No One Is Too Good for the AHL. Not Even Porter Martone.

Send Porter Martone to Lehigh Valley. Not for 40 games. For two or three weeks.

Let him play 20 minutes a night, run the top power play and start shooting the puck again. Then bring him back. That isn’t a punishment. It’s development, and it’s the same thing the Flyers are already doing with almost every other young forward in the organization.

There’s a narrative going around that you can’t send him down because it would piss off your best prospect. I don’t buy it. No one is too good for the AHL.

Here’s what’s going on

Martone looks like a shell of the player who showed up last spring.

He came straight from Michigan State, where he put up 25 goals and 50 points in 35 games. He had 10 points in nine regular-season games and five more in 10 playoff games. He played 17 minutes a night and was firing the puck from everywhere. Nine games into this season, it’s a different player.

Per The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn, Martone’s shot rate last season was third in the NHL. This season he’s 320th of 358 forwards. His only goal came on the power play. He has zero points at 5-on-5.

The ice time tells the rest. He’s 11th among Flyers forwards in shifts per game. He played 11:31 against Seattle and 12:29 in Detroit. That’s third-line usage for a player everyone treats as untouchable, on a team that’s winless through nine games and scoring 1.22 goals a night.

When did the AHL become good enough for only some players?

Why is the AHL good for Alex Bump, Jett Luchanko and Cole Knuble, but bad for Martone? The answer you’ll hear is that those guys need the minutes to develop. So does Martone.

Knuble and Luchanko went to Lehigh Valley at final cuts. Bump got loaned down after the Michael Bunting signing, and Danny Briere explained that one himself. Bump had been dropped to the fourth line, and Briere wanted him playing top-six minutes every night in Lehigh Valley. That’s the whole argument. It’s just being applied to one player and not the other.

It’s working, too. Bump has scored in all three of his Phantoms games, with 11 shots on goal.

This isn’t a rules problem either. Martone was drafted out of the OHL, and CHL-drafted players can play in the AHL once they turn 20 by Dec. 31. He turns 20 on Oct. 26. He’s on his entry-level deal and waiver-exempt, same as Bump. The Flyers could send him down tomorrow and call him back the day after.

I get why the Flyers never went there with Matvei Michkov. His situation came with a risk Martone’s doesn’t. With Martone, the only thing stopping it is the idea that the AHL is beneath him.

What I’m seeing: the AHL has never been too good for anyone

Some of the best players in the league got NHL time, struggled, went down and came back better.

Caufield is the closest comp. College star, great debut, a playoff run, Calder favorite, then a slow start the next fall. Montreal sent him down to get his confidence back and he was gone 17 days. One caveat: his real breakout came once his minutes went up. Keep that in mind for the plan below.

Zegras is on the Flyers right now. He’s living proof it works.

Others just dominated the AHL on the way up. Nikita Kucherov had 24 points in 17 games in Syracuse before Tampa called him up. William Nylander came up through the Marlies. The AHL wasn’t beneath either of them, and I’d bet it paid dividends.

The GM and the coach have both lived this

Danny Briere went through it himself. He split his first four pro seasons between Phoenix and AHL Springfield and won AHL rookie of the year with 92 points in 68 games. Later, as a Flyer, he played a three-game conditioning stint with the Phantoms in January 2009 on his way back from a groin injury. One goal, four assists. If the Flyers need to call it a conditioning stint, call it that.

Rick Tocchet has made this exact move. In 2017 his Coyotes sent Dylan Strome, the third overall pick, to Tucson after two games. His explanation: “I don’t even care where he’s been picked.” Strome put up 26 points in 15 games and was back in the NHL seven weeks later.

And if he doesn’t want to go?

Then you’ve learned something. Jonathan Drouin is the cautionary tale.

Drouin went third overall in 2013. In January 2016, Tampa sent him to Syracuse after using him on the fourth line. He didn’t report to a game and was suspended without pay. He eventually came back and was great in that spring’s playoffs. But he never became what a third overall pick is supposed to be. His career high is 56 points. He has 398 points in 671 games. This summer the Blues bought out the last year of his deal, and he was still unsigned in August.

I’m not saying one bad January decided his whole career. But how a player handles a demotion tells you a lot about him as a player and as a person. If a kid refuses to report, that tells you what you’re likely to get from him. Nobody should be too good for the AHL.

I don’t think Martone is that guy. Everything we’ve seen says the opposite. He captained Canada at world juniors. After two games this season, he said “I expect a lot more from myself.” That’s a player who goes to Allentown, puts up points and comes back mad in the right way.

What I’d like to see

The Flyers are scoring 1.22 goals a game, so pulling a scorer out of the lineup looks backwards. But Martone has one goal. Thirteen minutes a night on a winless team isn’t protecting him. Here’s how I’d do it.

1. Send him down for two to three weeks. Six to eight games, not 40.
2. Top line, top power play, 20 minutes a night. When Minnesota sent Marco Rossi down, he led AHL forwards in ice time at 23:17 a night. That’s the point.
3. Get him shooting again, and measure it. When he’s back around five shot attempts a game, he’s ready.
4. Tell him what it is, and say it publicly. It’s a reset, not a demotion.
5. When he comes back, play him. Top six, 16 to 18 minutes. Caufield didn’t take off until his minutes went up. Sending Martone down and bringing him back to 13 minutes a night fixes nothing.

Let him go be the best player on the ice somewhere. Then bring that player back.

Let me know what you think @BroadStBreakout.

Still all in on Martone? So am I. The Porter 94 tee is in the shop.

Sources and data notes

• Martone stats, ice time, shot attempts and on-ice shot share: Hockey-Reference, through Oct. 15, 2026.
• Shot rate rank (Dom Luszczyszyn, The Athletic), via Broad Street Hockey.
• Shifts per game: The Hockey News. Bump’s AHL start: The Hockey News. Goals per game: NBC Sports Philadelphia.
• Briere on Bump: The Inquirer. Training camp cuts: NBC Sports Philadelphia.
• AHL eligibility rule: Russian Machine Never Breaks.
• Caufield: Daily Faceoff. Rantanen: NHL.com. Connor: Winnipeg Jets. Rossi: The Hockey News. Forsberg: Wikipedia. Zegras: San Diego Gulls, The Hockey News. Strome and Tocchet: Arizona Sports. Kucherov: The Hockey Writers.
• Briere’s AHL career and 2009 conditioning stint: AHL, The Globe and Mail.
• Drouin: NHL.com, Daily Faceoff, The Hockey News.
• Martone quote: NBC Sports Philadelphia.