Can (or Should) the Flyers Pick a High School QB in the 2025 NHL Draft?

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The Philadelphia Flyers are one of a few teams towards the bottom of the NHL looking to add talent in any way they can. One NHL insider just connected them to a... high school quarterback?

Mason West, one of the hottest prospects in the 2025 draft class right now, is a 6-foot-6 right wing who most recently played for the Fargo Force of the USHL, scoring a goal, eight assists, and nine points in 10 games last season.

Last season, as well as in the two seasons prior, the 17-year-old played for his local high school, Edina High, in Minnesota. But there's a catch: he's also a three-star quarterback who's passed for 65 touchdowns and 5,217 yards in the last two seasons.

West, according to 247 Sports, has visited with the University of Illinois and has drawn interest from fairly decent football schools like Marshall and the University of California.

That all said, the hulking winger is focused on hockey and will dedicate his efforts to the rink after his last seasons at the helm of Edina's offense on the gridiron.

According to NHL insider Elliotte Friedman, teams are going to be playing the game of chicken with West in the draft, seeing which of their peers will bite and select the polarizing dual-sport athlete first.

The Flyers, with multiple first- and second-round picks, could very well be one of those teams.

"He's kind of got his own list on each team's draft board. The way it was explained to me was, every time a team gets a pick from the second round on, he'll be part of the conversation," Friedman said of West on his latest episode of the "32 Thoughts" podcast. "Is now the time we take him? He's really raw, but he's big, he's obviously a great athlete, and he can score. He scores goals, and he plays on the power play, too.

"Someone told me that he was playing point on the power play because he can really shoot the puck. Because you're always looking for big, mobile guys, everyone's watching him. There's so little eye test against really good players. He briefly played in the USHL, he's planning on going there, I guess, for the back half of next year, that he's the biggest wildcard in the draft. Because he could go boom. It really could turn out to be a great pick."

Flyers 2025 NHL Draft Big Board: Can Philly Afford to Pass On Top Centers? With the NHL Scouting Combine now in the rearview mirror, the Philadelphia Flyers have just over two weeks to make final preparations for the 2025 NHL Draft.

And that's where the Flyers come in. The Flyers have the 22nd, 31st or 32nd, 36th, 40th, 45th, and 48th picks in the first two rounds of the 2025 draft, excluding the No. 6 pick that will be used on a better and more projectable prospect.

"What a couple teams told me is, every time your pick comes up, you're going to be sitting there saying, 'If we don't take him now, is somebody else going to jump in there and do it? Are we going to lose our opporunity?'" Friedman added. "So that's going to be the question. When is some team going to say, 'We have to do this now because we won't get another opportunity to do it later?'

"The same team told me that they wonder about those teams with multiple first-rounders. A team like Nashville, or a team like Philadelphia, do they look at it and say 'Look, we've got multiple first rounders, we're just going to do it,' (...) I think teams are trying to figure out who's really serious about this guy, and where do we take this player? It's going to be fascinating. I was told [West is] the biggest wildcard of the draft."

West is currently ranked as high as 46th and as low as 98th based on rankings compiled by EliteProspects, so there's a fairly high chance he'll be available to the Flyers at the top of the second round later this month.

Flyers Mock Draft 3.0: A Bold Trade and the NHL Scouting Combine The

Philadelphia Flyers, as expected, were one of the busiest teams at the NHL Scouting Combine, giving some clues of their intentions leading up to the 2025 NHL Draft later this month.

But, as Friedman said, the scouts and GMs are going to be playing the game of chicken. Will the Flyers be one of the teams willing to pull the trigger on West late in the first, even with the plethora of right wingers in the system?

His size and athleticism are two things the Flyers would love to add to their ranks, but is that worth passing up on a top goalie or defenseman they so desperately need? It's a question the Flyers have two weeks to answer for themselves.