Everybody Plays: 2025 NHL Draft breakdown – Shane Vansaghi – Philadelphia Flyers

Everybody Plays: 2025 NHL Draft breakdown – Shane Vansaghi – Philadelphia Flyers

We’re through yet another draft. And once again, according to what the media says and everything you read, all these players are going to pan out instead of the 35 or 40 out of a whole class. Pretty much everyone is in the clear this time. Welcome back to the two-line pass. Since everyone else is focused on why a player might make it and show off only the plays where they succeed, I’ll try to provide a more balanced perspective. I’m just going to do a quick history lesson. In 1989, Limro was with the general manager of the New York Devil. They drafted with the fifth pick overall. Billy Garren Oliver Walstrom is this generation’s version of Billy Garren the way he plays the game. This is a very good pick. I I I think he’s a better goal scorer than Billy Garren. But Philip Adena, when I talk about a really well-rounded offensive player, David Pastnet comes to mind. And for the Detroit Red Wings, they’re looking at a player that I think they can really hope to be in their lineup at the beginning of next season. I love this guy as a player. I really think he’s going to be a good NHL player because he plays the game the right way. Coaches love him. His dad’s a scout for the LA Kings. Uh now got tremendous vision, tremendous composure. His panic point is he doesn’t have one and he’s got tremendous offensive upside. He’s got a chance to be a quarterback style defenseman in the National Hockey League. Not an overwhelming physical presence out there. Rob Neater has been compared to Rangers captain Mark Messier. I don’t show those clips because I’m going to get everybody right 10 years down the line. I’m gonna get people wrong, too. But what I want to get right is elements. I want the process to be good. The scouting process to be good. I I want to do the the right work on it. And if the players don’t turn out 10 years down the line, well, that’s too bad. I don’t wish failure on anybody who doesn’t earn it. I hope all these kids play. In case they don’t, here might be why. And not to stifle conversation, but I know the blanket statement comments that you get if you cross into not so positive territory on prospects. So, here’s a little internet disclaimer and away we go. Today on Everybody Plays, we’re going to take a look at Philadelphia Flyers second round pick Shane Vanagi, a true freshman at Michigan State. All right, right off the draw, he’s involved. Contact stick in the lane, then shoves his check out the center. He’s the winger, so he comes through and picks up the high guy on his wing. Doesn’t chase him all over the world. He switches off, maintains his position. This is predictable for everyone. Fights for ice going back up ice. We we immediately get clues on how he does his business, right? We’re we’re seconds into this video and look at how much contact we’ve had. Even going up ice there, he didn’t find open ice and get into a foot race. Why? Well, because he can’t. He’s He’s got heavy feet. But you’ll see why I don’t care about that at all. Because he’s taking you down with him. Going back the other way again, feet aren’t great, so you have to compensate. Look at him maintain the glide and maintain really good gap. Last couple videos, guys, with all due respect, weren’t tracking the play and player movement nearly this well, even if it’s subtle. Doesn’t take much to make me happy sometimes. This is a terrific neutral zone route. Presents a target that leads him into good ice. Clean pass catch in motion at the line. He turns toes and attacks toes, but that that’s all right. He probably thought that Dman was going to bite inside. He immediately realizes that the Dman is coming with him and he starts puck protection techniques to to not have a ghastly turnover at the line. So, he’ll probably just put this in the corner and go after it. Whoa. Honestly, he he sold me that he was going to onehand that into the corner. Look at this Dman. He guessed right at the line, but he got panced right here. He he waits and lures the one stopper to this plan to go by. Allows his D to get into the zone. And this is just great awareness because he knows what he just did to player four. He knows he’s got a minute to figure this out and then he doesn’t marvel at what he’s done. He works inside into the shot lane to get the tip attempt. Okay, he’s on the outside looking in at this puck battle. He’s got no shot. Oh man, he gets in there with a strong stick and takes the candy from the older Dman. Puts it in the space where his guy can get it. Tracks to the puck smartly. He gets it right back. And now the D man on his back uh wants revenge on the true freshman. Tough luck, bud. He a-frames him. He A-frames him, absorbs the contact, walks with it, and then cycles back against the grain. No hesitation. Rotates to the front of the net. Honestly, do I even need to continue with the rest of this game? This is already a player that I think is going to play. If you’ve seen some of my other videos from this this year or last, you can see the night and day difference between Vanagi and your regular compete guy, right? Like it’s the detail work. He has it already. He’s not going to forget it. The foundation is there to build off of. Next shift here. Bang. Excellent contact coming through the hands. Closing off the defensive side of the puck. Very good contact. More of it as the puckets ring the round to four. Wins that puck battle. Keeps the puck. Survives the contact. Puts it right on the tape ahead. play tracks back the other way. He doesn’t lose his head trying to manage all that ice. Has a little uh-oh moment with the guy going to the far post. Luckily, that puck doesn’t get through as he’s as he’s covering there. Why Why didn’t I have him higher on my list? I I don’t think the technicals are that great uh necessarily. The skating and the skill level aren’t great now. So, as a personal rule, I I don’t like to draft bottom six upside guys too high unless it’s an impact 3C, but that’s just my rule, and I’m maybe I’ll grow out of it. I I assume he was in the 20s on a number of NHL list. Maybe late teens for Philly given how they drafted. Uh you see here, good idea that the feet are still heavy. He’s he’s a heavy player, though. That’s the deal. Sometimes I don’t think it’s a stopper. And frankly, if he had better skating in hands, he’d have gone top 10. But you see here, he takes the puck, runs into some trouble that he can’t work out of. That’s okay. Perfection is in the bar. He doesn’t sulk about it. He digs in. He gets on the right side of the puck and he fights to make it right. Uh tracks back to the interior and then once again puts the whammy on player four who has already had just about enough of Van Sagi. And it’s probably only like 7:25 p.m. He’s got a whole night of this coming up. But going back to it, you know, I I think you can find bottom six guys and bottom pair of defenseman without the without a big asset cost. Draft picks are worth their weight in gold to me, so I try to find a little bit higher upside guys. Um, but you sometimes you don’t the foundation and the floor here are just so sturdy with this player and really quite elevated uh that you never know when one of these guys pops and becomes like a Mike Canubal type um where you can put him anywhere. it just becomes like a Swiss Army knife or in this case Swiss Army tank. It could it could happen. I I’d rather play it safe and have this player lower, but I really like this player. It’s it’s a paradox, I guess. MSU a little bit not engaged off the draw here, but look at how strong Vanagi is on his stick here. This is a clean lift and it causes the lefty to throw himself into the gutter. Uh Vanagi gets the puck in the wide lane, but he doesn’t put it on the wall right away because he sees a dead end. He takes advantage of the space, holds the puck in the interior and really flattens out the Dman. Even though he doesn’t have the dot line to start, he starts to take back a little bit of the ice so that if that Dman flattens out, he can’t close him off. A bad worker B gets slammed there. Vanagi gets a clean entry. Then he buys time and completes a pass. He works to the front of the net and gets a tip. May maybe you saw a similar situation in the Horhoff video uh about being down in the fray. So you’re either on the puck pursuit or you’re F1 coming back. Not neither. Be engaged. Let’s see. Immediately he’s F1 going back in case his team doesn’t get the puck. Then he finds the right ice to keep the play alive. Puck protection. Buying time. Maybe that goes to the point there. Maybe it’s a shot. Either way, this is all positive. Wraps it up with another good stick play. OSU is going to beat out the icing. Not a lot happens here. He’s in about to be in on F1. Good harassment. Forch is not man. It’s a rotation. Nice job here. He approaches the pile. He approaches the pile smartly here. Good timing. gets a disruption and it’s not a free out for OSU as a result of his work. Bad pass here. Tough to handle. Eventually play is going to go back the other direction. Vonagi doesn’t get drawn into a bad decision just because the tempo increases. He picks up the biggest threat in sudden change hockey, then parlays it into a bracketing on the puck, which is great. Not a lot is going to happen here uh on the ice for a bit. It’s funny sometimes how people look at the draft invariably the the picks right before you and the picks right after you attract attention, but that’s not really the right gauge because that’s not necessarily how your team had them. But in the beginning of the second round, there is some very unimaginative picks on defense in particular there for a while and most of those guys probably won’t have an impact in the NHL. I don’t think Washington took that Swedish forward doesn’t do much for me looking around that area of the draft. uh not everybody because there’s there’s some fun in there, too. But if you look at the top half of the second round, there is there’s some some picks that I’m not a huge fan of. This is one of the better ones for my taste. I don’t know every single player in that group, I’ll admit, but I know most of them. I I like this pick a lot from that particular perspective. Off the draw, he gets caught off guard by the Capitals draft pick who can really skate, but since he can’t do much else but skate really well, this amounts to nothing. The forward on the puck here tries to shovel this back to Vanagi, but he actually whiffed and this gets banged back out to center. That’s not Vanagi’s fault. Not much else is going to happen here the rest of this shift, but you know, this is a player that really uh improved. I thought he improved as the season went on, but he he really jumped up to this level of play. Like you talk about a player, is it the right fit? Now you have all this freedom, right? You can go junior hockey. You can do anything you like. You can go NCAA. Boy, is this player just made for college hockey. And and this Michigan State team is is is really on the rise. Again, positional integrity and discipline. Sees F1 and F2 ahead of him. Uh MSU has this uh has the 113 on protecting the lead and Vanagi’s going to force the offside. Okay, coming up here. He’s going to slide behind the heels of the Dman and presents a target, but he loses the handle trying to outweight this prone Dman. Uh, good showing of him getting off his center line, but this isn’t good puck protection here. He thinks he can skate this out. He’ll figure it out. He’s He’s very good at puck protection already. About as unforced of an error as you can get. And then there’s a whiff and a spill up high. It’s It’s bad luck. He gets the retrieval. Folks may recall from the Zanin video how his neutral zone routes confused me. Uh, not so here. Vanagi doesn’t skate in the way of the puck carrier. Instead, he turns out he turns outside to isolate the D while also allowing the puck carrier the center lane. That that’s exactly it. It fairly mundane, but not all prospects are doing this. He he plays the game with intentionality. He plays the game from inside out all over here. Uh when coaches say play the game the right way, it’s cliche a bit, but this is a component of playing the right way. It’s a shift where he doesn’t touch it and his team doesn’t ne necessarily get it. Uh but he shows that he has a good process and that’s what’s important when projecting players. Here we go. Offensive zone faceoff. Clean loss. Well, until Vanagi dirties up that clean loss, that’s a bad bounce on the point man to quickly turning into uh quickly turning that loss into possession. Very, very close. Uh play transitions back the other way. I think we get that he plays inside out hockey. So, we’ll fast forward through some of this, but there there’s been a lot of off the puck stuff in this game. And and I just wanted to highlight his game isn’t stuck to the wall. He’s inside out all the way through. Watch as he catches the hard bank. This is just intended to be tinkedked out to center. He makes a tough catch, gets it pointed to the interior, and really improves the condition of the puck. And not for nothing, he bodies the guy that’s trying to finish the hit on him and his exposed chest there. Positional discipline here. This will end up all the way down the ice. Uh but we’ll watch 23 support the breakout well. And then again, the right neutral zone route, right timing, right angle. Doesn’t seem like much, but as we see in the other videos, first round picks don’t necessarily get it. He’ll stop up here and draw two players to him. That improves the condition of the play. Puck is going to come around to the right point and and this thing is zipped around. I couldn’t have caught this puck if I had a pool skimmer. And the freshman stabs it, keeps his stride. A frames the defender, walls him off, gets into a little bit of hot soup, but he stays with it. Puck comes back to him. He tells Nine to take a hike before the play ends up dying with someone else. Nine, by the way, is 6’4, 215 lb, 22y old. So, not not nothing. Uh, so so that’s what you’re getting. Um, maybe not going to blow the roof off, but he’ll play. He’s got all the makings of a really strong depth player. And if the offense comes through, which would be fantastic, if the offense comes through, then you’re really cooking with a legit power forward.

The “Everybody Plays” series pokes fun at the infinitely optimistic upside of every draftee, when only 15-20% of each class makes it to the NHL. In changing the lens from “why they will play” to “how could this player one day improve an NHL roster”, we look more at where progression can or needs to take place instead of showing highlights where the player exclusively succeeds. In this episode, we look at Philadelphia Flyers (#letsgoflyers ) 2025 NHL Entry Draft (#2025nhldraft ) selection Shane Vansaghi from the Michigan State Spartans (#gogreen ).

Apologies for a bit of herky jerky-ness with the video, it was cobbled together over two months, as I try to balance life as a new dad…YouTube videos somehow have slipped down the priority list…