{"id":22910,"date":"2025-06-28T22:19:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T22:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22910\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T22:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T22:19:12","slug":"will-the-broad-street-bullies-be-back-philadelphia-flyers-go-big-at-the-nhl-draft","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/22910\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Broad Street Bullies be back? Philadelphia Flyers go big at the NHL draft"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the time the Philadelphia Flyers are legitimate contenders again a few years down the road, they could have a lineup that makes the 1970s Broad Street Bullies proud.<\/p>\n

Five of their eight selections in the NHL draft<\/a> stand 6-foot-3 or taller, including first-rounders Porter Martone and Jack Nesbitt. They overlooked smaller talent to get a hulking winger in Martone at No. 6 and traded up for Nesbitt, a 6-5 center, with the 12th pick.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Jack Nesbitt, left, stands with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman after being drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers during the NHL hockey draft June 27, 2025, in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Damian Dovarganes \/ AP<\/p>\n

“It’s a nice bonus that they’re both tall and will bring us size, as well,” general manager Daniel Briere said. “It just kind of worked out that way. It wasn’t a plan that we had in mind going into the draft that we wanted to get bigger. It just happened that way.”<\/p>\n

Philadelphia’s second-rounders were 6-6, 232-pound defenseman Carter Amico and a trio of nice-sized forwards: Jack Murtagh, Shane Vansaghi and Matthew Gard. Murtagh described himself as “a high-end workhorse.”<\/p>\n

Their second fifth-round pick, Luke Vlooswyk, called himself “a big defensive, defenseman.” He said Gard, a teammate with the Western Hockey League’s Red Deer Rebels, is “a big kid like me.”<\/p>\n

Bulking up the prospect pool makes sense for the Flyers, who have a lot of smaller talent in the system, from budding star Matvei Michkov already on the roster to 2024 first-rounder Jett Luchanko, who played four games for them last season. They also just traded for 6-foot center Trevor Zegras and could use some size in their not-too-distant future.<\/p>\n

\"Porter<\/p>\n

Porter Martone, second from right, puts on a jersey next to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, right, after being drafted by the Philadelphia Flyers during the NHL hockey draft June 27, 2025, in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

Damian Dovarganes \/ AP<\/p>\n

Other draft highlights<\/p>\n

After William Horcoff, whose dad Shawn spent 15 seasons in the NHL, went 24th to Pittsburgh<\/a>\u00a0in the first round, Day 2 of the draft was full of the sons and nephews of retired players hearing their names called.<\/p>\n

It started with Seattle trading up to get Blake Fiddler, son of Vernon, early in the second round. Eric Nilson, son of Marcus, went a handful of picks later to Anaheim.<\/p>\n

There were more familiar names picked in the third round: Artyom Gonchar, nephew of 2009 Stanley Cup champion Sergei Gonchar, to the New York Rangers, and Blake Vanek, son of Thomas, to Ottawa.<\/p>\n

After Simon Wang became the highest-ranked China-born NHL draft pick when San Jose chose him at No. 33, Matous Jan Kucharcik made some Italian hockey history.<\/p>\n

Taken by Buffalo 103rd, Kucharcik is a Czech national but became the fourth player born in Italy to be selected.<\/p>\n

\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By the time the Philadelphia Flyers are legitimate contenders again a few years down the road, they could…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,293,1448,2830,1311,3108,62,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-22910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-philadelphia","13":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}