Welcome to the Philadelphia Flyers Top 25 Under 25 ranking, Winter 2026 edition. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be putting out our ranking of the, well, top 25 players in the Flyers organization who are under 25 years old. A total of 13 writers at Broad Street Hockey submitted ballots and here is the consensus ranking.
More and more of our rankings are being revealed and now we’re getting into the real meat of it. From here on, it really seems like it involves players who could play a role on the Flyers in the coming years. That, or have at least an elevated chance compared to more long-shot prospects or college graduates playing pro hockey at 23 years old.
Let’s get to it. And this time it’s talking about a trio of 19-year-olds.
19) Heikki Ruohonen
Primary Team: Harvard University, NCAA
2025-26 Stats: 3 G, 13 Pts in 21 GP
Rank in Summer 25 Under 25: Unranked
Age: 19
Acquired: 4th-round pick (107th overall) in 2024 NHL Draft
Jacob (Ranked #22): The World Junior performance that Ruohonen was able to put together showcased the very best of his skillset. No one part of his game really stands out, but he stays ahead of the play and can play all three situations. He still lacks the x-factor skill that could propel him into NHL contention as soon as next year, but there is no doubt that he is ahead of schedule in his development as of right now. The rest of his freshman season at Harvard should be very interesting to watch.
Joe (Ranked #15): I’ve been a believer in Heikki “The Ruiner” Ruohonen for a while, ranking him 16 in our summer iteration of this list (and if he makes it to the NHL, we’ve gotta work to make that nickname stick). He’s having a fine rookie season at Harvard, but it’s his World Junior performance that stands out: he wore an “A” for the Finnish team, potting three goals and nine points in seven games–leading the Finns in scoring–and helping the team finish fourth in the tournament. For a fourth-round pick, that’s pretty good, and there are a lot of qualities to his game where you can see Ruohonen becoming a reliable, bottom-six center who plays with pace. He’s probably still a year or two from turning pro, but that’s okay–the Flyers can wait.
Another day another Heikki Ruohonen assist#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/MNqvht7Gf0
— Flyers Clips (@Flyers_Clips) January 5, 2026
Brad (Ranked #16): Ruohonen is really intriguing to me because, in my opinion, it’s hard to pinpoint a real weakness in his game: he just seems to be solid all around. He’s not the fastest skater, but he’s not lagging behind. He’s shown some offensive creativity, especially at the WJC, and isn’t allergic to shooting the puck. He can be relied on defensively and, while he doesn’t hit everything that moves, he’s not averse. While certainly not a guarantee, he has a real shot at making the NHL, and if all goes well, he could end up being a third center who kills penalties and can maybe play up the lineup in a pinch. On the higher end of potential outcomes, I’m picturing Noah Cates, but a little more physical, and maybe not on the stats folks’ Selke ballots. Ruohonen could definitely be a riser by this time next year.
Cole (Ranked #16): Ruohonen’s really been a breakout in the Flyers system this year, and he’s really raised his chances of making it to the big club at some point down the line. After his draft, Ruohonen’s motor was never the question, it was everything else that needed to catch up. Well, over the course of the season at Harvard and at the World Juniors, he’s really made strides. He’s gotten so much stronger along the boards, is attempting and successfully completing creative offensive plays, and is reliable defensively. Since his breakout at the World Juniors, he’s registered 8 points in 9 games at Harvard and his offense continues to tick upwards. Lots to like, even if his upside is ultimately an effective bottom-six center.
18) Spencer Gill
Primary Team: Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, QMJHL
2025-26 Stats: 0 G, 0 Pts in 2 GP
Rank in Summer 25 Under 25: 18
Age: 19
Acquired: 2nd-round pick (59th overall) in 2024 NHL Draft
Joe (Ranked #19): It’s such a drag that Gill suffered an injury early in the season; it makes it difficult to judge what kind of player he’s going to be. He’s signed an ELC, too, so the NCAA route is closed to him next season. There’s still a lot of potential in the player–he’s a solid passer, has size, and is a coveted right-shot defenseman–but we’re left to measure his progress in only the 2024-25 season when he was still with Rimouski, before the trade to the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada. He’s quite young for his draft class (a mid-August birthday), so the runway’s still there, at least, but Gill’s going to be a project.
Brad (Ranked #19): As Joe said, Gill is a really difficult prospect to rank right now. With his size, position, and puck moving abilities, there’s a lot to like about him. However, the amount of time he’s missed is concerning, and who knows how missing that much time could affect his development. Blainville-Boisbriand did say that Gill is expected to return to the lineup this weekend, so hopefully he’ll be able to show us something and finish the season strong.
Jacob (Ranked #17): When Gill was selected in 2024, he immediately became one of the Flyers prospects that intrigued me the most. His ability to make up ground and deliver a good first pass at his 6 ‘4 frame would make him a tantalizing prospect if he was just able to stay on the ice. Injuries have hampered his development, and there is a chance that Gill may be lagging behind when compared to some other names in the Flyers system, but his skillset is so varied for a defenseman of his size, that he will stay on my version of this list indefinitely regardless of his injury history.
Cole (Ranked #19): I’ve been a massive fan of Spencer Gill since the Flyers drafted him in 2024, but man he can’t catch a break. Gill has been raved about in each development camp, and pretty much anytime Brent Flahr and the Flyers have seen him. Prior to his major injury this season, Gill was poised to be the breakout defenseman in the system this season. His combination of raw physical skills, smart use of his reach, and puck-moving abilities have all the makings of an NHL quality defenseman. I’d even argue there’s No. 4 upside with Gill, but that will all go to the wayside if he can’t figure out how to stay healthy.
17) Shane Vansaghi
Primary Team: Michigan State University, NCAA
2025-26 Stats: 3 G, 9 Pts in 26 GP
Rank in Summer 25 Under 25: 17
Age: 19
Acquired: 2nd-round pick (48th overall) in 2025 NHL Draft
Brad (Ranked #18): Vansaghi hasn’t had the bump in offensive production that we were hoping to see from him this season, but there is still a solid foundation here. He makes the majority of his impact on the forecheck and along the boards, with occasional offensive flashes. He plays a very heavy game, and with good defensive instincts, he’s a player with a really high floor. Until his offensive game picks up, his ceiling feels limited, but I do believe there’s an NHL player here. One interesting note on Vansaghi is that about midway through the season he switched wings (from right to left) and this switch hasn’t seemed to hurt his game at all. If anything, he’s been playing better since the change, with one of his better showings coming against Penn State two weeks ago. With the Flyers stacked on the right, Vansaghi having the flexibility to play either wing is certainly a plus.
Joe (Ranked #20): The Vansaghi pick was one of my favorites from the 2025 draft–a great selection in the middle of the second round. His season hasn’t gone quite according to play, playing a limited role for Michigan State, and he wasn’t that effective at the WJC, either, suiting up for only three games, scoring zero points, and carrying a minus-4 rating. I do think we’ll be seeing him turn pro sooner than later, though: he’s a sophomore this year, and at 6-foot-2 and 216 pounds has the physical tools to hold up in the pros. Most importantly, his game’s suited to a fourth-line role; he could get minutes in the NHL as a rookie that way, similar to how Nikita Grebenkin is being utilized this season. It’s easy to envision a world where Vansaghi’s a long-term replacement for Garnet Hathaway, and Vansaghi has enough skill and hockey sense on top of his high-end physicality to hope the ceiling’s even higher than that, so long as his skating improves. Easily one of my favorite prospects in the system.
Cole (Ranked #25): Truthfully, I think I ranked Vansaghi a good bit lower than I should have, especially considering Vansaghi’s likely NHL floor. At his best, Vansaghi likely tops out as a darn-good fourth line caliber player that can move up the lineup in a pinch if absolutely necessary. While he’s shown flashes in his offensive game this year, the offense has just been incredibly inconsistent so far. His point-per-game pace at Michigan State is less this year (.34) than it was in his freshman year (.43), and I think there’s legitimate worries that Vansaghi will never reach another gear offensively. We’ll see, but I think it’s been a somewhat disappointing year for Vansaghi relative to expectations after the draft.
Jacob (Ranked #18): Counter to what Cole just said, I’m starting to think that maybe I ranked Vansaghi too high. The other second round picks that the Flyers selected in that same draft, Jack Murtagh and Carter Amico, both fell below Vansaghi on my list, but realistically, they both probably have higher potential NHL ceilings than the MSU winger. His second full season at Michigan State has been similar to his freshman year production-wise, and while his heavy playstyle should be able to translate to the pro game… you’re left wondering what his ultimate NHL upside will be, especially for a team who already possesses a host of NHL caliber wingers.
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Matthew and Brady Tkachuk are some of the most notorious pests in the NHL. Constantly getting into scrums after the whistle, causing massive problems for their opposition, and just being a general nuisance is what they thrive off of — and of course scoring loads of goals and points and being impactful players when they’re actually playing hockey.
But in a recent interview clip, Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim let the world know that he doesn’t really like either of them and wouldn’t want to be around them for too long.
With the 2026 Winter Olympics taking place, it’s the opportunity to get the players all together as they’re representing their country and get little viral moments out of what they say off the ice. Whether it’s fun little quizzes or lighthearted polls, almost every single rightsholder got to produce their own montage of question and answers for social media.
Travis Sanheim voices his opinion on Matthew and Brady Tkachuk, sort of
Over at Sports on Prime Canada — you know, how Amazon Prime has its weekly game north of the border and now have that access — the latest clip they put out from interviews recorded who knows when, featured a whole lot of Olympians answering a fairly interesting question. “Would you rather play with Matthew or Brady Tkachuk?” seems like something that would be asked to just stir the pot, especially for their Team USA teammates, as Bruins blueliner Charlie McAvoy says point-blank.
Sanheim gave the most interesting answer of the bunch, though.
We are all Travis Sandheim rn.pic.twitter.com/KyKhHdPCzX
— Sports on Prime Canada (@SportsOnPrimeCA) February 14, 2026
We’re just going to completely ignore a rightsholder misspelling the name of the Flyers’ top defenseman, because that will surely get most fans on a tangent about how disrespected and not acknowledged this team is.
“I don’t know if I’d like to play with either of them,” Sanheim said. “Just get into it every game — I get into it with both of them but Brady’s a lot more annoying. So I’ll go with Matthew.”
Obviously, this is all in jest and we shouldn’t take this as seriously as someone saying something like this after a game or during an intermission interview. But, it is funny that even during a more relaxed setting, Sanheim knows that neither would be the best option for him personally just to not be annoyed. And it’s completely understandable. As the workhorse on the Flyers blue line and the brothers both playing in the Eastern Conference, Sanheim has had to face these two for several years now and try to get them both away from whatever netminder was in the Flyers’ crease.
It would be incredibly annoying trying to deal with any of the Tkachuks’ nonsense on the ice, let alone be the guy need to take care of it for his team. But the good news is that if Canada and the United States face off in the Olympics, Sanheim will probably be off of that assignment as one of the depth players on the star-studded Canadian roster.
It would be a lot more fun if Sanheim came out and spat on about how much he loathed both of the brothers and how much he wants to see them lose in every opportunity (Matthew isn’t doing a whole lot of that) but we’re stuck with the Flyers defenseman just spilling the beans on how he’s a little irritated by their presence.
While trying to figure out what countries are likely to face each other in the knockout round is a task that might require several minutes of serious concentration (maybe just for this writer), with Canada winning all three of their games and having a massive goal differential after their three games, and the United States needing to win against Germany by several goals to make up that difference, it feels likely that the two North American nations won’t be facing off until much later. The semifinal games are on Feb. 20 and the gold medal game is on Feb. 22.
Maybe we’ll see Sanheim wrestle with a Tkachuk brother after the whistle if they do face off, and now we’ll know just how much he dislikes battling against them.
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The Phantoms are in the midst of, undeniably, the most challenging period of their season, to date. But while the results for the team as a whole have been at times maddeningly uneven, this period hasn’t been without its share of positives smattered throughout. The Phantoms have seen good flashes of impact up and down their lineup, but perhaps most notably, this last month and a half has seen Christian Kyrou making really positive strides to course correct on him game, and get things moving in the right direction again. Indeed, for the defenseman in his first season in the Flyers’ organization, despite some bumps in the road along the way, he’s working well, of late, to again string together some of the best hockey of his young career.
Getting rolling again
It’s been, if nothing else, a pretty wild season for Kyrou. He joined the Phantoms and certainly seemed to get a boost from the initial adrenaline that comes with joining a new team, but to his credit, he did really well to keep that positive play rolling once that adrenaline wore off — through his first 12 games with the Phantoms, Kyrou put up a very impressive four goals and 14 points, and seemed a threat to make something happen offensively every time he stepped onto the ice. And while this stretch was certainly eye-catching, there was in it an expectation that regression would swing around to catch him and he would cool off to some degree again, but no one would have predicted that the drop-off would be as sharp as what unfolded as soon as December rolled around. That is, after a scorching first 12 games with the team, Kyrou went without a point in his next 12 games, a stretch which saw both his scoring touch dry up and his decision making without the puck break down quite badly, all of which earned him his first healthy scratching of the season.
There was a certain whiplashing effect created in all of this, but credit to him, Kyrou was able to stop the bleeding at 12 games without a point, and has been building up his game steadily in the — tidily — 12 games which have followed. Over that span, it’s been a respectable (and perhaps also slightly more sustainably paced) 11 points racked up, as he’s gotten back to looking much more dynamic with the puck, and that’s been noticeable to the more distant eye, but it’s also made an impression on his coach.
“I think he’s playing with some confidence again,” John Snowden said after last weekend’s game against the Penguins. “You know, I think a player like him, when you find yourself on the scoresheet consistently it adds to the oxygen that he takes, and it gives him the confidence to make the plays that we want him to make and we need him to make. So I have no issues with what he’s been doing on the offensive side of things. He’s been generating plays, he’s been generating offense.”
The Phantoms’ scoring game collectively has been something of an uneven affair of late, but Kyrou has stepped up again as a major driver for them, and his confidence is begetting more confidence from others in the lineup, and it’s brought them some of the more marked jump offensively than we’ve seen from them, of late.
Rounding things out
Of course, the emphasis from his head coach about how he has no displeasure with what Kyrou’s been doing on the offensive side of things does leave open the point that there’s still some work to be done in cleaning up his play on the defensive side.
Now, there’s credit to be given here in that he’s certainly made some positive strides to correct his overall steadiness from what it was in its most challenging stretches in the last couple of months — he’s had a couple of moments when he’s been a bit exposed on a couple of more passive plays, but he’s largely been able to avoid getting caved in in a major way — but this past weekend delivered a reminder of how quickly and badly things can his level of attention to detail slips.
In Friday’s game against Cleveland, Kyrou was on the ice for three of their five goals scored (and three of the four goals they scored against a goaltender), and his play did leave a bit to be desired on these chances against. The first was the least egregious, as it saw the Monsters score off of an extended cycle play — extended after a failed clear by Alex Bump — and the shot having come from the opposite side of the ice, and there wasn’t much that Kyrou could have done to break that up. But the second was a little uglier, coming off a weird play where Helge Grans whiffed on an attempted pass over to Kyrou on the breakout, had the puck intercepted by the Cleveland player, and then Kyrou got caught slightly flat-footed and wasn’t able to cross over quickly enough to stop that from turning into a one-on-one chance on Bjarnason. And the third was uglier still, as it saw a more major breakdown on the power play’s defensive zone regroup — Bjarnason had the puck behind the net, but pressure was coming down on him fast, and with Kyrou for some reason positioning himself on the side of the descending Monster and behind Bjarnason’s back, taking himself away as an option to receive a pass, Bjarnason had no choice but to send the puck up the wall to be, ultimately, turned over, and he was scored on off of the ensuing scramble in front of the net.
just waited for the right time
: Pearson
: Ceulemans pic.twitter.com/aP70T24m2r
— Cleveland Monsters (@monstershockey) February 15, 2026
That breakdown wasn’t all on Kyrou, and Max Guenette was nowhere to be found on that play, starting completely out of frame and ready to blast the zone, but it was certainly not his best work either.
Of course, Kyrou was far from the worst offender defensively in this game — really, one would be hard pressed to pick out a singular defender who was outright good in that matchup — but his struggles did seem to be enough to earn him a night off and watching from up top in the weekend finale against Syracuse on Saturday, as the Phantoms worked through their rotation and looked for a bit of a different look.
So, not only has it been a tale of two seasons for Kyrou as far as his production is concerned, it’s equally been a tale of two degrees of impact on either side of the puck. On the whole, Kyrou’s defensive play has been, though imperfect, trending in the right direction, but there’s still a lot more that he can be doing. Snowden has been challenging his group to do more, show him more, to each find a way to be the one who cares enough, has enough, to be the one to step up as a difference maker to help break the team out of this slump they’re in, and Kyrou with his wealth of skill, remains one of their best chances to step up as a difference maker. Kyrou has shown already this season what he’s capable of when he’s firing on all cylinders, and that next elevation of his game is just what his team needs at the moment.
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