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Prospect Watch: Liam Greentree
As the 2024 season looms ever closer, I feel it necessary to start to provide you with a few names of some promising prospects who I think you need to keep an eye on. One such name is Liam Greentree. Liam is a 2024 draft-eligible player who stands at 6’2 and 198 pounds. He is a right-winger who plays for the Ontario Hockey Leagues (OHL) Windsor Spitfires.
Now, Liam is viewed by several so-called experts as a potentially late first-round pick. Still, by my evaluation, he will likely surprise many people this season with his game and potentially be taken just outside the top ten next summer.
I based my hypothesis on the fact that Liam scored more goals than any other rookie in the OHL last season when he totaled 25. Yes, that means he even managed to outscore the highly touted Michael Misa (who is projected to be 2025’s number-one overall pick), who finished the season with only 22 goals, but who won the OHL’s Rookie of the Year Award (Emma Family Award) last season because he finished the season with more overall points than Greentree.
But how does he do it, you may be asking? To go with his NHL size and strength, Liam already possesses the kind of high-powered shot and quick release some players can only dream about having. Whether he has space to let it go from above the faceoff dots or finds himself in tight with traffic, Greentree always manages to put the most behind his shot. He may have picked up this trait from watching the Winnipeg Jets star Mark Scheifele who Liam once compared his game to in a prior interview. Let’s hope this comparison is accurate because Scheifele set a career-high in goals this past season with 42.
What could help Greentree reach such lofty goals is that teammates: Matthew Maggio, Jacob Maillet, Alex Christopoulos, Oliver Peer, Brett Harrison, and 2022 4th overall pick Shane Wright all are either aging out or potentially moving on to bigger and better things. So Liam will likely get the playing time he thus deserves next season for the Spitfires.
His first chance, however, to prove his worth to the masses this upcoming season will be in just a few days when he suits up for Team Canada in the 2023-2024 Hlinka Gretzky Cup, which will be held July 31st through August 5th in Trencin, Slovakia, and Breclav, Czechia. It is here where Greentree will not only get a chance to shine playing alongside some of the best Canada has to offer but be allowed to line up across from some of the players who currently sit above him in those mock drafts. And so, you don’t miss your opportunity to catch Liam donning the Red Maple Leaf with pride, make sure to tune into NHL Network for all the action.
Sam Dickinson is one name that should already be up on the Flyers 2024 Draft Boards
With the 2023 NHL Entry Draft now behind us, it is never too early to start looking ahead at the next crop of young upcoming players who will be available to select in the draft next summer. That statement resonates even more true if you are the Philadelphia Flyers, who are just now embarking on a total franchise rebuild.
Now, of course, it is still extremely early to try and nail down exactly where the newly promoted President of Hockey Operations Keith Jones and General Manager Danny Briere will be making their first-round selection from next summer but given where the team finished this past season, and the players Briere has already shipped out or chosen not to resign I feel like it’s a pretty safe bet to say that Philly most likely will find themselves picking from within the top ten once again next offseason.
With that being said, Sam Dickinson is one prospect who will be available above all others in this upcoming draft class that should already be up on the Flyers Draft Boards. Sam is a 6’3, 194-pound left-hand shot defender who plays for the London Knights of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL). A team that the Flyers are very familiar with, seeing that they just drafted Dickinson’s defensive partner, right-hand shot defender Oliver Bonk with the 22nd overall pick this year, as well as the Knights center Denver Barkey who the team took in the third round with the 95th overall pick.
What’s with the Flyers’ fascination when they hear “This is London Calling,” you may be asking? Well, you could say Keith Jones and the Knight’s Head Coach/ Part Owner Dale Hunter have some history. They played together for five seasons in Washington D.C. for the Capitals from 1992 to the end of the 96-97 season. So, it should go without saying when Hunter calls up his old teammate and says you have to come check this kid out. You best believe the Flyers executives and their scouts will be on the first plane out of town.
But this interest in selecting Dale’s players isn’t solely based on nepotism. It’s founded on the fact that these players also possess a lot of skill. And why wouldn’t they? After playing in over 1,400 NHL games, scoring over 1,000 points, and totaling over 3,500 penalty minutes throughout his 19 seasons in the league, I think it’s safe to say that Hunter has developed not only quite the eye for spotting talent but for developing it as well seeing that he now has amassed over 900 regular season wins coaching in the junior ranks.
In saying that, Sam is just the latest prospect in a long line of Knights players who have been or are currently being cultivated by Dale Hunter. And it is this writers opinion that because of the tutelage he has received while playing in London that Dickinson projects to be not only one of this draft’s top two-way defenders but a top-five pick in the 2024 NHL Entry Draft as well. Sam’s assets may include his NHL size and strength, but what really sets him apart from the pack is that he is able to combine his herculean-like attributes with an immense amount of speed that he uses to jump up and join the rush offensively.
To prove this, in just his first season playing in the OHL, Dickinson scored nine goals and 14 assists for 23 points in 62 games played during the regular season. He built upon that newfound success in the playoffs by scoring four goals and four assists for eight points in 21 games.
But while Sam is already projected to be a top-five pick in next summer’s draft, what I believe will let him maintain his current draft stock is his ever-evolving shot from the point. As the season went on last year, I saw Dickinson feel increasingly more comfortable unleashing his behemoth of a shot from the point when traffic was in front of the net. This proved effective primarily because Sam concentrated on trying to keep the puck on the ice so that it did not lose any velocity on its way to the back of the net.
In addition, I would like to see Sam introduce a little more physicality to his game. But in doing so, he has to be careful because this can prove to be a double edge sword if not done correctly. For Dickinson already excels at the art of using his size to force the opponents to the outside, which creates tougher angle shots for them to shoot from. He also is skilled at tactfully removing the opposition from in front of his goaltender’s net to eliminate the possibility of a screen. But Dickinson does not use brute force to outright knock the opposition off the puck, for example when crossing the blue line. So, if he adds this to his repertoire and manages to do so cleanly, Dickinson just might follow Bonk’s footsteps by holding an Orange and Black jersey up on draft day so that the pair can continue to build upon their success together at the pro level.
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Flyers have Addressed Many Issues This Off Season, but one they have yet to touch is the Left Wing Position.
With the additions this off-season of defenseman Marc Staal, right wing Garnet Hathaway, and center Ryan Poehling, Danny Briere, the Flyers’ newly appointed general manager, has certainly managed to bring in an established veteran presence who will be able to help guide this team’s youthful core. But there’s just one thing; management has yet to address their lack of depth at left wing. To date, the team currently only has three natural left-wingers signed. Only two are proven NHL talents, Joel Farabee and Nicolas Deslauriers. The other is prospect Elliott Desnoyers. Their unsigned left-wing talent is as follows prospect Cutter Gauthier, who refused to sign with the team when offered an entry-level deal earlier this off-season and recently turned down the invite to development camp. Another is Alex Bump, who is having a good camp but is still a year or two away, and lastly, Alex Cernik, the Flyers’ 2023 4th-round pick.
The right side is a different monster, though. The Flyers have tons of depth lining up on that side of the faceoff circle, with names like Travis Konecny, Owen Tippett, Garnet Hathaway, Wade Allison, and Cam Atkinson all being natural right-wingers who are already on the Flyers roster. On top of that, the team has multiple right-wingers in the waiting like this summer’s first-round pick Matvei Michkov, early-round draftees like ’20 1st round pick Tyson Foerster, ’21 2nd round pick Samu Tuomaala, ’19 2nd round pick Bobby Brink, ’22 3rd round pick Devin Kaplan, and late round gem Alexis Gendron who managed to score 55 goals this season in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
To combat this lopsided depth chart, the Flyers invited the 23-year-old NCAA undrafted left-wing prospect Matt Brown to Development Camp. Brown, who stands at just 5’9, played in 39 games for the Boston Terriers this past season, scoring 16 goals and 31 assists for a total of 47 points. These totals equated to him scoring at a 1.20 points-per-game pace. To go along with that impressive stat, he also maintained a +15 average on the season. But unless he outshines the other Flyers previously drafted prospects that the franchise has coveted and scouted for months/years before selecting them, he will not be able to garner a contract by the end of this week.
So, who does that leave the team within which to fill those vacant roster spots created by James van Riemsdyk’s recent departure? Center Scott Laughton has been known to play left wing over the recent years but shouldn’t be counted on to stay there all season long as Sean Couturier should now be labeled as injury prone as he missed all of last season and only played in a combined 74 games throughout the last three seasons after sustaining numerous injuries that required him to have to endure two separate back surgeries.
For those of you who have never played the game, it might be easy to say the team should just force one of their young and upcoming right-wingers to slide over and play their off-wing. But I would disagree. That may work in the minor leagues where a promising prospect can react fast enough to get the best of a career AHL’er. But it won’t work in the NHL, where everyone is the world’s fastest, strongest, and most talented players. By doing this, the team is putting said prospect at a severe disadvantage. Let me give you some examples. Every time that off-wing tries to break out of the defensive zone, that prospect is forced to either receive the puck on their backhand or turn their backs entirely to the opposition’s defense to accept a pass on their forehand. This proves to be very dangerous as they then become an unsuspecting target when they turn around, and the opposing defense is there to try and administer a filling rattling open ice hit to regain the puck for their team. Ouch!!! To compare the severity of that kind of impact (think of a slot receiver in football when they stretch out to catch a ball over their head only to come back down and have a middle linebacker like Ray Lewis or Brain Urlacher coming at them in full stride while foaming at the mouth).
Those same drawbacks happen once they cross into the offensive zone, seeing that a player who is forced to play his off-wing will feel immediately handcuffed by any pass heading in their direction because they will always be on their backhand. And in that split second it takes to try to stop and bring it to their forehand for a better shot, sometimes is all the time a goaltender needs to dish out a little left-hand larceny.
So, with all the big-name unrestricted free agents now inked to new deals, how might Briere manage to bring in some much-needed help on the left side? Well, he could call his old Sabers teammate Chris Drury who is now the New York Rangers General Manager, and ask him what it might take to acquire their former number one overall pick Alexis Lafrenière. I mean, it is plausible. The Rangers have already gone out this off-season and signed veterans like Blake Wheeler, Tyler Pitlick, Riley Nash, Connor Mackey, and goaltender Jonathan Quick to fill vacancies in their lineup. But because of this recent shopping spree, Drury has left himself with very little cap space left to re-sign his own restricted free agents. So much so that he has been rumored to be listening to offers for Lafrenière even though he hopes to be able to keep him. But Drury also has restricted free agent (RFA) defenseman K’Andre Miller to sign, who has been an integral part of the Rangers’ defense over the last couple of seasons and is rightly due a substantial pay raise. This makes Alexis (the other RFA) possibly the odd man out, seeing that he has been rumored not to be willing to sign a team-friendly bridge deal.
And who could blame him? Alexis is a natural left winger with a ton of skill that is still just 21 years of age. He already has three NHL seasons of experience under his belt, but to date, he has yet to reach his full potential because he has been buried on the depth chart by other Ranger superstar left wings like Chris Kreider and Artemi Panarin. But that doesn’t mean that Lafrenière has failed to produce. In the ’21-22 season, Alexis set a career-high in goals with 19, and this past season he set a career-high in points with 39.
These totals might not seem entirely up to par with what you would expect from a former number-one overall pick. Still, I believe if the Flyers could somehow acquire him from New York, his production might take off like Owen Tippett’s did when he was given a chance to finally play consistent top-six minutes upon arriving in Philadelphia.
The question now becomes, what exactly might Briere have to give his old teammate to obtain him? Might it take a 1st round pick? The Flyers have two of them next year. One of which previously belonged to the Florida Panthers, who, as we all know, made it to the Stanley Cup Finals this year, so if they are anything close to the team, they were last year; it will be like giving up an early second. My guess is that with the Rangers being short on funds and having to get cap compliant. They might be willing to settle for a lower-tier NHL roster player and someone like Samu Tuomaala or Bobby Brink, who also were taken early in their respective drafts and show a lot of promise.
Whether Briere chooses to orchestrate a sign-and-trade deal or settles for retaining his rights, given that he is due to get more cap space with the DeAngelo trade supposedly being finalized in the next few days, I think the cost would be worth it. For adding Alexis to the youth movement here on Broad Street that already includes Foerster, Gauthier, and now Michkov, the Flyers struggles are sure to become a thing of the past once they find themselves all playing on the same sheet of ice.