Denver Barkey and Oliver Bonk ended their junior careers in London with a bang.
The Flyers prospects helped put the finishing touches on the Knights' year-long tear through the amateur ranks, with London beating the Medicine Hat Tigers, 4-1, on Sunday night to win the CHL's Memorial Cup.
Barkey, as the Knights' captain, scored the third and fourth goals to seal the deal.
The pros are next for the two 20-year-olds, as Flyers general manager Danny Brière alluded to at the end of the team's locker cleanout in April. It'll just be a question of whether one or both of them make the NHL team out of camp later in the summer or start out with the Phantoms in the AHL.
The key for now, though, is that two prospects who figure to be a part of the Flyers' big picture are moving on through in the pipeline.
Bonk, a right-handed defenseman taken with the 22nd overall pick in the 2023 draft, finished his playoff run two goals and 12 assists for London with a plus-28 rating.
Barkey, a third-round forward from that same draft class, had nine goals and 11 assists for 20 points through the postseason, even with some time missed due to injury. And of course, in his last showing on the junior stage, he came up big.
Lead the way, Cap 🫡 #MemorialCup | #LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/cj50PEptBw
— London Knights (@LondonKnights) June 2, 2025
Now it's on to seeing where their careers go next.
It might not hurt fans to keep an eye on Gavin McKenna either, the 17-year-old consensus top pick for the 2026 draft who was skating on the other side for Medicine Hat on Sunday night.
Look, the Islanders won the first pick this time around, so you never know.
2 goals while battling through injury on the biggest stage.
Dawg.#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/kutTrDiDt5— London Knights (@LondonKnights) June 2, 2025
Here are a few other thoughts on the Flyers…
Grans' shot?
The Flyers re-upped defenseman Helge Grans on a two-year, two-way/one-way contract extension on Friday, at an annual cap hit of $787,500 per season.
The 23-year-old put up eight goals and 15 assists (23 points) in 66 regular-season games for the Phantoms down in the AHL, posting a minus-2 rating. In the playoffs, he also put up a goal and three assists until Lehigh Valley was eliminated by Hershey in the best-of-five second round, 3-2.
Additionally, Grans got a six-game look up with the Flyers back in late November, when he registered an assist and went even with an average ice time of 14:28, and has a clear opportunity for more heading toward training camp.
Rasmus Ristolainen, the Flyers' big right-handed defenseman at 6'4" and 208 pounds, re-tore his triceps during the home stretch of last season and is expected to miss the start of this coming one as he recovers from surgery.
Grans, a big right-handed defenseman at 6'4" and 205 pounds, could be the immediate solution to try and fill that gap in the lineup (assuming Bonk can't make that big a leap right away).
Right-handed defensemen are pretty coveted across the league, especially ones with size and physicality, which was part of the justification from general manager Danny Brière and former head coach John Tortorella as to why the Flyers held on to Ristolainen at the trade deadline back in March, even though interest rumors were swirling around him.
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It's a positional fit that has value and is not so easily filled, especially at a time when the Flyers' roster was already spread so thin. Granted, given where the Flyers were headed in the standings and in their rebuild, fans can argue endlessly about whether stripping the team down even more so should've been the move.
Regardless, the Flyers ended up not finishing the season with Ristolainen anyway, for the second straight year, and will have to figure out how to get by without him into the new one.
Grans, a former second-round pick by L.A. in 2020 who was part of the Ivan Provorov trade from two years ago, has been steadily coming along with Lehigh Valley in the minors and might be on the bubble of another, bigger jump to the NHL.
Training camp in the late summer should be his shot.
One more note, too: Jamie Drysdale is the only other right-handed defenseman on the Flyers' roster right now, not counting Ryan Ellis, who isn't coming back.
A Stanley Cup pick
The Stanley Cup Final will be a rematch between the Florida Panthers, looking to repeat, and the Edmonton Oilers, with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl still after their first Cup, along with Canada's first since 1993.
And it could go either way.
The Panthers are still a tough defensive team that can wear down and outlast anyone in a seven-game series, including Edmonton, with the benefit of a Hall of Fame goalie in Sergei Bobrovsky right behind them.
But the Oilers have made the climb all the way back from last year's crushing defeat, with the two best players in the world skating on an entirely different level, and with the most contribution from their depth than they maybe have ever gotten.
WHAT A GOAL FROM CONNOR MCDAVID 🤯
(via @ESPN) pic.twitter.com/FTfvwPWYt6— BarDown (@BarDown) May 30, 2025
Losing Zach Hyman the rest of the way is a tough blow for the Oilers, and this matchup seems built to go the full distance, but with the way McDavid and Draisaitl have been playing, I'm going to say this is Edmonton's time.
I also can't help but shake the feeling that this could all play out similarly to Detroit and Pittsburgh when they both went back-to-back in the Stanley Cup in 2008 and 2009.
The Penguins had Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin as the league's two big stars in 2008, but the Red Wings had an experienced team that was built to win and knew exactly how to.
It took Crosby and Malkin losing that first time to come back around and win it the next, and maybe that's how it plays out for McDavid and Draisaitl now.
Should be a great series, regardless.
A run worth making
The inaugural Gaudreau Family 5K was held on Saturday at Washington Lake Park in Sewell, N.J., with the support of the local community and the hockey world at large.
About 1,200 participants showed up to run or walk the path in memory of late brothers and South Jersey hockey stars Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, and to stand behind their family in a mission to raise funds to build an adaptive playground for the Archbishop Damiano School in Westville.
About today – it was everything ❤️❤️
Thank you and more to come. #GaudreauFamily5K #GaudreauStrong pic.twitter.com/kIpkI90mR8— Gaudreau Family 5K (@Gaudreau5K) June 1, 2025
A count of 1,180 more ran and walked the 5K virtually, too, which included the Panthers down in Florida, even as they prepare for the Stanley Cup Final.
That initiative was driven by Florida stars Matthew Tkachuk and Sam Bennett, who were each teammates of Johnny's back when they were with the Calgary Flames.
"Everybody was out there, which I thought was amazing," Tkachuk said (via WPLG's Kacy Hintz). "I got to walk around Holiday Park and got to raise some money for the foundation. Just to honor them, I think, is really special.
"It means a lot to me, and Benny, and guys that played with [Johnny] and that knew him. Very special, and I know [the Gaudreau family is] very appreciative. I was just very happy that we were able to do it."
Today our players, staff and their families participated in the @Gaudreau5K after practice in honor of Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau. pic.twitter.com/NgBFWRrHi2
— x – Florida Panthers (@FlaPanthers) May 31, 2025
Johnny, as an NHL star, and Matthew, as a pro himself who pivoted into coaching, were major impacts to the sport across Philadelphia and South Jersey. Their deaths last summer were devastating, and their losses continue to be mourned throughout the game and the Delaware Valley.
Events like the now annual 5K, though, which had all proceeds go to the Archbishop Damiano School's playground project, are keeping their memory going, along with that impact.
Remember when?
It's been 50 years since the Flyers beat the Sabres to win their second consecutive Stanley Cup title, which cemented the Broad Street Bullies' place in NHL history and turned them into Philly Sports legends.
I talked to Joe Watson over the phone last week about the anniversary of the back-to-back Cups and the Flyers' Alumni Charity Classic Weekend coming up later this month.
There was an oddity from that '75 series against Buffalo I did want to ask him about, though: That bat that flew down from the rafters of the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in Game 3.
As Watson recalled, with some laughs:
"I was on the ice, and we're ready for a faceoff in the Buffalo zone, and the thing flutters down in the middle of the ice.
"Jim Lorentz was a centerman for Buffalo, he knocked the damn thing out of the air and the damn thing fell on the ice. Next thing you know, Rick MacLeish takes his glove off and he picks the damn thing up.
"I say, 'What are you doing, Ricky? You can't pick that up, you might get Rabies!' And he says to me, 'What are Rabies?'"
There will never be another team like them.
Fog enveloped the ice soon after from humidity seeping into the arena. The game continued on. The Flyers lost in overtime, but ultimately won the series in six games, skating off with the Cup again.
A year later, they were swept by Montreal, and the franchise has been trying to get it back ever since.
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