Philadelphia Flyers midseason report cards: Defensemen and Goalies

Yesterday, the Philadelphia Flyers forwards received their mid-term grades.

Today, it’s time for the defensemen and goaltenders.

Yet again, only players with at least 15 games receive a grade. Also, our report cards showcase a number of key stats from the 2023-24 season for each player — point pace, 5-on-5 Points/60 and even strength play-driving percentile rank by position for defensemen, and save percentage, shutouts, and Goals Saved Above Expected from both Evolving-Hockey and MoneyPuck (a stat which used shot quality models to determine if a goalie stopped more pucks than expected given the nature of the shots faced) for the netminders.

And then, there are the grades themselves.

Has Sanheim’s play slipped a bit in recent weeks? Maybe. He’s in the midst of a nine-game point drought, and his first-pair partnership with Cam York has regressed from its stellar start to merely acceptable levels at 5-on-5 (50.07 percent xG share).

But on the whole, Sanheim has still been fantastic.

Coming off the worst all-around season of his career, Sanheim is on pace for his best. 47 points would blow away his career high of 35, he’s a key cog on the second-best PK in the NHL (his 128 minutes leads all Flyers players in the situation), and the Flyers are back to controlling play at 5-on-5 with Sanheim on the ice (52.95 percent xG share), as they had basically every year of his career aside from the last one.

And he’s doing all of this in a first-pair, No. 1 defenseman role.

When the Flyers traded Ivan Provorov, it was a legitimate question as to which player would step into the vacated role at the top of the defense depth chart. Not only has Sanheim taken those available minutes, he’s done far more with them than Provorov did in his final three seasons in Philadelphia. Despite facing top lines and the toughest competition every night, Sanheim has been assertive and aggressive, carrying the puck up ice constantly and playing in perpetual attack mode.

Sanheim was a mess last season — his play was severely inconsistent, he didn’t click personality-wise with new head coach John Tortorella, and he even got scratched for a game in Calgary that his family and friends went out of their way to attend. Credit Sanheim for not only learning how to coexist with Tortorella in Year 2, but thrive under him. The extra 15 pounds of muscle he added over the summer hasn’t hurt, either — and it certainly showcased to the coaches his dedication to his craft, and his commitment to putting the 2022-23 season firmly in his rearview mirror.

That’s exactly what Sanheim has done — and in the process, he’s been one of the biggest reasons this Flyers club has so exceeded preseason expectations.

Another big reason why the Flyers have been such a surprise this season? The emergence of Sean Walker.

At least with Sanheim, fans had seen him deliver borderline high-end results for the Flyers in the past; he was just coming off a poor season and being entrusted with a new, more difficult role. Walker, on the other hand, has never been close to this level of performance as an NHLer — and was coming off a major injury in 2021 and an underwhelming comeback season in 2022-23 that led to Walker becoming the odd man out in Los Angeles. After being moved to the Flyers in what was essentially a salary cap dump, no one expected much — beyond maybe decent third-pair results — from Walker.

Instead, Walker has helped drive the second pair’s success, in the same way that Sanheim has lifted the first pair. Walker’s innate aggressiveness as a player has proved a perfect match for Tortorella and Brad Shaw’s attacking tactics, and the result has been the best underlying even strength metrics of Walker’s career and his best scoring pace since 2019-20.

A recent dip in Walker’s play — just four points in his last 21 games and a 47.80 percent on-ice xG share at 5-on-5 since December 1 — is a bit concerning, and perhaps a sign that Walker will continue to regress to career norms, and that his play over the season’s first two months was a bit on the fluky side. But looking at the first half as a whole, Walker has delivered stellar results, and given his status as a RHD on an expiring contract, he’ll have plenty of teams interested in his services come the March 8 trade deadline — if the Flyers are selling.

When Chuck Fletcher picked Nick Seeler up off the free agent scrap heap in the summer of 2021, it’s tough to imagine he saw a defenseman capable of providing above-average results in 17 minutes a night for a team in the playoff mix.

But that’s exactly what Seeler has been for the Flyers in the first half.

It’s not like Nick Seeler has been a stealth all-star candidate, to be clear. He’s on pace for just 13 points, and even on his successful pair with Walker, it’s fairly obvious that Walker is the one carrying the puck-moving and attacking load. Seeler has been more of a support piece than a true driver.

But good teams need solid support pieces, and Seeler has excelled in the role. His more conservative style has complemented Walker well, and his willingness to stand in the way of any shot — no matter how heavy — has been exactly the kind of defensive zone example that the coaching staff wants its veterans to be showing. Seeler has been a rarity — a player with plus intangibles that appeals to traditionalists, with the kind of results that would justify his place in the lineup even if those intangibles were disregarded entirely.

It took Ristolainen about a month and a half to begin his 2023-24 season.

But once it began, he picked up right where he left off in 2022-23.

In remaking Ristolainen into a legitimately good defensive defenseman, the Flyers are accepting that the days of 40+ point Risto are gone forever. Three points in 24 games certainly isn’t moving the needle offensively. But unlike those days in Buffalo when Ristolainen was a high-scoring, big-minutes blueliner, this version of Ristolainen doesn’t get obliterated at even strength.

And that trend has carried over for the second straight season. Ristolainen currently sits in the 82nd percentile among NHL defensemen in play-driving impact per Evolving-Hockey’s RAPM model, primarily driven by his defensive work — he sits in the 80th percentile when looking solely at his impact on scoring chance suppression. The adjustments Ristolainen made to his game in 2022-23 appear to be real — he rarely ends up way out of position chasing big hits, he’s gotten much better at using his stick to break up passes and deflect shots, and he’s still a bruiser in terms of hits, even if those numbers are down a bit this year relative to career norms.

The only negative surrounding Ristolainen is his now-limited role — due to the emergence of Walker and the move of Sanheim primarily to the right side, Ristolainen has largely served as a third-pair blueliner, which means that his minutes are down and his matchups are easier. But he’s performing well in his lesser role, and given his results last year as a second-pair defenseman, there’s little reason to doubt he could hold his own in the top-four if called upon once again.

A “B” grade for Marc Staal? Hear me out on this one.

Staal hasn’t been exceptional for the Flyers; there’s a reason why he ultimately was relegated to No. 7 — and now potentially No. 8 — defenseman status in early December. At age 37, Staal’s mobility is not what it once was, and especially when facing off against top-end forwards on the rush, he can be exposed for the aging veteran that he is.

But Staal is being paid to be — and now being used as — an extra defenseman. In that role, a team wants someone who can hold his own when he does play, and provide off-ice, intangible value in the locker room when he doesn’t.

Staal checks both boxes. Teammates rave about his calming influence and steadying presence within the locker room. And as much as he can fail the eye test at times, his underlying metrics at even strength are quite strong — a 56.16 percent on-ice xG share at 5-on-5 and the 82nd percentile in terms of impact on even strength xG differential.

Especially now that he’s not regularly standing in the way of consistent playing time for young defensemen like Egor Zamula, it’s hard to complain about what Staal has provided for the Flyers this season. He’s performed admirably in his dual role as on-ice depth piece and off-ice mentor.

The fact that Cam York technically ranks sixth on the Flyers’ blueline corps in this grading exercise and yet still earns a solid B-minus speaks to how much the backend has been a low-key strength for the team in the first half.

York’s first half has been far from terrible. He’s been saddled with greater responsibility (22:19 minutes per night, up from 19:39 in 2022-23) and has been locked in on the team’s first pair, a role that was only partially his last season. Yet York’s defensive game in particular has taken strides, and he’s earned praise for it from John Tortorella as a result. York is establishing himself as a legitimate scoring chance suppressor at even strength, and a quality PK option as well.

Offensively, however, York has been a disappointment.

Perhaps it’s in part because York has been paired with Sanheim, who has ramped up his on-ice aggressiveness with the puck dramatically, at the behest of his coaches. Someone on the pair has to hang back if Sanheim is constantly carrying the puck up ice. But York struggled most of the first half in his PP opportunities as well, even getting pulled off the units entirely for a few weeks in November and December. The offensive game just hasn’t come around yet for York at the NHL level, and it’s a big reason why his overall play-driving impacts are more middle-of-the-road than truly impressive: he’s just not driving enough Flyers shots and chances.

York has made progress in other elements of his game, and the offensive upside remains. He just hasn’t fully tapped into it yet.

Remove the past four weeks from Egor Zamula’s season, and he almost certainly is in “D” territory in terms of his first half grade.

But it just might be starting to click at the NHL level for the 23-year old.

Since being put back on the power play on December 22, Zamula’s play has improved dramatically. He has eight points in those 12 games, and a 52.84 percent on-ice xG share over that span as well; in the 23 games prior, Zamula scored just four points and delivered an ugly 46.05 percent xG share.

Zamula’s poise with the puck up at the point on the power play has been difficult to miss, and it does seem like he’s tapping into the confidence gained from solid power play shifts while skating at even strength as well. It’s not like Zamula has been dominant since December 22 — he’s basically just looked the part of an above-average third-pair defenseman — but that’s a dramatic improvement over where he was in November, when Tortorella justifiably was scratching him on the regular due to his consistently poor performances.

A month ago, Zamula may have gotten a D. If he keeps on his current trajectory, however, he could be in the “B” range by the time 2023-24 comes to a close.

Ersson’s first-half numbers are impressive enough on their own.

Knock out those first three appearances too, when he was clearly rusty and adjusting to the routine of being an NHL backup? We’re talking about a 0.930 save percentage and a +16.39 Goals Saved Above Expected mark, per Evolving-Hockey’s shot quality model.

Now we’re cooking with gas.

Ersson has performed so well since the start of November that he’s basically forced his way into a semi-timeshare with Carter Hart, who isn’t even playing poorly. But since Hart returned from his extended illness, Hart has seven starts; Ersson has five. That’s not quite a 1A/1B situation, but it’s darn close.

Ersson has earned those extra starts. He radiates calm in the net, has proven to be stellar against breakaways (both during game action and in the shootout), and very much looks the part of an above-average NHL goalie. And if he keeps up this post-November 1 level of play throughout the entire second half, Ersson is rightfully going to put himself in the Calder Trophy mix. It’s only those first three rough appearances that keep him from full-fledged “A” status.

The emergence of Ersson has led some in the fanbase to mentally relegate Hart to No. 2 goalie status in the organization, even as he continues to get the majority of the starts from the coaching staff.

It’s an unfair conclusion to draw, for a simple reason: Hart has been pretty darn good this year too.

That’s not to say that his game has lacked blemishes. Hart has given up more than a few weak goals this season — shots that squeaked through Hart despite seemingly being in proper position. In addition, the health issue popped up once again for Hart; this time in the form of a yet-to-be-revealed illness that Hart believes has been finally addressed and resolved, but kept him out over a number of stretches, including a two-week absence in December. Given that the big on-ice concern surrounding Hart prior to the 2023-24 season was whether he’d ever be able to take the leap into the kind of high-end workhorse No. 1 that he once appeared destined to become for the Flyers, the first half provided legitimate reason for those doubts to linger.

But on the whole, Hart has done solid work in goal. His 0.912 save percentage is well above the league average of 0.899, and according to both the Evolving-Hockey and MoneyPuck xG models, Hart has stopped more shots than expected given the quality that he has faced. By the numbers, Carter Hart is having a perfectly respectable season for a starting NHL goalie.

Does that mean he’s been one of the best goalies in hockey? Of course not. Since November, he hasn’t even been the best goalie on his NHL team. But Hart has still graded out as a solidly above-average NHL netminder; he shouldn’t be pilloried because he’s yet to take the full-fledged star turn that some fans demand, given the hype that accompanied Hart’s early career.