The Flyers recalled Oliver Bonk, Jacob Gaucher, Anthony Richard, Hunter McDonald and Aleksei Kolosov from AHL Lehigh Valley on April 17, and Bonk is set to make his NHL debut against the Canadiens in the team’s season finale.
Philadelphia made the move a night after locking up a playoff berth, giving the club a chance to reward several players from its farm team before the postseason begins. Bonk, the Flyers’ 2023 first-round pick and the 22nd overall selection, spent much of his first pro season trying to recover from an upper-body injury that hit shortly before training camp and kept him out until Christmas.
He finished with Lehigh Valley at 6 goals, 13 assists and 19 points in 44 games, along with a minus-10 rating, while being listed as the Flyers’ No. 3-ranked prospect. The organization has viewed him as a long-term piece on defense, even if the projection is for a shutdown role rather than immediate scoring impact.
The other recalls carried their own signs of where the Flyers are in the season. Gaucher had seven career NHL games and no points with a minus-1 rating, Richard had 6 goals and 14 points in 39 career NHL games and led Lehigh Valley with 18 goals and 44 points in 63 games this season, and McDonald, a 6-foot-4, 238-pound sixth-round pick in 2022, arrived after a path that ran from the USHL’s Chicago Steel to Northeastern, where he earned Hockey East All-Rookie Team and Best Defensive Defenseman honors. McDonald signed his entry-level contract in 2024, and it expires this summer.
For Bonk, the debut lands at the end of a year spent adjusting to the pro game after the injury. For the Flyers, it is a final-night look at one of their highest-regarded prospects before the focus shifts fully to the playoffs.
