Jake O’Brien is one of the more interesting prospects in the 2025 NHL Entry Draft and the Philadelphia Flyers could select him at sixth overall this June. So, we decided to watch some tape.
In another edition of our Shift By Shift video series — where we compile every shift of a certain player’s game and we watch it on a live stream — over on the Broad Street Hockey YouTube channel, we decided to expand it to include not just players in the Flyers organization and their prospects, but potential prospects as well. To kick off this span of looking into prospects from the 2025 NHL Draft, we decided to pick O’Brien.
The Brantford Bulldogs center has been quickly rising up draft boards after consistently putting up some really solid numbers among OHL draft-eligible players. A whole lot of points and a whole lot of ability to create scoring chances for his teammates.
**Watch it now and dive into what we learned:**
Overall, O’Brien continues to be an interesting prospect. While there are attributes that some other top players have over him, he is just so slick in the offensive zone and will happily pass to a teammate in a better scoring position rather than shoot the puck.
In this game, we saw plenty of smart passes, decent individual scoring chances for O’Brien, and some puck skills — but it wasn’t all the good stuff. There was plenty of moments to talk about where he could improve as a player as he continues down his own development path. Especially considering what he would bring to the Flyers’ prospect pool — they don’t have anyone right now with as high an offensive ceiling as the Bulldogs center.
But, we will have to see. All we have is some game tape to comb through and waiting for the weeks until the 2025 NHL Entry Draft to see what happens. There will be many more Shift by Shifts focusing on the draft coming up. Stay tuned!