With Nolan Patrick, Flyers get The Key to the future

Dave Isaac | The Courier-Post

CHICAGO — If Joel Embiid is The Process then perhaps Nolan Patrick is The Key.

His season-claiming injuries, the Flyers hope, are over. He's been medically cleared by the team and could give the team a huge leap forward in becoming contenders again. They have a piece to build around in the middle.

The 76ers may be further along in the process — they believe top-pick Markelle Fultz is the final piece of the puzzle and the Flyers still need to add — but Patrick has the potential to be a No. 1 center who could change the landscape for the Flyers.

“Nolan’s gonna have to answer that,” general manager Ron Hextall said. “We see a kid with a big body, extremely high hockey sense, really good skill set, but you know what? He got drafted (Friday). The work starts now. Nolan’s gonna have to put the work in. He’s gonna have to do the work. He can play junior hockey and everything else. This is the National Hockey League. In September he’s gonna come to camp and he needs to have a big summer.”

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The 6-foot-2, 200-pound center was the presumed No. 1 pick for most of the last year. Between injuries keeping him off the ice and Nico Hischier’s meteoric rise, the New Jersey Devils opted to let Patrick go by the top slot.

Hextall prepared for both scenarios, knowing either one was going to be a key piece of the future. Devils GM Ray Shero didn’t tip his hand, either. Hextall asked him 10 minutes before the pick was made and he still wouldn’t tell him.

“I give him credit. That’s what he should have done,” Hextall said. “He kept it quiet right to the bitter end. Honestly I didn’t have an expectation one way or the other. We liked both players.”

Either way, this pick was always going to play a huge part in moving the Flyers back to contention for the Stanley Cup.

With a defense corps maturing toward the NHL together and a franchise goalie — probably either Carter Hart or Felix Sandstrom — on the way, a young center who can score was a missing piece.

“I still need to make the NHL and establish myself,” Patrick said. “I’m just gonna try to play my game and contribute as much as I can and obviously I think the Flyers are a really good team. You look at their D core coming up they’ve got some real good prospects. I think in a couple years we’ll be a real good team. Even this year coming up they’ve got all the tools to do that.”

Patrick comes from a hockey family. His father, Steve, was a first-round pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 1980. His uncle, James, was selected by the New York Rangers ninth overall the next year. Both have been the biggest influences in his hockey upbringing.

“My dad’s real different from my uncle, their personalities,” Patrick said. “My dad’s a goof and he’s always been a good coach. My uncle is a little more serious. They’ve both been good for me.”

The pedigree is there for Patrick and if the expectations of him matching a player like Los Angeles’ Anze Kopitar or Chicago’s Jonathan Toews are correct, the Flyers are set for a long time.

With all the hype sometimes things can come easy. Hextall recently made that assessment for 2012 first-round pick Scott Laughton, who may have found his game in the minors this season.

“Personally, Scotty, I think a lot of things came to him very quickly and I think it hurt him,” Hextall said. “I really do. Last year I think he figured it out.”

Laughton played five games in his draft year and was also the captain of Team Canada in the World Junior Championships the next season. Patrick is a different person and different player, but the risk of being handed too much too quickly is something that Hextall is always aware of.

Someone who could be such a big piece to the franchise gets under the microscope even more.

“I believe Nolan’s a really good young man,” Hextall said. “You guys can ask Ivan (Provorov) about him. Really good young man. Works hard, wants to be a National Hockey League player. We couldn’t be more excited to have him on board. The big, prototypical power centermen…hard to find. They’re really hard to find.”

Dave Isaac; 856-486-2479; disaac@gannett.com