After coming over to Lehigh Valley for the end of the Phantoms season on an amateur tryout, there were some hopes that Philadelphia Flyers prospect Alex Ciernik would sign his entry level contract and report back to the AHL next season. Well, it looks like Ciernik is instead taking his talents over to Finland, to Liiga’s Lahden Pelicans.
The Slovakia-born winger has spent parts of the last three years in the Swedish HockeyAllsvenskan, where he’s been fairly injury-riddled since his draft year. Battling a concussion that he sustained early in 2023, it took a bit for Ciernik to get settled in the HockeyAllsvenskan, and it’s fair to wonder if we’ve really scratched the surface of the player that he is.
So far, though, Ciernik has still been a productive player that’s shown flashes of becoming a late-round steal. With 14 points in 26 games in 2023-24, and then 23 points in 46 HockeyAllsvenskan games this season, Ciernik has really flashed some tools in a league of men. For the grand plan to work, contending teams really need mid-to-late round picks to occasionally hit in the way that Ciernik has the potential to, and the Flyers are no different.
What’s really curious about this move is Ciernik’s decision to move from the Swedish hockey leagues to Finland’s Liiga. Liiga, by comparison to the HockeyAllsvenskan and arguably the SHL, is a better men’s league overseas. Ciernik might just want a change of pace, or this might be the Flyers challenging him into the next stage of his development. With the Flyers owning Ciernik’s rights for the next two seasons, there’s not that much more runway left before Ciernik becomes a free agent, but it’s not a concern quite yet.
For some, it might raise some eyebrows and questions that Ciernik isn’t just staying in North America. The head coach of the Lahden Pelicans, though? Former Flyer and former European scout/development coach Sami Kapanen. Through Kapanen, the Flyers will have a ton of control over his development, as it’s not hard to imagine the Flyers still trusting Kapanen a whole lot with developing Ciernik in the right way. It’ll be interesting to see if Kapanen getting trusted with more overseas Flyers prospects on his team becomes a trend, or if this is merely Ciernik-specific.
Team specific, the Pelicans finished second to last in the entire Liiga last season, prompting a coaching change to Kapanen in mid February. We’re not the most versed on the landscape of the Finnish Liiga, but we have to imagine there’s lots of change that’s happened with the Pelicans over the course of the year. Hopefully, Kapanen will put Ciernik in a really high-minutes role on a team that tries to define its new identity, and then Ciernik will come over to North America in a year or two.
