Flyers Fan Reaction (FFR4) Gm 57: PHI 3, FLA 6 – Risto vs. Reward

Flyers Fan Reaction (FFR4) Gm 57: PHI 3, FLA 6 – Risto vs. Reward

Bitter Sweetness. The Philadelphia Flyers lose, 6-3, to the Florida Panthers. The Flyers remain winless on the road in 2022. They finish the 2021-22 season winless (0-2-1) against the Panthers. They have not won more than two straight games since a three-game streak from Dec. 10-15. It’s the only time all season they’ve done just that.

But it’s hardly the biggest talking point about the team right now, literally, figuratively, or monetarily. The Flyers being picked apart at 5-on-5 and on special teams, especially by elite opponents, is nothing new. Rasmus Ristolainen’s 5-year, $25.5 ($5.1 million AAV) extension? That’s hot off the presses by comparison.

It’s easy to understand why the Flyers made this decision, no matter what you think about it. Physicality is undoubtedly an important part of hockey, especially when the sport is at its highest stakes. And Ristolainen certainly brings that in spades. He’s top ten in the league in hits, and it’s definitely true that Ristolainen is not a fun player to play against. Physical right-handed defensemen who can skate don’t come around very often. And while the advanced stats crowd was quick to mock Ristolainen’s play this season, it’s certainly worth mentioning that the Travis Sanheim-Ristolainen pair has been Philadelphia’s best second-best by expected goals and third-best by actual goal differential; and you can comfortably move them up a peg if you’re willing to cast aside the random success of the Sanheim-Nick Seeler duo as an outlier.

So what’s the (potential) problem(s) with this extension? Let’s go back to what Chuck Fletcher said about a month-and-a-half ago at him and Dave Scott’s press conference during the Flyers’ 13-game losing streak. “We do need more top end talent, there’s no question,” said Fletcher. It’s clear the Flyers do not view Rasmus Ristolainen as a top-end caliber player; just look at his deployment. It’s incredibly telling that of the 53 games the Flyers have played without Ryan Ellis, their projected number-one defenseman on the right-side, Ristolainen has been on the top-pair in just three games: 11/24 @ Florida, 12/15 vs. Tampa Bay, and 1/4 @ Anaheim. The Flyers lost all three games by a combined margin of 13-3. In 62 minutes of 5-on-5 play with Ivan Provorov (mostly in those three games), the duo has a 39.46% expected goals percentage and were outscored 4-3.

A top-end player should be trusted to move into a bigger role in a pinch without question. The Flyers have all but ruled Ristolainen playing on the top-pair as a non-option. In fact, part of the justification for acquiring Ristolainen last summer was that his poor results were in part due to him being thrust in a role way over his head on a Buffalo team with a poor supporting cast. “I think it’s all context,” Fletcher said on Ristolainen’s results with the Sabres on July 23, 2021. “(He) played a lot of minutes, rotating cast of partners, rotating cast of coaches. I think any time players are slotted in the right role with the right mix of players around them, they have a much better chance to improve and look better.”

The bolded sentence (which I emphasized on my own — NOT Fletcher) seems to imply the Sabres weren’t using Ristolainen properly, and that Philadelphia was in a position to use him in a much more favorable role; namely, dropping him to second pair minutes and responsibilities. Of course, almost nothing has gone as planned. The Flyers certainly haven’t addressed the rotating cast of coaches issue. In all likelihood, Ristolainen will begin play in 2022-23, his ninth in the NHL, under his ninth NHL head coach (assuming Mike Yeo doesn’t remain behind the team’s bench). The rotating cast of partners may go down a similar path; his main partner this season, Travis Sanheim, is a pending UFA at the end of next season; he’ll either need a raise or a replacement.

And that brings us to perhaps the biggest issue of the Ristolainen extension — the salary cap. It’s no secret the Flyers need to improve quite a bit if they’re going to return to the playoffs next season. Re-signing a player, by definition, does not improve a team; it makes a team no better, no worse. Of course, that logic could be manipulated to insist that every single player on a below-average team be shipped off; that is neither practical nor the point. But Fletcher, who will be making the final decisions this summer, believes the Flyers need more high-end talent. Every Flyers fan can agree with that assessment. What is far murkier, however, is how the Flyers can afford to go about doing just that; starting with the 2022-23 team as currently constructed.

For this mock roster, I only considered players under contract for next season; RFAs such as Wade Allison and Morgan Frost are excluded. The combined cap hit of the 15 players listed is $72,727,690, leaving the Flyers with just under $8.77 million in cap space. Filling in every roster hole except first-line left wing at between $750K and $1 million each will cost $3-4 million in total. That leaves the Flyers with no more than $5.77 million in cap space to acquire a top-end talent to fill in that 1LW void. And remember, that player isn’t replacing a void; they’re replacing Claude Giroux, one of the team’s leading scorers and the team’s captain. Finding a player as impactful, let alone more so, than Giroux will almost certainly cost more than the Flyers currently have to offer.

Yes, it’s incredibly unlikely that all of the fifteen players above will be in Orange and Black next year. But this too raises more questions than answers. James van Riemsdyk is the obvious candidate to be moved; however, ridding his entire $7 million cap hit will almost certainly require significant sweeteners. We’re almost certainly talking a first-round pick or a high-end prospect — at least. Maybe even both. Can the Flyers afford to do that and also potentially make trades to acquire top-end talent? Given the failure of drafting and developing in the last decade, the answer to that is almost certainly no.

So that means either retaining salary on JVR or/and trading out someone else; Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, and Ivan Provorov could all be on the block this summer. But again; more problems than answers. Say the Flyers trade one of these players and significant futures to acquire a top-end talent. That player may fill the 1LW hole. But that opens up a different hole at the position of the traded player. It would take a Simon Biles level of cap gymnastics to make the whole thing work out; and given the disaster that the last two seasons have been, it’s certainly easy to understand why many fans are skeptical.

It would have been easier to make those improvements with an extra $5.1 million in cap space; not to mention the fairly sizable haul of picks and prospects a Ristolainen trade likely would have netted. Yes, that also would have opened up a hole on the team’s second pair. But given the track record of both Ristolainen himself, by both public advanced metrics, the eye test, and even basic counting stats such as plus/minus, finding a replacement likely would not have been the end of the world.

Traditional hockey fans would likely scoff at the first reference (advanced stats). They may produce examples of Ristolainen excelling in the middle one (of which there are some, but plenty of glaringly poor plays as well). And they’d counter that a stat like plus/minus unfairly penalizes players like Ristolainen that are on bad teams.

But dig a little deeper on that last point. It would be incredibly unfair and simply incorrect to say that Ristolainen’s teams are bad solely because of him. Same if you tried to say that a team absolutely could not be successful with Ristolainen on it. But there is something to be said about the fact that the teams that have reserved about 7% of their salary cap and 20 or more minutes a night to Ristolainen have never produced a winning record. If there’s any correlation between those data points, it’s impossible to defend this extension. The good news for anyone who disputes that: you will have five long years to try and prove the doubters wrong.

Lindies

If you’re going to criticize any decision, you need to have a contingency plan. I won’t get into the details to keep this article from becoming too long. But some realistic candidates I’d rather have at 2RD than Ristolainen: Jeff Petry, Josh Manson, and Alex Goligoski (especially the former two). Not to mention some players I’m not even considering as legitimate possibilities that could become available at some point before October. And given the difference in their cap hits, I’d honestly put Justin Braun in that group as well.

Now to focus on the actual hockey game itself. The Flyers came out of the gates fairly flat, but I thought they started playing pretty well after receiving a power-play down 1-0 6:52 in. Unfortunately, poor net-front coverage on a pair of Ristolainen penalties put the Flyers behind the eight-ball. They showed an impressive amount of fight in the second period, not only preventing the game from getting out of hand but getting right back in it. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to generate any offense in the 3rd period, registering just six shots on goal. Another PPG from Florida, this one off a Flyers’ stick, all but put the game away seven minutes into the third.

If the Flyers are going to keep Ristolainen long-term, they need to find a more consistent role for him on the power-play. Putting up points on the man advantage was one of his biggest strengths for a while in Buffalo, yet he’s just fifth among Flyers defensemen in PP ice-time per game (0:45). It also didn’t seem to be a coincidence the Flyers man-advantage delivered one of its best overall showings in 2022 after taking off Ivan Provorov, who has struggled on the PP by both the ice test and advanced metrics (Provorov is 57th out of 60 defensemen with at least 75 PP minutes in expected goals per 60 minutes).

Really scary moment in the second period when Scott Laughton took a dangerous hit from Florida’s Petteri Lindbohm. Laughton left the game and did not return with a “head injury,” per the team; his status for this weekend’s back-to-back certainly seems in doubt.

With an assist on noted Flyer killer Sam Reinhart’s second goal (his 63rd, and third of the night) of the season, Jonathan Huberdeau passes his own record (62, set in 2018-19) for most single-season assists by a Panther. He picked up No. 64 on the empty-netter. He has over twenty more assists than any Flyer has points. That’s why the Flyers need more top-end talent right there.

Another road game, another road loss for the 2021-22 Flyers. Their streak dates all the way back to their final game of 2021.

As a first-time visiting fan, I thought the atmosphere at FLA Live Arena was overall pretty solid. The lower bowl and second section were mostly full, though the upper duck was certainly scant. Minus points for the rink switching songs mid-stoppage multiple times and fans throwing their hats on the ice when a Flyer, not Reinhart, deflected in the 5-2 goal (which would’ve been Reinhart’s third), but not the 6-2 goal, which actually was Reinhart’s third. Other than that (and the outcome), not a bad first Flyers road game.

3 Stars

3rd: Carter Verhaeghe (FLA) – 2 Goals (19, 20), 5 Shots

2nd: Jonathan Huberdeau (FLA) – 4 Assists (61, 62, 63, 64)

1st: Sam Reinhart (FLA) – 3 Goals (20, 21, 22), 5 Shots

Next

PHI: 3/12, 3 PM @ CAR (40-12-5, W3)

FLA: 3/13, 10 PM @ LA (32-19-8, OTL1)

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