Flyers prospects play ultimate frisbee on ice, draw NHL attention

Philadelphia Flyers prospects turned a development-camp skate at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees, N.J., into a hybrid ultimate frisbee game, a light summer detour inside a week built to showcase the club’s pipeline. The 2026 camp ran from June 29 to July 3, with 41 players expected, all six of the Flyers’ 2026 NHL Draft picks scheduled to attend, free public on-ice sessions, daily media availability, a July 1 autograph session at The Franklin Institute from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m., a July 2 scrimmage at 6 p.m. and a July 3 three-on-three tournament at 10 a.m.

The offbeat drill made sense because the sports overlap is real. Ultimate is built on spacing, quick decisions, hand-eye coordination and non-contact movement, and USA Ultimate describes the game as one that showcases athleticism, teamwork and Spirit of the Game. The governing body’s 2024-26 strategic plan centers youth development, grassroots growth, semi-pro leagues, diversity and marketing, while Ultiworld has argued that copying the pacing and polish of bigger sports accounts can help ultimate reach mainstream viewers.

Philadelphia has already shown how a development camp can become a summer event. In 2025, fans packed the Flyers Training Center for the finale, where Team Briere rallied from a 3-0 deficit to beat Team Jones 4-3 in overtime; Alex Bump and Jack Nesbitt scored twice each, and Jack Berglund, Santeri Sulku and Matteo Giampa also scored. That same camp gave Porter Martone, the Flyers’ sixth overall pick in the 2025 NHL Draft, another shareable moment when he reunited on the ice with Wayne Simmonds, the former Flyer who once posed for a photo with him as a child in Voorhees.

This year’s camp kept the public-facing formula intact under player development director Riley Armstrong, with Lehigh Valley Phantoms coaches helping run the sessions. For ultimate, the clip was more than a gag: it put a disc in front of a hockey audience that already responds to movement, timing and creativity, the same ingredients that make the sport easier to recognize when a bigger league borrows its playbook for a day.