Owen McLaughlin and Alex Bump

With the All-Star break here and fans probably looking for a small bit of sunshine, I wanted to take a quick look at two Flyers prospects in the NCAA that are probably a lot lower on Flyers fans radar, but could be impact players in the NHL some day: Owen McLaughlin and Alex Bump.

**Owen** **McLaughlin** was drafted in the 7th round out of New England prep school, but is from the Philly area, playing with the Valley Forge Minutemen and The Hill School before leaving his senior year. He followed up his post draft year in the USHL, and finished 10th in the league in points (just like Noah Cates who also did a post HS year in the USHL).

McLaughlin is a center with a high skill upside, good speed, great edges, and great hockey sense. You may be wondering why a player like that was taken so low in the 7th round, but that likely has to do with him not playing in highly scouted leagues. He did get looks from the US NTDP and was recruited by North Dakota, a college hockey power house, prior to his breakout year in the USHL.

While his first year at North Dakota was respectable, not good, not terrible, his second year has been has been remarkable. He’s second on the team in points (North Dakota currently ranked 2nd in the NCAA) and tied for 10th in the league in assists by forwards (tied with 1st rounders like Frank Nazar and Oliver Moore, one back of 2023 4th Overall Will Smith). It’s not like McLaughlin is being carried by other star prospects, Jackson Blake leads UND, and while he certainly is a great prospect he doesn’t come in with a super star pedigree (taken in the 4th out of the USHL, same age as McLaughlin).

One interesting thing is McLaughlin’s scoring comparables. Right now McLaughlin is averaging 1.12 points per game. If you look back at the last 10 NCAA seasons, there have been 17 twenty year old forwards (not including this season) who have scored between 1.04 and 1.2 , the range McLaughlin will likely end the season in. Of those 17 players, 9 have become regular or semi-regular NHL players, playing in or projected to play in over 300 games (Heinen, Pinto, Grambell, Donato, Kerfoot, Guentzel, Joshua, Hinostroza, Evans), 5 are earlier in their career and stand a solid chance of hitting the 300 game mark (Farrell, Brisson, Samoskevich, Coronato, Knies – all are either first rounders or highly touted), while only 3 appear to not be able to be a regular at the NHL level (Laczynski, Hutsko, Barber). Even looking at these three players that didn’t make it we can see some reasoning why they didn’t make it, Laczynski we know struggled with injury issues (missing over half the season each of the last three years) but could still have an NHL future with some team, if not the Flyers. Hutsko had a major injury his senior year and didn’t make an immediate impact in the AHL. Hutsko is also 5’9 compared to every other player listed who are almost all between 5’11-6’2 (including McLaughlin who is 6’0).

While you may look at those lists and not see a superstar, though there are one or two stars or potential stars peppered in, the odds that a 20 year old who scores in that range will make the NHL.

**Alex** **Bump** is a bit of a similar player in a similar situation. Bump was drafted in the 5th round of 2022, playing his draft year in Minnesota High School hockey as well as having a few cups of coffee in the USHL. He was runner up for Minnesota Mr. Hockey and was named the USA Today high school hockey player of the year. He didn’t blow up the USHL the way that McLaughlin did but he did fairly respectable.

Bump is a player that 100% passes the eye test. From attending Rookie Camp, if you didn’t know where someone was drafted you would swear that Bump was a 1st rounder. High end skill and can pull of skill plays against great prospects, often standing out as the star of the Flyers 3 on 3 tournaments. Excellent hangs, a great shot, very good speed, and strong on his edges. He has a strong build as well and is able to protect the puck and ward off defenders much better than his 6’0 frame would suggest. He also has pretty good defensive awareness, that combined with his speed make him a pretty strong defensive player.

Bump had a bit of a rocky road getting to the NCAA. He was originally committed to Vermont, but after Vermont’s coach was fired for inappropriately communicating with a female student, Bump transferred to Western Michigan in August of this year, not being able to join the team on ice until September. Bump, at 20, is the youngest player on a very old Western Michigan team where most of the rest of the team’s top 9 forwards is in their 4th or 5th year in the NCAA. Bump wasn’t even the biggest transfer this season with WMU picking up former 36th Overall and WJC participant Sam Colangelo.

Bump’s numbers may be mildly underwhelming, only having 6 goals and 18 points in 24 games. But this is him as a rookie in the NCAA, playing on a veteran team that the coach didn’t even plan to have until a few weeks before the season started. Which can explain why he had only 3 points in his first 7 games, before going on a 7 game point streak. Next year Western Michigan will almost certainly be Bump’s team – the team is looking to lose their top 9 forwards outside of Bump, as well as their top 2 D – sending Bump from late addition new kid to the guy you build your team around. While his numbers may not be there this year, WMU is great at putting systems in place that really allow star players to rack up points so we will likely see a big breakout next season.

One more interesting thing on Bump is [this tweet from Sportslogiq](https://twitter.com/Sportlogiq/status/1752809076768018587) on chances off the rush this season in the NCAA. It shows the top 5 players at getting chances off the rush. The league leader is Ryan Leonard with 42, second behind him is Alex Bump with 40. Rounding out the top 5 are Bradley Nadeau (2023 1st rounder/1.41 ppg this season) with 34 chances, Gabe Perreault with 31 chances, and a former 5th Overall Ducks prospect who will remain nameless at 29. Outside of Bump, those players are averaging between 1.26 and 1.57 points per game this season. When he is the focus on the offense next season we could see Bump scoring at a similar pace.

People may look at this and say “so what?” citing that neither is a super star and we have depth players. We have more highly touted prospects and these are just guys with some ok numbers. And we do have a wealth of young talent in the pros already with some super start talent coming our way in Matvei Michkov. But these two players are two of the best players the Flyers have had come through the NCAA with only JVR and Farabee being the only prospects to have better 1st or 2nd seasons (outside of somebody traded to the Ducks), and only Brink has had a better U21 season. McLaughlin and Bump don’t have 1st round pedigrees but they have stats just as good or better than guys who have made the NHL. They may be in the 7th-9th range of Flyers 23 and under forwards, but with depth like this the younger players will all push each other, creating better players and having the best ones break through. McLaughlin and Bump are both high end skill guys who if they can make the jump to the NHL could be real impact players.

by hawks27-2