in that draft was that I felt that Marco Rossi, Cole Perfetti, Alexander Holtz, Jamie Drysdale and Anton Lundell, who were all still available, were going to be better NHL players and also better fits for a Senators organization that I believed (and still believe) needed game-breakers in its prospect pool up front more than on the blue line, even after selecting Tim Stützle.

Since then, Sanderson seems like a future number 1 defenseman for the Senators. He’s doubtlessly the cornerstone of their blueline. He’s a star producer by NHLe with a career 0.45 points per game. And his on-ice results are stellar, even with high usage.

The 2019 NHL Draft had 0 players selected in the top 13 with a July or late August birthdate.

To sum this all up? In the last 5 drafts, only 3 players have been selected in the top 13 with a birthdate around Jett Luchanko’s. One of the three was a true anomaly. But fittingly? Two of the three were quite similar in theme to Luchanko.

They weren’t spectacular producers as of their draft year, but they were elite athletes who showed flashes of high-end intelligence. Somewhat strangely, both players happen to be defensemen, so neither is a true fit for who and what Luchanko is.

But of the two, he rhymes a lot more with Jake Sanderson than Luke Hughes. A true 200 foot player. A no-nonsense playstyle that, despite its lack of fluff, is highly effective even at the top of NHL lineups.

That’s the dream. That’s how Luchanko can become a steal at 13.

Interestingly enough, teams have only made this bet 3 times in the last 5 years. Luchanko is the third. The previous two? They both seem to have worked out fairly well.

Does that mean it’s destined to work for the Flyers? Absolutely not. But as you can see, the recent precedent is more on their side than you might think.

Join The Chase

Mandatory Credit: Elizabeth Robertson / Staff Photographer Philadelphia Inquirer

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