It’s no secret that the Philadelphia Flyers want to build off of their success this past season. And it could mean one of the defenseman that they developed from being a second-round draft pick to playing a solid role on this team, could be heading out the door.
As we comb through the Flyers roster, doing a little bit of a post-postseason audit of just where there could be room for improvements and what the front office could address this summer, a lot of people are landing on the blue line as a good opportunity. While it featured six defensemen who are certainly capable of playing in their roles and we didn’t have a big complaint about the makeup of the blue line and the players on it, it does feel like it has a limited ceiling.
Unless players like Jamie Drysdale and Cam York take a massive step forward offensively and become some monstrous two-way players that make opponents shudder at the sight of their nameplate, it feels solid but a little predictable and not having much more room to grow into. Travis Sanheim is a workhorse and has established himself as a top-pairing guy, Nick Seeler is dependable in his depth role, Rasmus Ristolainen has become a stable top-four defenseman, and then there’s the two younger guys.
The one player that did play the majority of his season on the bottom pair next to Seeler is Emil Andrae, and that’s where it feels like there is a possibility that the Flyers look for a big change.
Emil Andrae might no longer be in the Flyers’ future plans
Andrae is perfectly fine — just to get out ahead of everyone and to not make it seem like we despise the player or think he stinks. The 24-year-old blueliner has played just 107 NHL games and reached a career-high 61 this past season, so this might be getting ahead of ourselves — since the Swedish blueliner hasn’t even had a season yet where he didn’t spend some time in the AHL — but the writing is on the wall.
With defenseman ahead of him in the Flyers depth chart that already have the “undersized but mobile” label smacked on them, and the notion that this team only wants to get bigger on the back end; that alone feels like reason enough that we could see Andrae being traded this summer. He is a restricted free agent, so whatever new team he lands on will need to get him to a new deal, but it would be slightly surprising to see him re-up with Philadelphia and them run it back again next season.
Andrae himself recognized what he needs to work on this summer during exit interviews earlier this month, but will it even be enough for him to truly work his way up this Flyers depth chart?
The elephant in the room is that younger defensemen like Oliver Bonk and David Jiricek are going to be encroaching on his position this training camp. Jiricek has lost his waiver exemption status, so he is almost guaranteed to be on the Flyers 23-man roster next summer, and Bonk has impressed even more than Jiricek; so much so that he got himself into a playoff game ahead of Andrae for Game 4 against the Carolina Hurricanes.
If in the most dire situation, as the Flyers were trying to avoid a second-round sweep, head coach Rick Tocchet views Bonk as more of a dynamic option than Andrae, then that might just be saying everything we need to know.
Multiple trades could happen on the Flyers’ blue line this summer
The only NHL defensemen that we could say with 90 percent certainty that will be at Flyers training camp this fall are Sanheim, York, and Drysdale. There could be a big change, if the Flyers front office thinks that there needs to be one.
Ristolainen could obviously be on his way out, as well. With his name brought up as one of the top defensemen available at the trade deadline last season and the Flyers not getting their price, teams could revisit and with just one year remaining on his contract, Danny Briere could easily move on from the big Finnish rearguard. Nick Seeler feels unlikely to move, but his no-trade clause is expiring on July 1 and that opens up the possibility of him leaving Philadelphia too.
Even if the Flyers move from Ristolainen and get just future assets back since they don’t really have room to add much more at forward, then Andrae could still see his spot taken. Sanheim, York, Drysdale, and Seeler are your safe bets. Add in Bonk and Jiricek, and that could be the six regulars right away — if Tocchet wants to go with a younger look and believes that can get it done.
But you just know that there is going to be some Noah Juulsen-esque addition in free agency — Andrew Peeke and Jeremy Lauzon are the first two free agent defensemen that come to mind — that would provide security. And Tocchet would prefer those guys playing over Andrae, if he has already added some young risk-takers like Bonk and Jiricek to his roster.
Even with Tocchet liking to carry eight defensemen on his roster, Andrae can see his role shrivel up to nothing. The Flyers could get ahead of it and instead of panicking and trying to find a home for him this fall, or possibly losing him on the waiver wire after training camp, could just move him to a team that can use some more undersized-but-mobile punch to their blue line.
It’s just feeling like there will be a slight changeover on the Philadelphia back end and even if some veterans are moved, Andrae will not have a secure hold on his spot and could be sent elsewhere in the coming months.
