Flyers prospect Zayde Wisdom’s career is back on track thanks to his ‘do-or-die’ approach to this season

ALLENTOWN — Ian Laperrière likes to check in on his players during the summer, so the Lehigh Valley bench boss rang up Zayde Wisdom last summer to see how things were going after a disappointing season.

Drafted by the Flyers in the fourth round of the 2020 draft, the forward hadn’t quite found his footing in the pros. After playing for the Phantoms during the COVID-19-shortened 2021 season, Wisdom underwent offseason shoulder surgery and was sent back to juniors for the rest of 2021-22.

He put up good numbers for Kingston of the Ontario Hockey League, with 38 points in 43 games, but struggled the next two seasons back in the pros. It came to a head last season with just three points in 49 games for Lehigh Valley.

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Things needed to change. And then, Wisdom had his light bulb moment.

“He’s like, ‘Lappy, I changed my training when I moved to Montreal with Elliot Desnoyers, and we’re training together. I’m going to come to camp and you won’t be able to take me out of the lineup,’” Laperrière said Wisdom told him on the phone.

“That’s great, but I’ve heard that before,” the Phantoms coach added. “Talk is cheap sometimes, but [I’ve] got to give him props.

“He talked the talk, but now he’s walking the walk.”

Wisdom, 22, has become a powerhouse for the Phantoms this season and credits his coach for “still believing in me, not giving up hope, and having my back.” But people have had Wisdom’s back since he first put on skates at 18 months old. The hockey-obsessed kid has faced and overcome adversity from a young age.

Growing up in a one-parent household with his brother, Zaccharya, a Seattle Kraken prospect, Wisdom experienced poverty. Their mother, Mairri McConnell, told The Inquirer after Zayde was drafted that sometimes they didn’t have enough money to put gas in the car to take him to hockey practice.

It truly was a village that helped the Wisdoms become hockey players in the hockey hotbed of Toronto.

“I think we definitely broke that mold,” McConnell told The Inquirer before the Phantoms’ first-round clincher against the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. “Hockey’s very expensive in Toronto, very expensive period. So I don’t know that we fit that mold, but I certainly know that these boys have.

“I hope that they’ve shown other kids that it honestly doesn’t matter where you’re from. It doesn’t matter. If you want it, you can make it happen.”

There are pressures on Wisdom that not many people can relate to. Although Wisdom is the family’s “hope,” McConnell just wanted her kids to be good humans, and Wisdom won the OHL’s E.J. McGuire Award of Excellence in 2020, honoring his character and humanitarian work.

But the self-proclaimed mama’s boy and his brother know they would not have reached the levels they have in hockey without their mother. While she may be hard on her sons while watching their games — “She doesn’t say it to our face, but in private with herself, she’s pretty hard on us, [saying] ‘What are you doing? What are you doing? Let’s go,’” Zaccharya said with a chuckle — she is nothing but supportive around them.

McConnell’s approach to life’s hurdles and fighting through challenges has helped steer the renewed mental approach Wisdom has this season.

“My mom’s probably the most mentally tough person I know,” Wisdom said. “So growing up and watching her just fight for everything she’s had and fight for me and my brother … watching her grind, battle, and that’s kind of where I transfer it onto the ice and grind and battle for everything I have.”

Wisdom has found a home this season on Lehigh Valley’s top line with Olle Lycksell and Jacob Gaucher. He’s also flourished after being put on the penalty kill, which has taken on the Flyers’ “power kill” mentality of trying to capitalize on chances to score shorthanded.

In 68 regular-season games this season, Wisdom tallied a career-high 32 points (13 goals, 19 assists), including two shorthanded goals and three game-winners. He had his first professional hat trick in January and finished the season as one of four Phantoms with a double-digit plus-minus (plus-10).

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“I’m a pretty safe player,” Wisdom told The Inquirer recently. “Lappy can trust me in the D-zone when he needs that shot blocked at the end of a game. … Not so much a power-play guy, but I can definitely kill penalties and make sure the puck gets out. … In the O-zone, I hunt the puck, trying to be a dog on the bone, as people like to say, and just make sure I come out with the puck in all my one-to-one battles.”

But what’s been different this season?

“Just holding onto pucks more, having that confidence to make plays, shooting the puck when I’m in dangerous areas, and knowing I can score,” Wisdom said.

“I felt like I kind of lost it the last couple of years.”

After last season, Laperrière was ready to drive Wisdom to Reading to play for the Royals of the ECHL. He wasn’t done with the player, far from it. It’s just that he didn’t think there was room for him in the AHL, and by sending him down, the 5-foot-10, 201-pound bruiser could get more touches and his confidence back.

It never came to that.

Wisdom spent the summer in Montreal training with Desnoyers, and his younger brother Caleb Desnoyers, who is expected to be a top 10 pick in the 2025 NHL draft. The forward, who previously trained in Toronto with his buddies, was hyper-focused in what they called “The Laboratory,” and got into some of the best shape of his career.

“[Desnoyers’] dad has a rink, so it was real easy access for us to get on the ice whenever we needed,” Wisdom said of the training schedule that included off-ice training followed by on-ice work on Mondays and heavy conditioning on Wednesdays. “It was work out, skate, and then just taking care of the body after, making sure you were good for the next day because the next day would be even harder.”

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Entering the final year of his contract, Wisdom had to get it together if he wanted to continue in the Flyers organization — and, likely, in the pros. As Laperrière said, new guys are always coming in to take spots.

“That bounce-back, that resilience that he has, that strong will, you learn from it,” Zaccharya said. “You see that if he can do it, I can do it, kind of mentality. Especially as a brother, you want to be better than him. So you see it, you learn from it, and, honestly, I’m just so proud.”

Wisdom is putting his hard work to good use. He has three points in the Phantoms’ five Calder Cup playoff games and, entering Thursday, was tied for second on the AHL leaderboard in plus-minus (plus-6).

One game in particular was a statement of how far Wisdom has come.

In the third period of Lehigh Valley’s 3-1 win in Game 2 of their best-of-five second-round series against Hershey, Wisdom scored two shorthanded goals. The Phantoms also won Game 3 and have put the two-time defending champions on the brink of elimination. Game 4 is Friday at the PPL Center.

“Early in the year, he might have been a healthy scratch, and I know that he was spoken to,” assistant general manager Alyn McCauley said. “It was like, ‘Listen, we’ve got guys that we need to get through here. It was a tough year last year. Everything looks good. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’ And I think he’s had that mantra. I think he did all that mental work or preparation in the summer that has allowed him to succeed.”

The question now is: What’s next? Wisdom is in the last year of his entry-level contract and will be a restricted free agent. There are no guarantees he’ll be given a new one, and he entered the season knowing his livelihood was on the line.

Wisdom has built a strong case to return as he has rebuilt his confidence and standing within the organization.

“I just realized that at the start of the year, this was kind of a do-or-die year for me, and I need to prove a lot of people wrong,” he said. “I had no choice, really, but to do my best and kind of dial it in this season.

“At the start of the year is when I had that light bulb [moment], where I was just in the realization, do or die.”