Flyers sign sixth-round draft pick Ilya Pautov to entry-level contract
Pautov is the latest 2024 draft pick to sign with the team.
As the NHL descends upon Buffalo for this week’s scouting combine, the Flyers signed yet another member of the 2024 draft class.
Ilya Pautov, a sixth-round pick, has inked a three-year entry-level contract, joining first-rounder Jett Luchanko, second-round picks Jack Berglund and Spencer Gill, and Noah Powell, who was taken in the fifth round. Heikki Ruohonen, selected in the fourth round, is at Harvard but is expected to join the Flyers in the future, while seventh-rounder Austin Moline is headed to Michigan Tech in the fall.
A source confirmed to The Inquirer that the expectation is Pautov will head to North America in the fall.
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“That’s [amateur scout Ken Hoodikoff’s] guy, he’s banging his table,” assistant general manager Brent Flahr said, referencing the Flyers scout who was based in Russia at the time of the draft.
“He’s undersized, obviously, but he’s got dynamic skill, and a smart player,” Flahr said of Pautov.
A left shot with creativity, the 5-foot-10, 165-pound native of Novosibirsk, Russia, split this season between Krasnaya Armiya Moskva of the MHL, the major junior ice hockey league in Eurasia, and Zvezda Moskva of the VHL, Russia’s second-highest professional league. He registered 10 goals and 23 points in 30 regular-season games in the MHL and added 10 points (four goals, six assists) through nine playoff games, the second-most on the team.
A source has also confirmed that the Flyers will not be signing 2022 seventh-rounder Santeri Sulku before the June 1 deadline. The Finnish forward will become a draft-related unrestricted free agent.