Training camps around the NHL are used for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s just a formality for some veterans to get on the ice in more organized fashion with their teammates, as they enter their 12th season in the league and feel the familiar rhythms of the season starting. Maybe it’s of use to some young player on the roster bubble trying to break through and get noticed. Perhaps it’s a hot prospect who is basically guaranteed a spot on the roster, but still need to show that they have room to grow to be one of the best players on this team.
There’s also a slightly overlooked use for NHL training camps. The freshly drafted prospect that gets just a little taste of what it’s like to be in the big leagues, years before he will actually compete for a spot.
Maksim Sokolovskii is in this position for the Philadelphia Flyers, as he somewhat surprisingly named to the training camp roster earlier. Just a few months ago, the 2026 first-round pick was spending time bashing some bodies in the OHL playoffs for the London Knights, and now he’s set to gear up and play some hockey in front of NHL coaches and with some very, very good players.
While Sokolovskii certainly has had an opportunity to show off a bit during development camp earlier this summer and the Flyers’ rookie camp last week, it’s a whole different environment to be thrust into training camp. The focus is not so much on the future and trying to get a grasp on how the prospect pool overall looks, as they run through various drills, but the actual NHLers are here trying to prepare for what should be an intense season.
It’s this mix that will pose an interesting situation for someone like Sokolovskii.
Stage is set for Sokolovskii to show something unique
It’s really an unknown. We don’t know how training camp will be formatted or organized, but we know that Sokolovskii and every inch of his 6-foot-7 frame will be there and will be the only member of the Flyers’ 2026 draft class present. The extremely raw prospect will be intermingling with the core of the Flyers and potential long-term teammates for the first time.
It’s an opportunity that has presented itself to the 18-year-old defender to maybe show a little bit of exactly what he’s all about.
We’ve all seen the highlights from camps over the summer of Sokolovskii showing off his stickhandling that looks too good for someone his size, his skating that is too good for someone his size, and his physicality that is perfectly appropriate for someone his size. But, it’s been largely in drill situations or, as we saw just this past weekend, during the Rookie Series up against some lowly competition in the prospect pool of the New York Rangers. Sure, it shows off some individual skills that Sokolovskii has but in a competitive game situation, it’s an entirely different experience.
Now, we get to see how the freshly drafted defenseman can stack up against other young defenders and even someone like Travis Sanheim to serve as a gold standard — even if they will be wildly different players physicality-wise if Sokolovskii makes the NHL.
It’s not a perfect exercise but we can possibly use the couple days of training camp that Sokolovskii will be there, to maybe see where he realistically is in the depth chart if he continues his development. Hunter McDonald, Helge Grans, and Ty Murchison all running through drills and practices with him should at least be a benchmark. Will he look like someone who will grow into one of those on-the-bubble defensemen, or be something better? Does he have tools that, once he is a couple years older, put him above that tier of blueliner fairly easily?
We won’t find out a clear answer, but it will at least be a sample of something beyond what we got of him next to a whole swath of similarly aged defenseman prospects.
There is a world where he performs fairly well and before he inevitably gets sent back to London, could get into an actual NHL preseason game in some bottom-pairing role, just to crank the difficult up a couple notches and see if he sinks or swims — or just how far he goes in either direction.
It’s a unique opportunity for such a raw prospect. Typically we see these types of players get drafted and then head back to their league overseas and never hear from them again until development camp opens up the following year. But Sokolovskii is here and has been hanging around Philadelphia for weeks now and is being given this incredible chance to be at an actual NHL training camp before he even really pops off as a junior player.
The London Knights’ regular season opens up this Friday, so Sokolovskii could miss at least the first game or two for his Flyers duties. We don’t expect him to be around for very long, as he will surely be part of the first cuts, but he will get looks and a bigger stage with more attention on him to see what he’s really about.
He’s an exciting talent and the very good has come with the not-so-great during his camp experience so far with the Flyers. Now, it’s a big test and a bigger opportunity.
