Well, it looks like one of the few bright spots on this team is no longer going to be on it for the time being.
The Philadelphia Flyers announced on Friday morning that they have sent young defenseman Emil Andrae back to the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
Transaction: We have loaned defenseman Emil Andrae back to the @LVPhantoms (AHL).
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) December 20, 2024
Simply put, the 22-year-old blueliner has been one of the team’s best defensemen this season. Almost immediately when he was recalled earlier this year, everyone could see the improvement in physicality and mobility and general awareness on the ice, compared to when he made the team out of training camp last season. Through the 20 games he has played, Andrae has scored one goal and earned five points while averaging 19:18 of time-on-ice per game and at times, being on a power-play unit. But, recently he has not had the same spark as he did when he first arrived in Philadelphia.
Andrae was a healthy scratch for three consecutive games and then was back in the lineup for Thursday night’s bout with the Los Angeles Kings. Where, unfortunately, he played a not-so-great game and could have been his worst on-ice performance in the Orange and Black.
But why send Andrae down now? The most obvious reason is in the paragraph above. Head coach John Tortorella did not like what he saw in the last couple of weeks and thought he deserved to sit — as he has done with Cam York recently, Egor Zamula, and countless other young players. And in his first chance to get back into the good graces of his coach, Andrae didn’t score any points, was a plus/minus of zero in a 7-3 loss (honestly, not bad), and had two shots on goal. He did make some mistakes that allowed Kings’ scoring chances so generally, a fairly poor game.
So, if Andrae isn’t going to be playing for the Flyers — or Tortorella sees this as a time to take a step back and develop — now is the time to send him down. The Flyers do play two more games before the holiday break, but if Andrae was not going to be on the blue line anyways, they can send him down without having to go through waivers obviously, and over the holiday break they can accrue some cap space for future moves this season.
Since teams accrue cap space on a daily basis as the season goes on, with Andrae down in the AHL, the Flyers are getting roughly $4,700 of more cap space to use at the trade deadline every day (if we are doing the correct math). The Flyers’ first game after the holiday break is in eight days, so again, some poor math, but that is roughly $37,600 of cap space they can do by just sending Andrae down for two games.
Now, he could last longer down there. If the coaching staff still do not like what they are seeing with the Phantoms, he can stay down and the Flyers can just continue having Egor Zamula on the blue line. And they still have Erik Johnson just hanging around.
The Flyers mostly see that they will only have Andrae in the NHL if he deserves it, and in their eyes, he has not played well enough to beat out the other players that they can’t send down without going through waivers. That’s most likely their view on the whole thing.
