How top NHL draft prospects fared at the final day of the NHL combine
Consensus top pick Gavin McKenna was among players who dominated the testing in Buffalo.
BUFFALO — Alexander Command sat down in front of the media after finishing his twirl through the fitness testing on Saturday at LECOM HarborCenter.
The Swedish center looked relaxed and rosy cheeked for someone who said he had just vomited.
It’s not an unheard-of result for the Wingate test, in which players at the NHL scouting combine ride the bike for 30 seconds as hard as they can with no clock in view to see when the end is coming and trainers shouting to keep going.
“I’d say the Wingate was better than I thought, and pretty fun,” Command said with a smile before revealing how it really went.
Command, who could be available when the Flyers select at No. 21 overall and has met with the team, finished tied for 11th in the peak power output test that concluded the combine for each player. He also finished tied for 17th in VO2 max, a test completed Friday in which a player rides a bike with the resistance increasing and keeps riding until they cannot keep up the required revolutions per minute.
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The consensus was that the Wingate test, which also provides a fatigue index result, was the hardest but, oddly, the most fun. Ryder Cali, a center with whom the Flyers met, said the VO2 drained him and he couldn’t move for 25 minutes after, but he felt the Wingate was his best test as it showed his power. He also said the screaming the trainers do as the players pedal actually made him angry, which, in turn, made him go harder.
Said Jaxon Cover, a right winger who met with the Flyers and will head to Penn State in the fall of 2027: “I wish that I could see the time while I was doing it because I couldn’t believe that I had more time to go while I was on it, but it was a lot of fun, and it’s a great experience overall.”
Layne Gallacher, a center who went to Guelph of the Ontario Hockey League in the trade that sent Flyers prospect Jett Luchanko to Brantford, finished atop the Wingate test’s peak power output while consensus No. 1 pick Gavin McKenna was the best in VO2, joking long shifts helped him in his career. The Penn State winger finished in the top 25 for several tests, including third in the new isokinetic squat strength test, which was “performed on a motorized resistance device [1080 Cable] to assess lower extremity strength,” according to the NHL.
McKenna gave the his team and NCAA hockey’s weekend-heavy schedule some of the credit for his strong performance, as it helped him spend a considerable amount of time in the gym at the beginning of each week. He also was training in Kelowna, British Columbia, with Markus and Liam Ruck — Markus tweaked his back on the vertical jump and could not continue — and Mathis Preston since the end of his season.
“Obviously, you want to do your best at everything, so I wanted to prepare hard for this,” said McKenna, who measured 5-foot-11¼ and 170 pounds.
“I think sometimes my frame’s not the biggest, so [I] just wanted to show that I can compete out there and I can work hard off the ice,” he said. “I think that’s a big key to carry through the next level.”
Among the 90 prospects at the combine, many just wrapped up their first year in college, are heading there in the fall, or are going in two years.
In addition to McKenna, Beckham Edwards and Cole Zurawski, who will be teammates at Notre Dame in September, dominated the tests. The pair tied Norwegian Niklas Aaram-Olsen for No. 1 in the pro agility test to the left. The test is a 5-10-5 yard shuttle that evaluates multidirectional speed, agility, and whole-body reaction plus control. Aaram-Olsen and Edwards tied for the lead to the right, and Edwards was No. 1 in force plate no jump.
Zurawski finished atop the leaderboard for the new 10-meter sprint test, which showed how off-ice linear sprint performance is a good predictor of on-ice speed. And Aaram-Olsen led the way in the horizontal jump, landing 118.0 inches, almost two inches more than second place.
“I like the explosive,” said Aaram-Olsen, a winger who is a teammate of Command with Örebro HK U20 in Sweden’s top junior league.
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Pierce Mbuyi is off to Penn State in 2027, but first he topped the isokinetic squat test, came in second on the bench press power test — behind UMass’ Landon Nycz — and finished tied with several players for sixth in pullups (14). Mbuyi, a winger and captain of Owen Sound of the OHL is listed at 5-foot-9 and 177 pounds. Fellow under-6-foot-tall winger Victor Plante, the son of former Flyer Derek Plante who is heading to the University of Minnesota-Duluth was atop the fatigue index.
Two centers had the best grip strength. Cali, who recently flipped his commitment to Providence, tied for first in right-hand grip strength, and Ilia Morozov, 17, who was the youngest player in college hockey this past season at Miami (Ohio), had the best left-hand grip strength. Both met with the Flyers and could be right in their wheelhouse when the first round of the NHL draft is held June 26-27.
Breakaways
Winger Adam Novotný said he had a good meeting with the Flyers. He mentioned that his head was still spinning when he spoke with the media after riding the bike. The Czech winger, who played for Peterborough of the OHL, did the most pullups (18). … Goalie Michal Oršulák slipped doing the shuttle. He was OK but said “I think not too much good,” afterward about his overall performance. His Prince Albert squad finished its season on May 16, losing to Flyers prospect Luke Vlooswyk and Everett in the Western Hockey League final. He said he did not have much time to prepare for the testing. … Two top prospects, Ivar Stenberg and Carson Carels did not do physical testing at the combine.