The Flyers met with top-ranked winger Porter Martone this week ahead of the NHL draft
Martone is the second confirmed extra visit the Flyers have conducted with a prospect. The Inquirer reported last week that James Hagens recently visited with the team ahead of Friday's first round.
The Flyers seem to be doing their due diligence leading up to the 2025 NHL draft.
After The Inquirer reported that James Hagens met with the team in the Philly area last week, Porter Martone confirmed on Thursday to reporters in Los Angeles that he also made a visit to the Garden State this week.
Martone is considered the top winger in this draft class, and with the addition of Trevor Zegras on Monday — and the intention of, at least to start, having him down the middle — the Flyers could shift gears and not take a center. That said, Martone is a right winger, which the Flyers already have an overabundance of in their top six.
» READ MORE: Flyers draft: Could the Orange and Black pass on a center in favor of high-scoring power forward Porter Martone?
But what right-wingers Bobby Brink, Travis Konecny, and Matvei Michkov don’t have is Martone’s size. The hyper-focused winger brings a big frame at 6-foot-3, 204 pounds, high-end skill, and is a proven leader.
“I think Porter, obviously, the size is a big component,” FloHockey NHL draft analyst Chris Peters told The Inquirer in Buffalo. “He is a power forward, but he probably could stand to be more physical. He is physical — it’s not that he’s not — it’s just, I think that at his size, he’s going to be forced to play a certain way.
“But I think that, at his heart, he’s a playmaker. He’s more of a skill, hockey sense, passing, scoring kind of player, which I think is a great thing and why a lot of teams are very interested in him. … I think that he does a lot of things well. Very mature.”
Martone is the captain in Brampton of the Ontario Hockey League and has also worn the “C” for Hockey Canada. He needs to work on his skating, but he has elite playmaking skills, can score goals, and has major upside.
This past season, Martone tallied 37 goals and 98 points in 57 regular-season games for Brampton, tying another possible Flyers pick at No. 6, Jake O’Brien, for seventh on the OHL scoring charts. He added nine points (four goals, five assists) in six playoff games.
The winger also has some direct ties to the Orange and Black. Martone happened to billet with the same family that Owen Tippett did in junior, and the Flyers forward swings by for dinner sometimes when he’s in the area. The projected top-10 pick was also teammates with Konecny, Travis Sanheim, and Tyson Foerster for Canada at the recent World Championships.
“One day, Travis Konecny took me golfing in Sweden,” Martone said. “Foerster’s very great, kind of around my age, I sat beside him in the room. And then, Sanheim, too.
“They’re all unbelievable people. And one thing I could tell is what it means to be a Flyer. And they really value that. They’re very tight, tight, tight people, and they really enjoy playing for the Flyers.”