It’s that time of year again. The offseason provides an annual opportunity to look back. It’s a chance to assess whether preseason predictions were accurate in regard to, both, the team performance as a whole and the individual player performances that led the team to its ultimate outcome.
First on the list is Justin Braun, whose final season in the NHL was notable in approximately zero ways. Braun is surely disappointed to conclude his career in service of the Flyers’ worst season in 15 years, but the Flyers’ woes are not due to Braun alone. In fact, for the ever-rotating turntable that was the Flyers’ defense, Braun showed himself to a be a steady veteran who didn’t create a stir, for better or for worse.
Basic Stats
To many, Braun’s lack of offensive productivity is a strong demerit, and indeed, recording 2 points over 51 games is shockingly awful, even for a defenseman. However, Braun wasn’t brought (back) to the Flyers for offensive firepower. Just the opposite. The Flyers have two offensive-minded blueliners in Ivan Provorov and Tony DeAngelo. Even Travis Sanheim sometimes finds his way up into the play. Thus, Braun shouldn’t be knocked for failing to perform a role that he was never intended to perform.
What was his role? Stability on the back end, a feature that this team desperately needed and lacked from two of the three aforementioned players. Sure, Braun wasn’t the team’s most outstanding defenseman, but he also wasn’t noticeably terrible.
If you’re the type of person who values the +/- statistic, Braun was -1 on the season while averaging 15:00 per game. That’s a good number when compared to DeAngelo’s -27 and Provorov’s -17, though Provorov and DeAngelo obviously averaged far more minutes.
If you were pleasantly surprised by Nick Seeler this year–as you should be–you could even make the case that Braun contributed to Seeler’s success. Would Seeler have been so impressive if he were paired with Provorov? Likely not. Would he have been so impressive if he were paired with Sanheim or Ristolainen? That’s a more interesting conversation to be fleshed out in the comments below. Regardless, Braun clearly did something right (even if it wasn’t anything relating to offense).
Three Questions
Did they live up to expectations?
Well, it depends on the expectations. Did anyone really think that Braun should be one of the team’s top defensemen? That probably wouldn’t be fair. No doubt, he was largely worse than last year’s Justin Braun, so if the expectation was that he would repeat his 2021-22 performance, he largely undershot that metric. As stated, Braun was offensively abysmal, and he averaged five fewer minutes per game than last season. However, Tortorella’s coaching philosophy was largely unpredictable, particuarly at the blue line, so it’s hard to say that Braun did anything to merit the shorter shifts. If you expected the 13th-year veteran to provide nothing more than stability to the third pair, you’re likely happy with what you saw this year.
What can we expect from next season?
This is usually the space where we use our previous predictions to formulate additional predictions for the future. However, Braun has announced his retirement, so his career has come to a close. We wish him well in his future endeavors, and we thank him for his service to the city of Philadelphia.
How do we grade their 2022-23 season?
Others might substantially dock Braun for his lack of offensive production, but there’s a solid argument that he compensated for the deficit on the defensive end. This is especially true when you consider how desperately the Flyers needed defensive help. Of course, defense wasn’t the Flyers’ biggest liability this season, having finished 29th in Goals-For. Thus, it is reasonable to wish that Braun would have at least matched his point totals from last year–6 goals and 12 assists. All things considered, he did his job, and he perhaps did it better than some of his more esteemed defensive colleagues.
C+
