Flyers draft defenseman Oliver Bonk with their second pick of the first round

Bonk, a 6-foot-2, 180-pound defenseman, is solid on both ends and is the son of former NHLer Radek Bonk.

The Flyers selected defenseman Oliver Bonk of the London Knights with their second pick of the first round.Read moreBRUCE BENNETT / Getty Images

Published June 28, 2023, 11:03 p.m. ET

NASHVILLE ― After taking a major swing by selecting Matvei Michkov with the seventh overall pick, with their second of two first-round picks, the Flyers played it safer. At No. 22, they selected defenseman Oliver Bonk of the Ontario Hockey League’s London Knights. He is the son of former Nashville Predator Radek Bonk and partially grew up in Nashville, where he was drafted.

Bonk, who is 6-foot-2, 180 pounds, was ranked as NHL Central Scouting’s 20th-best North American skater and third-ranked North American defenseman. He is a right-handed shot and scored 10 goals and added 30 assists in 67 games last season.

He’s known for his shutdown defense and for being a play killer. Bonk is a very reliable player who doesn’t show the inconsistency many players his age do. After being picked, he said he thinks his hockey IQ is one of his greatest strengths. Like most players, he said he needs to get bigger and stronger because he’s “lanky.”

Bonk said he talked with the Flyers before the draft and got a good feeling from them. He doesn’t know much about the organization, though.

“I just saw that they work extremely hard,” he said. “They got their work boots on.”

The Flyers had some feelings of their own about Bonk Wednesday night, according to general manager Danny Brière.

“We got nervous on Bonk,” said in a post-pick interview. “We thought he would go a lot earlier than that. There wasn’t very many defensemen left that we were excited [about] in that range. So we saw the board start to fall. We felt a right-shot defenseman like him we just can’t pass on.”

It’s a safe pick in the sense that scouts believe Bonk is expected to be an NHL player. It’s not a big swing, though, because he has less upside than some of the other prospects who were available when the Flyers were on the clock.

Bonk’s father, Radek, who was born in now-dissolved Czechoslovakia, played 969 NHL games over 14 seasons. He played for 10 seasons as a center for the Ottawa Senators, two for the Montreal Canadiens, and two for the Predators, tallying 194 goals and 497 career points. Oliver was born in Ottawa.

The Flyers were always likely to draft a defenseman with one of their two picks Wednesday, as they traded No. 1 blue-liner Ivan Provorov earlier this season, and have engaged in trade talks on fellow veterans Travis Sanheim and Tony DeAngelo.