No, Flyers prospect Morgan Frost isn't NHL ready yet

Dave Isaac | NHL Writer

Longtime readers of the Courier Post’s prospect report or those who follow coverage of the Lehigh Valley Phantoms are probably aware of this already: Scott Gordon meets with his players often and the team’s bench boss is usually pretty open about how those meetings go, even with reporters.

That level of transparency isn’t common among coaches. Being in a developmental league, clearly Gordon wants to show the messages he’s trying to get across.

Sometimes, like in the case of Morgan Frost, it’s an uber-talented player who is trying to adjust from a league where he scored north of 100 points against teenagers to a league with bigger, stronger, older competition. While that conversation can occasionally produce resistance on the part of the player, Gordon has been “really happy” to find just how open Frost has been.

Recently he showed Frost video of an offensive zone entry where he chipped the puck in and asked the player what he would have done differently.

“Well, I think I made the right play there,” Frost told him.

Gordon asked what he would have done in junior.

“Well, in junior I would probably get inside the zone because they would have backed off and I would have made a play from there,” Frost told him, “but that opportunity isn’t presented here.”

Gordon expected that recognition to be a little tougher. That tends to be one of the things first-year pros struggle with. Just because Frost has passed that test doesn’t mean he’s ready for the NHL, though.

Flyers president and general manager Chuck Fletcher said recently that he still sees swings in Frost’s game. Even his teammates noted it hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows.

“Yeah, he has swings, but just at the start of the season he had a bit of a tough time adjusting,” said Andy Andreoff, now with the Flyers, who played his last handful of AHL games on Frost’s line. “It took him a couple games but now…it’s around Game 12 for them. They’re slowly adjusting but I think he’s been doing a pretty good job so far.

“He’s highly skilled. He works hard. He’s got a bunch of talent. He’s just adjusting from that junior game to the pro game. He’s finding it. He had a little bit of a tough start but he’s playing really well right now. He’s putting up a lot of points and he’s probably one of the most skilled players I’ve played with. He’s doing a good job so far.”

The Flyers have tried out a couple young players from the minors in a fourth-line center role. They won’t do that with Frost because, like Joel Farabee, he needs more minutes and a bigger role to justify his being in the NHL as opposed to the AHL.

It’s not impossible to imagine a scenario where the Flyers create a top-nine role for Frost by moving Claude Giroux back to the wing…eventually.

It just isn’t the time yet.

“This is my opinion, but I think by the time January rolls around— he’s already shown the ability to adjust the speed of his game and playing faster and the more he gets an opportunity to do that, that’s going to also help him as far as playing in the NHL because the game is only going to get faster,” Gordon said. “When is he going to be ready? There’s no timetable on it. Whatever the timetable is, it’ll be shorter. Whether it’s two months from now, halfway through the year or March or next year, he’s gonna make that process quicker for himself because of his recognition of puck management. If he keeps himself in battling and trying to force things that just aren’t there, then he obviously sabotages his own game and sabotages the team game and I think he’s had some great awareness to that and the value in it and that’s just gonna make him a better player.” ________________________

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Dave Isaac joined the Courier-Post in April 2012 after covering the Flyers for three seasons elsewhere. Contact him on Twitter @davegisaac or by email at disaac@gannett.com.

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