Flyers draft: Roger McQueen comes with legitimate injury concerns, but his upside is tantalizing

To steal a line from Forrest Gump, drafting future NHLers is like a box of chocolates — you never know what you’re going to get.

And with center Roger McQueen, who most likely will be available to the Flyers at No. 6, that saying may never be truer.

“He’s a 6-foot-5 player with really quick hands. The ability to get the puck from one side of his body to the other, and using his length, is quite fascinating to sit back and watch, to be honest,” said Marty Murray, McQueen’s coach with Brandon of the Western Hockey League.

“There’s so many things, with his size and skill level and reach that leave you in awe. … And when he gets his shot off, it’s quite impressive,”

Sounds good, no?

But then came the kicker from the former Flyers center: “He’s a special player, but unfortunately, due to injury this year, he missed a good chunk of the season, and [we] didn’t get to see the true Roger.”

A chunk is an understatement. Try a slab. McQueen missed 51 games — a total of 4½ months watching his buddies compete from the sideline — during the 2024-25 season after suffering a stress fracture in his lower back.

The Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, native thinks the initial injury happened during the 2023 Hlinka Gretzky Cup. In that August tournament, as an alternate captain, he notched four goals and seven points in five games for the gold-medal winning Canadians.

Despite feeling something wasn’t right, McQueen headed back from the “Paris of the Prairies” to suit up for the Wheat Kings. He tallied 51 points (21 goals, 30 assists) in 53 regular-season games in 2023-24 before adding another five points (four goals, one assist) in four playoff games.

Gritting it out, he headed to the Under-18 World Championships as an underager and, as The Athletic’s draft analyst Scott Wheeler told The Inquirer, “Only played about a game and a half, but he was one of Canada’s best players.”

This season, McQueen played eight games for Brandon, in which he potted eight goals — including four on opening night — and added three assists, before being shut down because of a back injury until early March. He returned with a vengeance, registering 17 penalty minutes against the Red Deer Rebels on March 4 — including a major for boarding and a 10-minute misconduct — and finished with three goals and seven assists across his final 12 games, including three playoff contests.

“To come back when everybody is in playoff form and ultimately beginning playoffs, you have to reel in the expectations that he’s going to be a little rusty,” Murray said. “But he came out, he played hard, maybe even too hard, where he maybe, I think, tried to show where he could be physical and that his back was fine.

“I think, with the lack of conditioning coming off for so long, he used a lot of energy up. And how do you fault the kid for doing that, right? He came back and gave it his all, and, unfortunately, another separate injury kept him out of the latter part of the playoffs.”

Over the year-plus since the initial injury, McQueen was misdiagnosed with a bulging disc before the root cause was discovered. But through it all, and to his credit, the 18-year-old sees a lot of positives. The time off the ice helped him build up the mental and physical sides of his game.

“Watching all the games just got harder and harder, but I think I learned a lot in the sense of just kind of becoming a pro and the lifestyle,” McQueen told The Inquirer. “Of just knowing your body, knowing how to take care of it, and knowing I’m a bigger body. So I probably have to be in the gym a little bit more than some other guys.”

Eighteen years old and already tall enough to tower over everyone except for goalie Ivan Fedotov on the Flyers, McQueen said he still needs to grow into his body because at 198 pounds, he’s “pretty light for how tall I am.” His main area of focus is building muscle, especially around his back and core.

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So, how does one do that?

“I’ve been told Pilates, doing as much as that is very beneficial for that,” he said.

Pilates? Really?

“Yeah. I do a lot of the reformer, actually, which is really tough,” he said. “I do a lot of the mat too. I do it twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So it’s really good. I love it. I never realized how hard it was, and it’s definitely challenging for me, but it’s awesome.”

He noted that his favorite moves are doing a side crunch on one leg — “Which is the hardest thing on the planet” — and a speed skater stride.

Skating has always been in McQueen’s blood. The first time he was up on skates was at 4 years old, when his grandma, Sheila Trumpy, took him to an outdoor rink by the river.

“She never played hockey,” McQueen said. “She decided to take me out one day, I guess — that’s what she tells me. I don’t remember it, but she likes to tell people that she’s the first person who took me out.”

McQueen’s father, Scott McQueen, played in the WHL for the Rebels and Saskatoon Blades, the University of Saskatchewan, and in the Saskatchewan Valley Hockey League, a senior league. His uncle, Rennie McQueen, also played juniors.

While his grandmother planted the seed, his dad watered it. Scott McQueen built a rink on a pond out back, and his son was always on it. During lunch, after school, and sometimes before school, Roger worked on building his skill set — and dreaming big.

“When I was young, just imagining playing in the Stanley Cup or playing with Team Canada, it was always against Russia back in the day. … I think the biggest thing was probably my dad just building that pond outside,” he said. “I think that was where I definitely found most of my love for the game.”

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Pretending to play for Team Canada, where he “would always lose and then add three seconds somehow to the clock and score again,” McQueen pictured himself winning gold — which he did twice wearing the maple leaf at the Hlinka and U18s — or skating alongside Detroit Red Wings stars Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, the latter being his favorite player and the reason he wears No. 13.

McQueen was skating with Berkly Catton, who was drafted eighth overall by the Seattle Kraken last June, while developing a game he compares to former Anaheim Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf.

“Just a guy who can kind of find the happy medium between a finesse game and a hard game, like a playoff-type game,” McQueen said. “I like to play physical, but I like to play with a lot of skill. I like to play on both sides of the ice and be a guy who can be trusted with 2 minutes left in a game.”

For Murray, it’s a good comparison, but he sees McQueen as more like Buffalo Sabres 40-goal scorer Tage Thompson. It’s is quite enticing, considering that McQueen has his size and skills and is known for his hockey IQ and skating ability.

“I think [my game] would match really well,” McQueen said about playing alongside Flyers rookie star Matvei Michkov. “I think being able to gel with him on the skill side of things … and then also playing a kind of a down low, heavy game and a defensive game, just helping out down the middle and being a big presence, I think would be really good for him.

“He’s so crazy skilled and unbelievable at what he does, so I think just being a complementary guy with my size and just helping out kind of everywhere I can, would be really good for him. That’d be a dream come true.”

McQueen also has been a glue guy in Brandon. This season was his third in Manitoba, and despite being injured, “the life of the locker room” made it a point to help the younger players. Murray said McQueen followed his tradition of getting in touch with the kids selected in the bantam draft, which he’s done since joining the Wheat Kings.

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There are a lot of positives to McQueen, and the “upside is incredibly tantalizing,” as FloHockey’s NHL draft analyst Chris Peters said. But, as Peters added, “The thing is that he can tell us all that the back problems are behind him; he’s fine medically [at the combine by doing all the physical tests]. It’s always great to be big, unless you have back problems.“

The risk may be too much for the Flyers, who have the likes of Nolan Patrick’s migraines and Sean Couturier’s back issues hanging over them. But you can’t be fond of living in the past because if you are, then there’s no way that you’re going to last.

And the Flyers did their due diligence. Aside from meeting with him as a management staff, the Flyers athletic training staff also held a medical interview with McQueen — because while there is risk, maybe the reward will be worth it.

“I think Flyers’ fans would like what he brings to the table,” Murray said.

So, will this be a “Love Story” between the Flyers and the Swiftie, McQueen?

He is a Wheat King, and this match could be a pretty thing. Let’s just see what tomorrow brings.