It’s been fun to monitor the emergence of the Philadelphia Flyers this season, but their American Hockey League (AHL) affiliate Lehigh Valley Phantoms has had some individuals take some big strides. Most notably, 21-year-old Samu Tuomaala is having an exceptional season for them in his first full season in North America.
It wasn’t always pretty for Tuomaala, though. Very early, the 2021 second-round pick for the Orange and Black looked to be a miss. He had serious bust potential but has since turned it around and become one of the Flyers’ best prospects. How did this happen?
Tuomaala’s 2021 Draft Year
For proper context, let’s start with Tuomaala’s draft year in 2020-21. In the U-20 SM-sarja league in Finland, the youngster was among some of the top scorers in the league with 15 goals and 16 assists for 31 points in 30 contests — he improved from 23 points in 40 games his previous season.
Internationally with Team Finland in the 2021 U18 World Championship, he had five goals and six assists for 11 points in seven games, tying him for fifth in points in the tournament. So, naturally, he became a highly touted prospect in his class. He had loads of potential, and general manager (GM) Chuck Fletcher, the Flyers, and their scouts realized it.
After Fletcher traded his team’s 2021 first-round pick in a package that returned Finnish defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen, a good prospect needed to be landed to make that worth it — Tuomaala was sitting right there for them at 46th overall. So, he is who the Flyers chose.
Related: Philadelphia Flyers Pick Samu Tuomaala 46th Overall
At that time, the Flyers had prospect needs all over the lineup, so they took the player they felt was the best available. An elite skater and scorer, he’s the type of skilled forward the team desperately needed. Taking a chance on talent helped make up for the team losing their 14th-overall selection in the Ristolainen trade — but only for a little bit.
Post-Draft-Year Struggles
In his 2021-22 season, things didn’t go very well for Tuomaala. In the move up to the Liiga, Finland’s top league, he couldn’t get much of anything going. In 21 total contests, he had just one goal and three points. Internationally, his totals fell to two goals and two assists for four points in seven contests.
Tuomaala was still just a teenager, but it’s never a good look to regress that badly from your draft season to your first season after. Almost always, progression is shown. The transition from playing with younger to older players really hurt his progression, and for a while, it seemed as though he might not return to his prior form.
In 14 games in 2022-23 in the same league, he failed to score a single point at all. Back in the U20 SM-sarja league where he originated, he had just two goals and three assists for five points in 10 matches. But when he went to the Mestis league, that’s when he flipped a switch.
Tuomaala Finally Reaching His Potential
In a lower-tier Finnish league known as Mestis, Tuomaala finally started to hit his stride. Among players with more than a single game under their belt, he was second overall in points per game with 48 in 31 contests, scoring 27 goals and 21 assists in the process. With a plus-29 rating to go along with that, apparently, all he needed was to go against some competition that was a bit behind where he was previously.
But Tuomaala’s true progression has been this season with the Phantoms. He is one of the AHL’s top scorers with 13 goals and 22 assists for 35 points in 43 contests, tying him for 26th in the league in overall scoring. Among rookies, he is second in points. Adding to that point, some of the players ahead of him already have some NHL experience, so to be doing what he’s doing freshly off turning 21 in January is pretty inspiring for his future.
Selected to the AHL All-Star Game, he had a great weekend there, too. From struggling over in Europe to being among the best young players in the AHL, his progression has come quickly and is pretty unprecedented. But what does this mean for the Flyers next season and even further down the line?
What His Progression Could Mean for the Flyers
So, it’s unlikely for Tuomaala to come up to the Flyers this season, even if they are selling at the trade deadline. He was rushed to a high-end league once, so why do that again? Admittedly, he might actually be a valuable middle-six contributor for the Flyers as soon as today if he were given the chance to produce in the lineup. But he’s been so good in the AHL, that there’s really no reason to disrupt that. He’ll get his chance to make the team in 2024-25.
Next season, there will be some training camp battles that he’ll have to win. He has the talent to do so and was one of the bigger standouts in rookie camp, but him being just 20 years old at the time and the immense competition there pretty much gave him no chance to make the team. It’ll be a different story a few months from now, though.
Right now, Tuomaala looks to be one of the Flyers’ best forward prospects behind Matvei Michkov and possibly Denver Barkey. If he continues to progress, he could be a very good NHL player. It’s abnormal for that production to truly hit until forwards are at or just before their mid-20s, so he’s got a lot of time. He has years of development to go, but it’s been a good start thus far.
His progression has been a bit bizarre, but the good thing is that Tuomaala is exactly where the Flyers hoped he’d be when they drafted him. With the potential to be a solid forward in the NHL for years to come, he has seemingly gone from miss to hit in just a few seasons.
