Flyers prospect season review: Emil Andrae made the most of a challenging season

This spring brought to a close Emil Andrae\'s third season (and second more or less full season) with the Phantoms, and it was undeniably a bit of a strange one. With 25 games played down with the Phantoms through the regular season, played across three stints, between which he was pulled up to play with the Flyers, Andrae had to work not just at continuing to build his game at the AHL level, but to work against the whiplash of being bounced between levels and teams which were largely operating independently of each other (but more on that later).

It all made for a season in which momentum was a bit hard to come by, but one which also saw Andrae make some positive strides, as he continued to tinker with his game, shoring up some works in progress, and getting himself more ready for when his name was called again, and he was thrown back into NHL minutes.

Games played Goals Assists Points PIM Shots on goal Shooting percentage 25 3 13 16 21 44 6.8

Diving first into the basic stats, we see that Andrae, even in his limited number of games spent down with the Phantoms this season, was able to take a bit of a step forward as far as his production is concerned. Through his 61 games played across the 2023-24 season, Andrae put up a respectable five goals and 32 points, a solid enough total on one of the lowest scoring teams in the league, but this past season, he increased his output to three goals and 16 points over 25 games (a pace which would have had him score seven goals and 39 points over the same length of time). It\'s not as large of a leap forward as we might have hoped to see, but for a player who spent much of this season yo-yoed between the AHL and NHL levels, it feels like a positive, still, to see some level of growth, and a nod to his confidence still being well intact.

Games Tracked Corsi-For % Scoring Chances-For % High Danger Chances-For % Primary Shot Assists Secondary Shot Assists 5 53.93 51.28 51.85 2 2

This is an even smaller sample of data that we\'re working with on Andrae, so we\'re going to be careful not to draw any huge, sweeping conclusions from it. But, of course, it\'s still something, and it\'s something that tells us that on the whole, the Phantoms were in favorable positions when Andrae was out on the ice, as they were getting a comfortable edge in both the overall volume of shots created, as well as the share of more dangerous chances generated. His on-ice averages are each around four percent below the team average, but if we take into account the difficulty of minutes Andrae is generally asked to play, as well as the sample size, we can\'t find ourselves getting too worked up about that.

And, as we saw, he was good for around two shots on goal per game (this across all situations), he was also good for around one shot assist (this, at 5-on-5) per game, which lines up more or less with what the eye would tell us -- that while Andrae was not afraid to use his own shot (and, by extension, could get drawn into the Phantoms\' collective over-reliance on shooting from the perimeter), he was also comfortable playing a setup game.

Three Questions

Did he live up to expectations?

Given where Andrae stands in his development, we might have expected him to come in for this past season pushing for a roster spot with the Flyers, and if he got boxed out by the surplus of more veteran defensemen at that level and had to come back to join the Phantoms, he would step back in and dominate at that level, with all that he\'s learned there in the back pocket.

And while Andrae did earn himself his looks up with the big club, his time with the Phantoms wasn\'t as flashy as we might have expected. We have a hard time blaming him for that though. That is, we talk a lot about the importance of having consistency between the systems being run on the AHL and NHL teams, because this is a way to make sure they players called up from the minors are able to fit in more seamlessly with the big club. This consistency was pretty sorely lacking between the Phantoms and the Flyers over these last couple of seasons, and while this didn\'t prove to be a major hinderance to the guys coming up, it did look like it was causing problems for players like Andrae as they headed down.

We\'d see it each time he was sent back down, where he\'d look, frankly, uncharacteristically lost in the defensive zone for his first game or two, and then after that, he\'d settle in again and get to the point of being really solid for the team. This, to us, suggests that he was struggling with the Phantoms\' system, not knowing what was expected of him within their system. Andrae is a player who seemed to have a strong foundation laid when he was playing in Sweden, and he brought that with him when he crossed over to North America, and he seemed to do better when he was letting instinct take over, more or less (and this is something that still gave him an advantage over some of the younger prospects, coming up from juniors, and who were flying a little more blindly in that somewhat unfocused system). He still brought some solid performances once he was able to get going, but there\'s still a distinct feeling that he was held back by the way things were being run down with the Phantoms.

What would we like to see him improve on next season?

All in all, there isn\'t too much that needs refining in Andrae\'s game at the AHL level, at this point. Certainly he has his moments when you\'d like to see him make a better read in the defensive zone, or be a little more decisive in how he wants to attack a rush play coming at him, and while we\'d like to see him continue to learn to choose his spots better and improve his overall comfort with the pace of play, this isn\'t the type of tinkering that necessarily needs to be done down with the Phantoms, and could just as easily be worked on on the fly up in the NHL. It\'s a work in progress, but it will come to him with more reps, regardless of the level they\'re coming at.

What can we expect from him next season?

The idea that we\'re sort of gesturing towards here is that, with everything taken into account, we do feel that Andrae is ready to graduate to the NHL on a full time basis. Now, the situation is a little tricky, with the numbers game working against him to a degree, but the door does remain open for him to make a run at a roster spot out of training camp. The hope is that he finally gets rewarded for the work he\'s been putting in and earns that spot, but if he\'s back down with the Phantoms to start next season, we can expect to see him playing a similar role to what he has been -- playing a ton of minutes across all situations, and being leaned on for both the well roundedness of his play, but increasingly as well as something of a veteran presence on a team that just seems to keep getting younger and younger.

Talking Points