ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. — The Flyers made Porter Martone their 2025 NHL draft headliner, selecting him at No. 6 overall Friday night.
The 18-year-old is the captain of the OHL’s Brampton Steelheads. He was arguably the top winger in this draft.
“He’s a pretty complete package,” Dan Marr, the vice president of NHL Central Scouting, said June 11 in a phone interview with NBC Sports Philadelphia. “And I don’t think he gets recognized as much for his skills and smarts as what he brings.”
The 6-foot-3, 204-pounder has a slew of attributes that teams covet. He’s a dogged competitor, he forces turnovers and protects the puck along the boards, he sees the ice and he scores from the areas in which you need offense.
“He’s a good physical package and he can play that power forward game, but I think the tendency there might be that [people] don’t really recognize the skill set that he has,” Marr said. “Like, he’s a very offensively skilled player. He has got the offensive instincts, but he has got really good hands and good puck skills.”
Martone recorded 98 points (37 goals, 61 assists) and a plus-19 rating in 57 regular-season games for the 2024-25 Steelheads. He had seven games of four or more points; Michael Misa, the second overall pick who also played in the OHL, had eight such games. Martone added four goals and five assists in six playoff games.
“He’s a really good player already, he’s pretty close to being ready,” Flyers general manager Danny Briere said Friday night from the team’s draft headquarters at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino. “I don’t know that it’s going to be the right thing to play him [in the NHL] this year, in the upcoming season, but we’ll see.
“If there’s one thing I would say is, in this draft and in the first round, he’s pretty close to being the most ready out of that group. To be able to select him at No. 6 for us was, I wouldn’t say a steal, but we had him higher on our board with the talent.”
Martone was considered the third-best player in the draft by EliteProspects.com. TSN’s Craig Button had him at No. 4, while NHL Central Scouting had him as the sixth-ranked North American skater.
“If I do want to make the jump to the NHL, I do need to put on some more weight in the gym and just continue to work,” Martone said Friday night in a Zoom interview. “I’m going every day to try to get better. I’m going to enjoy this right now and then get back to work. It’s kind of taking it step by step at a time. I do want to go into training camp next year and try to crack the lineup. I think if I have a big summer, I’m able to do that.”
Martone joined NHLers at the 2025 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, playing two games for Team Canada, which had Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim and Tyson Foerster.
“They were great to me,” Martone said. “All three of those guys were tremendous to me. And one thing I noticed over there was how much they love being a Flyer and how much they take pride in being a Flyer.”
In their system, the Flyers needed some help at right winger. Martone now gives them a big boost. Down the road, the Flyers’ right side will feature a pair of top-seven picks in Martone and Matvei Michkov.
Later in the first round Friday night, the Flyers traded pick Nos. 22 and 31 to the Penguins and drafted center Jack Nesbitt at No. 12.
“I was trying to get some sleep last night, it wasn’t easy,” Briere said. “I tried to sleep this afternoon and I didn’t, I wasn’t able to get a minute of sleep. If I would have known those are the two guys we’d end up with, I would have slept a lot better last night and this afternoon.”