For the Flyers’ defenders in particular, this was a pretty notably up and down season. There were some big struggles that they faced along the way, but the late-season adjustments to their structure paid dividends in a big way, bringing the level of impact up to such a degree that the team was able to hit a new level, and indeed, crystalize their ultimate push into the postseason.
It was an effective team effort, but playing a particularly significant role in all of this was Cam York, as he continued to grow his game in his third full season in the NHL. With some major flash brought along the way, this season was another one of, simply, Cam York doing what he does.
| Games played | Goals | Assists | Points | PIM | Shots On Goal | Shooting Percentage | Average TOI |
| 74 | 4 | 22 | 26 | 28 | 89 | 4.5 | 22:32 |
Dipping first into the counting stats, we have the picture painted of a good but not stellar season for York. Despite a couple of minor injury situations throughout the regular season, he remained largely quite durable, and it was a good thing, because he was used pretty significantly on a game over game basis. And the production in all of that was respectable, if a little modest — his 26 points was four off of his career high (when he played a full season two years ago), and he was able to contribute a nice bit of that (eight points) on the power play.
All the same, though, we can’t help but feel that there was a bit of offense left on the table for him, as his shooting habit remained quite low, averaging just a hair over one shot on goal per game across the season.
| (5v5) Goals For % | Expected Goals For % | Corsi For % | High Danger Attempts For % | PDO |
| 51.46 | 48.88 | 46.37 | 51.67 | 1.007 |
Some of that bears out, as well, in the underlying numbers. While the Flyers were able to do well to suppress scoring while York was on the ice — coming in just a tick over breakeven in the scoring differential — but the share of shot attempts and Expected Goals went the other way on them. And even on a team that did not drive play overly well this season, those averages while York was on the ice were around a percentage point or two below the team average — not leaving them in horrendous shape during his minutes by any stretch of the imagination, and certainly not terrible when we take the difficult of the matchups he faced into account, but still, there were more opportunities given to the opponents to work with than we might have liked, and even if the Flyers were able to prevent those chances from going in the net at a high rate, there’s some room to grow in terms of getting more positive possession in York’s minutes, going forward.
| (5v5) Points Per 60 | Primary Points Per 60 | Shots On Goal Per 60 | Shot Attempts Per 60 | Expected Goals Per 60 |
| .76 | .42 | 2.51 | 6.5 | 0.2 |
There’s some room for improvement here if they’re able to kill a few more plays, to be sure, but equally some headway in those differentials can be made, some more possession established, if York is able to drive a bit more in the way of individual offense. As it stands, his impacts are more or less middling, but the sense is that for a player who is as effective of a puck mover as he is, and who has a shot that has the power to get through traffic from distance as well as the deception to beat goaltenders handily enough when the moment opens up for it, there is more scoring that he can contribute if he just taps into that toolkit more consistently. Developing a well-rounded game is a long process, and we’ve seen him clean up a nice bit on the defensive side, but now we wonder how long it will be before the focus shifts to see how much more he can do as a distributor, without coming at the expense of the rest of his game.
Did York live up to expectations?
Over these last few seasons, York has been settling nicely into his role at the top of the Flyers’ defense, and this past season saw him continue to largely find success in that big-minutes role. His defensive game has continued to develop well, and even though he doesn’t bring that more traditional booming physical presence, his mobility, his ability to kill plays on the rush, and his work with his stick have made him something of an underrated sound defender. He’s not a player who brings a completely mistake-free game — and there have been some big ones along the way — and there’s some room to improve in those underlying numbers, but the broadest of strokes is that the Flyers have tended to be better off when York is on the ice, and he delivered more of that work over this last season, meeting at least the barest threshold of expectation.
Running alongside this, though, is the fact that there has been a hope — if not an expectation — that York’s offense would begin to pop for him at some point, and that just hasn’t really panned out. Some of this comes down to usage — the Flyers are clearly resistant to giving him full charge of the job of running the top power play unit, though there might well be some untapped potential for him there — but some of it comes through his own approach to his game, and the limited number of individual chances he’s been creating.
That said, while York didn’t produce the highest overall volume of offense throughout this season, he did step up with probably the team’s biggest goal of the season, and that certainly counts for something.
What can we expect from York next season?
The landscape of the Flyers’ defense group broadly is changing — the addition of Simon Benoit shifts things a bit, we’ll likely have at least one prospect graduating up from the Phantoms, and then there’s the near-constant rumblings about a trade to ship out Rasmus Ristolainen before the start of the season — but even with all of the other pieces in flux, we can still comfortably assume that York’s role within all of that will remain the same. He’s proved himself to be a serviceable defender within the top-4, and equally shown a flexibility where he can hold his own playing alongside a number of different partners, and that’s valuable.
We’d like to see some better shot impacts pulled together — the bending without breaking clearly worked well enough while York was on the ice this past season, but the threat of regression still looms large — but there’s clearly still a lot working well for him in terms of how he’s been able to support a suppression of dangerous chances, and largely keeping the team out of danger in his minutes. There’s always more that he can continue to clean up in terms of decision making, but his game has been trending well in the right direction, and his abilities as a puck mover will be particularly valuable as the team looks to transition towards one that can generate more offense on a collective level. There’s room aplenty for York to continue to grow his game, and it will make him one to watch as we hit this next new season.
How do we grade York’s 2025-26 season?
And that more or less captures the essence of this past season for York — he performed well in his given role but left some opportunities for further growth on the table. Still, he was an effective piece within what became a very effective defensive group by the end of the season, and there’s a lot of credit due for what he was able to do within that situation. He’s finding a role nicely within this team, and that’s been a treat to watch unfold.
Grade: B
