Next season for the Philadelphia Flyers is a peculiar one. The past couple seasons felt more like a period of evaluation — trying to determine what players will be here in the long run and who the Flyers should try and commit long-term to. That time now feels like it has ended. They have moved on from players who did not fit and now have an early collection of players that appear to be doing some darn good stuff after making the playoffs and even winning a round.
But that was last season, and the 2026-27 campaign could be much more difficult as other teams have gotten better around the Eastern Conference and the Flyers are finishing their offseason by getting an NHL-quality second goaltender and signing a fourth-line center/wing. It’s a point that has been beaten to death but general manager Danny Briere clearly tried to make this team a whole lot better but for a variety of reasons, it never worked out.
Now, the Flyers are hoping for some internal improvement to continue this upward trajectory and make the playoffs in back-to-back seasons; and not make that postseason appearance seem like a fluke. While it can certainly come from a bunch of young high-end players inching closer to their potential like Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, and all the other young kids, there can also be improvement from the more established players, too.
The Flyers’ blue line is one of the more experienced groups, while also being a collection of players that can possibly still take a step forward. So, what are those slight improvements that each defenseman could make to sustain some success and potentially make another postseason appearance?
Some blueliners have a couple areas of improvement, but we’re going to stick to one for each defenseman just to make it simple.
Jamie Drysdale — Zone entries
Jamie Drysdale has come a long way from the player that showed up in the Cutter Gauthier trade. He was once seen as someone who is defensively inept, which caused some more pessimistic (or realistic) fans to think of him nothing more than a shallow player that could flash potential but might not get out of being a No. 4 on a mediocre team. Now? His two-way game has certainly grown and he can be trusted in almost every situation on the ice.
But, considering the top-end speed and how his skating is truly his strongest asset, why isn’t he grading out well in zone entries?
It can be simply that Rick Tocchet’s tactics has not allowed him to free-wheel into the zone and explode on the rush like prime Erik Karlsson, but the actual numbers go beyond anything that can be made up for with a stylistic change.
Per Corey Sznajder’s All Three Zones project, where he tracks a whole lot of games and all the microstats that come with it, Drysdale grades out as someone well below league average in terms of raw zone entries per hour, and when it comes to controlled entries, or entries that set up some scoring chances, he is just barely above league average. This was over 345 total minutes tracked of Drysdale last season:
While it is fairly decent for just any defenseman, it’s not good enough for someone who has Drysdale’s tools. He is just an incredible skater and can build momentum from his own blue line and burst into the zone like an unstoppable juggernaut despite his size. We’ve seen it happen at times throughout his Flyers career, but nowhere close to where it should be.
Maybe it’s just a mental thing. It has been drilled into his head to not cough the puck over or make mistakes, so he has played a more safe role — turning him into a more stationary player, or someone that will just make the uncreative breakout pass and hope for a forward to then do the hard work on the entry.
Rick Tocchet might not like this, which would kill this idea immediately, but Drysdale could get out of his own head a little bit and just be more confident with the puck, and act like he’s Bobby Orr for a couple shifts per game.
Cam York — More dynamism
For Cam York, it’s much less specific than what we think Jamie Drysdale needs to work on, but it is the one thing that feels like it’s missing from his game. The 25-year-old defenseman is already very solid in so many areas and aside from a couple major gaffs in a season, he can play against anyone in most situations. But, that’s just it. What else can he do?
His physical tools are just bang average and don’t really stand out. He can skate well enough to defend, his passing is solid, his shot isn’t powerful but no one really needs that anymore from their defensemen, and he has become someone who is better defensively than what he brings offensively.
York is someone almost every single team would like to have on their team in some sort of role, but now we’re hoping that he can just provide something extra to his game. Maybe it’s more speed and mobility so he can join the tier of Drysdale and Travis Sanheim as hypermobile blueliners. Maybe it’s getting more puck skills so he can be that offensive presence on his pairing.
It’s way more of an abstract desire we have, but we’re just begging him to show us something more. Throughout most of his time in the Flyers’ top four, he has been the B-side to his pairing, whether it was with Sanheim or Drysdale. Is there a way that he can be an A-side as soon as next season? Maybe not, but he should be able to show us some potential to be more than he already is.
Rasmus Ristolainen — Consistency in multiple areas
It would be foolish for anyone to want Rasmus Ristolainen to be more than he currently is at 31 years old and almost 1,000 NHL games under his belt. But what if he was who he is but just for longer?
The whole thing with Ristolainen is his health concerns. He has played 70 or more games in just one of the five seasons he has been in Philadelphia and most recently appeared in just 44 games last season. But, with a healthy playoffs and Olympics for Finland, there is at least some sign of more consistency in his health.
If Ristolainen can just be around for *gasp* all 84 games next season, then that would be phenomenal — which that might also lead him to not finishing his season with the Flyers.
The hulking rearguard could also be more consistent in his physicality. It’s been speculated that one reason why the Flyers are hesitant to trade Ristolainen is that they would miss out on that aspect of his game — but it has also been very inconsistent. He would have some games where he would try and control the game through his body, breaking bones along the boards and all that. But then other nights he would completely disappear and it’s not like he was contributing to the team in many other ways than that or being a big defender.
Last season, Ristolainen had as many games with zero hits (13) than he did where he had more than one hit. More often than not, he finished the game with just one single hit despite playing over 20 minutes. While we’re not expecting him to be a menacing punisher out there, it’s really just him or Seeler that brings that sort of game to this blue line, and we could use more of that.
More of this please. We don’t really expect Ristolainen to do much else.
Travis Sanheim — Confidence in his offense
Travis Sanheim is no doubt the best defenseman the Flyers have and he is only make further and further strides as he is deeply entrenched in his prime. Philadelphia is reaping the rewards for him sticking around and growing into someone who is a damn Team Canada Olympian, for goodness’ sake. So what is there to really improve?
The 30-year-old is already the only bona fide top-pairing defenseman the team has, but is there room for something else? Well, we just want him to ball out offensively more. He has it in his toolbox, but he chooses his moments very carefully to pull out some top-end offense from the blue line.
Remember when he did this in the dang playoffs?
Maybe it’s the perfect amount so that he doesn’t have defenders being hyperaggressive and expecting Sanheim to do something that directly leads to a scoring chance, but we could at least see him give a little bit more on that side of the puck. He’s already so good so it feels wrong to even complain about his game, but imagine if he put in something like a 55-point campaign next season and he build off his career-high of 11 goals last year.
Nick Seeler — Zone exits
While other potential improvements were not as tangible, for Nick Seeler, it’s really obvious and fairly realistic. He just simply needs to get better at breaking the puck out of the Flyers’ own zone.
Returning to AllThreeZones for another little chart, we see just how Seeler’s tracked puck retrievals and zone exits stack up to the rest of the NHL and it is abysmal.
Whether it is the way that Rick Tocchet deploys his retrievals and breakouts for that bottom pairing, or it is just the player himself, Seeler has been disastrous when it comes to getting the puck and getting it out of his own zone.
It is telling that he doesn’t actually touch the puck that often, so it might not even be his job with whatever pairing he is on, but whenever he does have the chance to do that, he can’t do it successfully all that often. While it might be a little much telling a 33-year-old defenseman to maybe get better at some more puck play, but how he has played last season was someone who barely even had possession of the puck and was more of a disruptor than anything. That’s perfectly fine and he’s good at it, but for the Flyers to get the most out of next season, he might need to be a little bit more than that.
David Jiricek — Defense and skating
Okay, we feel a little bit bad. Other defensemen on this list of little small tiny aspects of their game that they could improve on to get a little bit better, but for David Jiricek, it’s essentially an entire half of a defenseman’s game: Mobility and caring about defense.
There’s not even much to say about it. Jiricek has high-end offensive ability and a great shot — it’s what caused him to be drafted sixth overall and have teams still giving him chances. But why he has not found a stable place in the NHL is because his lack of footspeed and general agility, and not having that can cause him to make his errors in puck management, or possession, or just reading the other team’s positions, really stand out since he cannot make up for it.
While Jamie Drysdale had defensive issues when he came to Philadelphia, some of it could be covered up by his elite-level skating. For Jiricek, he can’t. It gets exposed and highlighted with the brightest color you can think of.
We’ll see his game on full display as he should be on the Flyers roster for all 84 games next season. Then, we will get a much clearer picture for where he’s at.
Simon Benoit — Maybe we’ll find out
There are things that Simon Benoit can work on, of course. He’s projected to be an extra defenseman on the Philadelphia Flyers. But his physical tools are solid — with an above-average skating ability and being, obviously, very large at 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds. So, while we can get into the dirty details of his past seasons in Toronto, we can also just blame a lot of that on the misfortune of playing for those underperforming teams.
Right now, we’ll put him in a To Be Determined category.
