It is weird to think that the Philadelphia Flyers have gone through their entire season up until now with a massive glaring hole on their blue line, but they have. Rasmus Ristolainen has been out with an injury dating all the way back until the end of last season and finally managed to return to the ice Tuesday night in Montreal as the Flyers took on the Canadiens.
The overall consensus has been that Ristolainen is a solid player but it’s not detrimental to have him in the lineup, like it is with someone like Travis Sanheim. A nice-to-have defenseman that certainly turned around some of his reputation with his time in Philadelphia, but not really someone who will lead the charge from the back. But in his return to the ice, he showed more of what we had no idea the Flyers were truly missing.
Ristolainen was able to do more of what he’s been known for: Have a level of physicality while also not really giving too much to the other team. It’s a careful balance that he has slowly been able to nail down more and more but it seems like since his last game all the way back in March, the idea of Ristolainen being able to bring that level of balance between physicality and not committing too much to that bit it ends up hurting the Flyers, really went away. No one really thought too much about what the team could look like with him back on the ice.
Even heading into Tuesday, the feeling was “Oh, Ristolainen is back. Nice.” over anything else. No true excitement.
And then in the first minutes of his game, he delivered a massive hit against Juraj Slafkovsky and drew a penalty as Ivan Demidov, for some reason, thought it was a dirty hit and wanted to fight the Flyers defenseman.
HUGE HIT BY RASMUS RISTOLAINEN ON SLAFKOVSKY AND THEN HE DRAWS A PENALTY. WELCOME BACK.#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/CrKdN1gPoO
— Flyers Clips (@Flyers_Clips) December 17, 2025
It took a play like this for us to all go “Oh yeah, right” and realize that this is what he can truly bring to the ice. He’s not going to control the offense or really shut down an opponent every single night (sometimes he will, though) but what Ristolainen can do is bring so much more physicality and an actual ability to separate opponents from the puck, or at the very least hit someone and cause a young winger to cause a fuss and take a really stupid penalty.
Flyers have missed Ristolainen’s physicalty so much
But it is something the Flyers have missed. Nick Seeler has tried his best to take on the burden of being the big, mean, rugged blueliner for the Flyers, and Noah Juulsen has shown flashes of being able to do that but lately has taken more of a backseat. But given that those two were regularly not featured in the top four and the defensemen who were getting the most minutes for the Flyers don’t really have physicality as their most premier attribute.
The four of Cam York, Emil Andrae, Jamie Drysdale, and Sanheim will probably continue to form the top four of this Flyers blue line for the majority of this season, so it’s not like Ristolainen is really going to overhaul the defense to an inconceivable degree. But, it is nice to have someone on the ice again who is a real, true threat to lay someone out once again. A defenseman where opposing forwards will know when he’s on the ice because they cannot be caught with their head down or not paying close enough attention along the boards.
Who knows if Ristolainen will be able to keep this up or provide more examples of laying dudes out for the rest of the season, but at the very least the Flyers’ blue line looks more whole. No patchworked third pairing anymore, but an actual NHL-level hockey player filling each role on the back end and doing it well. Now all we can hope for is for players to stay healthy so that we don’t have to think about a third pairing being made up of Egor Zamula and Adam Ginning ever again.
