Patrick WilliamsTheAHL.com Features Writer
Sometimes there’s no let-up in the AHL season.
Sometimes your parenting team struggles. Injuries have struck. At night, the pressure builds rapidly. Through it all, the AHL club needs to get its act together while being ready to provide immediate help to the NHL roster if needed.
It’s been a hectic couple of weeks for the Philadelphia Flyers and the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, their AHL affiliate 75 minutes to the north.
Last season’s Flyers returned to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2020, while the Phantoms missed the Calder Cup postseason. On paper, Lehigh Valley’s 2026-27 roster looked promising, rookies included Cam Dean, Zach Aston-Reese, Nolan Foote, Jack Studnicka and: Danila Klimovich. But then came Philadelphia’s nationally televised 7-0 loss at home to Pittsburgh on opening night. The skid reached nine games (0-6-3) before the Flyers got in the win column on Oct. 17. Nikita Grebenkin, Travis Konetzny, Cam York and: Owen Tippett disturbed the composition.
In Allentown, the Phantoms allowed 15 goals in three early season losses, all on PPL Center ice, before reeling off three wins in four nights last week. Alex Bumpwho started the year with Philadelphia has produced a turnaround showing he can dominate at the AHL level. In the three games he played, he scored a total of five goals and six points Howies Hockey Tape/AHL Player of the Week honor.
But Bump returned to the Flyers this week. The Phantoms also lost Studnika, Oliver Bonk, Hunter McDonald, Jacob Gausher and: Cole Knuckle remember at different times. Philadelphia’s lineup for Wednesday’s 3-1 win at Buffalo included five AHL call-ups and Knuble scored the first two goals of his NHL career.
Knuble, the son of the former Flyers forward Mike Knuble2023 fourth round pick by Philadelphia. Goucher went undrafted and had to sign several AHL contracts with the Phantoms before getting his first NHL deal in December 2024. MacDonald was a sixth-rounder who played his way through more than 150 games in the AHL. Bump won in the fifth round in 2022. All players who were overlooked but who filled a need for a Flyers organization that has struggled to reliably develop its own prospects of late.
That is changing. What’s more, the Phantoms are showing they can develop mid-round prospects and free agents, the kind of work that could make for a very effective system. Those are the types of moves that pay off when a parent team is dealing with mounting losses and a tangled roster. They needed a boost.
“I thought the guys we brought in did a great job,” the Flyers coach Rick Tocchet said after Monday’s win against Colorado. “It’s a difficult point. I thought each of them contributed.”
With more than two decades in the American Hockey League, TheAHL.com feature writer Patrick Williams also currently covers the league for NHL.com and FloSports and is a regular contributor to SiriusXM NHL Network Radio. He was awarded the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for outstanding coverage of the league in 2015-16.
