Flyers prospects Denver Barkey and Oliver Bonk following a shared path again

OAKVILLE, Ont. — When Rob Simpson and the London Knights drafted Denver Barkey and Oliver Bonk with their first- and second-round picks in the 2021 OHL draft, they hadn’t actually seen them play much — hardly at all, really.

The season prior, in what should have been their final year of minor hockey at 15, it was the heart of the pandemic and their leagues (both Barkey’s GTHL and Bonk’s HEO) never even got started.

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But Simpson, the Knight’s assistant general manger, and the rest of the team’s brass knew one thing about each: that Barkey, whom they’d pick first at No. 16, was a worker, and that Bonk, whom they’d draft 10 slots later, was incredibly smart.

A little over two years later, the Flyers also drafted them together, this time picking Bonk first (No. 22) and Barkey later (No. 95), for the same reasons. A few months after that, they’re both among the 30 players invited to Canada’s selection camp for the world juniors on the back of those same tools, too. In between, neither were invited to Hockey Canada’s summer meetings (which they hosted in place of a summer camp).

Barkey is the camp’s third-youngest forward. None of the 15 players selected in front of him in that OHL draft were invited to this year’s selection camp. His 35 points in 26 games coming in lead the Knights.

Bonk is one of only two 2005-born defencemen who got the invite. His 26 points in 26 games to start the year in London are second among the OHL’s under-19 defencemen.

And though they’re both just 18 vying to make a team that traditionally fills up with 19-year-olds, they both belong.

Standing inside the Sixteen Mile Sports Complex after his second skate of selection camp, Barkey is proud of himself for making it here.

When he returned from Philadelphia to London to start his post-draft season, making the Canadian world junior team, or even getting an invite, wasn’t even on his mind.

“Coming into the year, I didn’t think there was much of a chance, not being in the summer meetings,” he said. “When I got invited, it’s an accomplishment in itself. You’re a top-16 forward in Canada for ’04s and ’05s and even an ’06 (Macklin Celebrini). That’s an achievement. But there’s also a lot more to do to make the team.”

The work, he’s used to. At 5-foot-9 and a listed weight of 154 pounds, he’s the lightest player in Canada’s camp. That’s been true on every team he has played on.

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He had to work to make the Knights.

Though most OHL teams roster their 16-year-old first-round picks immediately, the Knights often send theirs to player Junior A or Junior B in their rookie season. Barkey worked so that he wasn’t sent down.

“When I was 16, to stay in the lineup I had to outwork all of the other bigger guys I had to win a spot from,” Barkey said. “Ever since I was 16, my big thing has been compete, and work ethic, and paying attention, just little things like that.”

He had to work “just to make the team” when he made his first Team Canada at the Hlinka Gretzky Cup that year, too.

“Being a smaller guy, you have to outwork the bigger guys to get the puck and put in more work to stealing and lifting pucks because you’re not as strong or heavy as them. That helped me, even at Hlinka, just to make the team. And it helps me here, knowing what I have to do and how I need to outwork these guys I’m competing with a job for.”

At that Hlinka, under current world junior head coach Alan Letang (who was an assistant coach on that Hlinka team), he finished the tournament as the player of the game in the gold medal game.

“It’s his IQ, his compete,” Letang said of Barkey. “You play him in London and he’s passionate about winning, he does a lot of the little things that it takes to win. (When) I had him at the Hlinka in Red Deer, he came in kind of as that extra forward, no one really knew anything about him, and he bought into a role and competed every play. He competed on the fourth line and ended up being one of our best penalty killers. So we see him as a Swiss Army knife. And you need some of those guys.”

If he’s going to make Team Canada’s world junior roster, it might be that penalty-killing ability that tips the scale. He, together with fellow camp invitee Easton Cowan, has formed half of the best PK duo in junior hockey this season. His three short-handed goals coming in are tied for most in the OHL.

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On a phone call with The Athletic shortly before camp started, Simpson said it feels at times like the Knights aren’t even down a man when Barkey and Cowan are out there short-handed.

“You’re killing the penalty but they’re also a threat out there where they can get the puck, find time and space for each other, use their feet, and then they kind of have that brain click going on where they know where each other is and what they’re thinking,” Simpson said. “It’s definitely an advantage when you have two players like that who have the hockey sense and the compete to play on the penalty kill but then have the poise and the understanding of how to create some offence on it into open ice.”

Barkey wasn’t a penalty killer until he and Cowan were placed together midway through their draft year and found immediate chemistry. Now it’s a part of his identity.

“Our work ethic, mixed with our IQ and being able to read plays and anticipate off of each other, that has led to offensive success and it helps us shut down plays,” he said of his special teams chemistry with Cowan, whom he developed an immediate bond with when they met at 16 with the Knights. “We complement each other really well, but it’s the combination of our IQ and our work ethic that has helped us have offensive and defensive success.”

The competitiveness, he says, comes from his grandfather, Randy Legge, who played more than a decade of pro hockey and made it as far as 12 NHL games with the Rangers as a “bruising, tough defenceman” (a little of it might have rubbed off from Darcy Tucker, his minor hockey coach with the Toronto Titans, too).

Legge died due to complications from fluid build-up in his lungs just days before camp, but Barkey was able to proudly tell him that he’d been invited to selection camp in his goodbye.

“Being a smaller player, you’ve got to have a bit of bite so I try to put a bit of (Legge) into me,” he said.

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Both of his parents were also athletes, with his mom, Devin (who now works at a long-term care home), running track into university, and his dad, Sean (who is now a business development manager), playing Junior B hockey.

“He always had a desire to get the puck, whether it’s from his routes to passing lanes or from dogging the puck, trying to strip pucks, and being hard on the forecheck,” said Simpson. “His ability to lift sticks and strip, sometimes he’ll make some plays where maybe there’s a turnover because he’s making so many plays in a game but he has that knack where he can just stop on a dime and you can’t feel like he’s going to give up on the play because a lot of times he’ll strip you back and get back on the offensive. It’s a big thing in the game now, takeaways and being able to strip pucks, and it’s something that he’s very, very good at.”

Barkey fell in love with hockey after his dad took him to a public skate at the Magna Centre in nearby Newmarket, Ont., when he was 2 years old and he kept asking to come back. He has worked to add weight with Gary Roberts in nearby Aurora. The Sixteen Mile Centre, where camp is being held, is a familiar rink, as the OMHA championships were held here during most of his minor hockey days. A “good amount” of his family are going to make the hour-long drive in from Newmarket to watch him in the camp’s two scrimmages against a team of collegiate USports all-stars before cuts are made.

To get here, Simpson said Barkey’s development has continued to take off following a stellar performance on London’s top line in last year’s OHL playoffs (alongside Cowan, a Toronto Maple Leafs first-rounder, and Seattle Kraken prospect Ryan Winterton) when he posted 24 points in 20 games.

“I think his edges and his agility laterally have really taken another big step this year. I mean, they were already good but he has done more work on it in the summer and now he’s got this little juke move he can do from forehand to backhand in the neutral zone and then use his lateral agility to get away from guys,” Simpson said. “His skating and his separation speed and east-west agility (have) really taken another step. And then that kind of goes hand-in-hand with his playmaking and his ability to get pucks.”

If he’s going to make Team Canada, Simpson believes he’ll have to do two things.

Work off the ice.

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“He’s very serious about his game and serious in everything he does,” Simpson said. “And he can have fun with the guys in the locker room but he has that professional mindset where he’s focused and he wants to improve and he’s always looking at ways that he can improve his game. He’s a really refreshing guy to have who kind of gets how to work on his game.”

And then work on it. That’s the Barkey way.

“The nice thing with Denver is you can put him in any role really that you want,” Simpson said. “Do you want him to play in a skill, top-six role? You can play him with other talented players and he’s got the speed and the hockey sense and the poise that you want. You want him to play in the bottom six? He’s got that too … It’s ‘you want me to play top-line wing? I can do that. You want me to play fourth-line wing and check and kill penalties? I can do that.'”

When Bonk talks about Barkey, he talks about a “hound.”

“He can play anywhere in the lineup. He can play first line, he can play fourth line, he can go get the puck on the forecheck, he can make any play, he’s a really good passer and shooter, he’s just an all-around really good player,” Bonk said.

When Barkey talks about Bonk, he talks about a player who is “good at everything.”

“There’s not something he can’t do,” Barkey said of his teammate with London, and Team Canada, and maybe someday the Flyers. “He’s smart, that’s the biggest thing with him is his IQ and his ability to shut down plays and make nice break-out passes and offensive passes. He’s a really smart, good first-pass defenceman who can really lock it down with a good stick. Guys in our league really struggle with him because he’s just always all over you and has a stick in the way.”

It hasn’t always been that way for Bonk, though.

“He’s a player when he was younger that sometimes I think you can misjudge a little bit because he’s got exceptional hockey sense and what he needed to work on was putting the body and the feet to add to the product so that that hockey sense could play out more and he could use it more on the ice,” Simpson said. “He has grown (now 6-foot-2 and 179 pounds) and turned into a man, now the skills and the athletic ability are coming together which, when you combine that with the hockey sense that he has, it just makes the game a lot easier for him out there because he can read everything before most players and now he’s able to move some pucks with his feet and get out of danger.

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That’s really what has brought his game to another level.”

When Bonk talks about his journey from second-round OHL draft pick who’d lost his 15-year-old season, played his 16-year-old season in Junior B, and then played his first full OHL year in his NHL Draft year only to become a first-round pick, he chuckles.

“(My game) has come really far. I came into the OHL and I had pretty bad boots, my boots were pretty off,” he said after Sunday’s practice, shaking his head. “I was still a smart player but I think my skills needed to develop. Then I played that one year in Junior B (where he was named top rookie defenceman in the GOJHL) and that helped me a lot, I played a lot of minutes, and then last year I got put into a position to succeed. I got trusted by the coaches to play a lot of minutes, and it was big.”

What are the Flyers getting in Oliver Bonk? I went to London to watch a game with his dad, Radek, to learn morehttps://t.co/qjfQuEEpci

— Sarah Jean Maher (@sarahjeanmaher) June 29, 2023

If he’s going to make Team Canada, he knows it’ll be in a different role than the power-play, point-per-game player he is in London, too. But like Barkey, he has had to be that player before.

“We had meetings with the coaches and they gave me stuff that they needed to see from me and what my role needs to be, so I just need to do that and it should be pretty good,” he said. “It needs to be more lockdown defence. With all of these skilled defencemen here, I’m definitely not the most offensive guy here. So it’s going to be more defence, moving pucks, and playing a solid game.”

If either or both of Bonk and Barkey are to make the team, it won’t be the first time they’ve played the waiting game together.

It was Bonk who texted Barkey after Day 1 of the NHL Draft with an excited message.

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“I think Philly’s going to take you tomorrow, I’ve talked to them a little bit and I’ve got a good feeling,” it read.

“Ah, we’ll see, we’ll see,” Barkey remembers thinking, before being greeted by him in the halls of Bridgestone Arena the following day with a big smile on his face and an “I told you so” joke.

Now, they’ve got to wait and see once more.

When it’s over, they hope to share a similar laugh — preferably with a gold medal around their necks.

(Top photo of Oliver Bonk and Denver Barkey: Dennis Pajot / Getty Images)

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