The NHL trade deadline always delivers a surprise or two, and with the Flyers stuck in a precarious situation, nothing can be ruled out. Could one of their young defensemen end up being the surprising move of the deadline?<\/p>\n
Andrae\u2019s rollercoaster tenure<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Flyers\u2019 young 23-year-old defenseman Emil Andrae has had a tumultuous tenure over the past three seasons since being called up to the NHL. Since the 2023-24 season, Andrae has played 86 games over the three-season stretch. He hasn\u2019t had a chance to stick as an everyday defenseman on a Flyers team that\u2019s not very strong on the backend. The soon-to-be 24-year-old is a restricted free agent come season\u2019s end; however, he is under team control until the 2029-30 season, when he could become an unrestricted free agent.<\/p>\n
His time with the Flyers has been a bit of a roller coaster. Andrae has been sent up and down between AHL Lehigh Valley and the Flyers many times over the last three seasons, including the beginning of this season, where he started the season up in Allentown with the Phantoms.<\/p>\n
Andrae fell out of favor with the previous coaching staff after having a solid start to last season. He was sent to the AHL in December of 2024, then was recalled in February of 2025 for a week, and then sent back down to Lehigh Valley again, then was recalled after the trade deadline and remained with the Flyers for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n
This season has been slightly more productive for Andrae, who currently has 11 points in 40 games and is a plus 11. Last season, in almost the same number of games, Andrae had 7 points in 42 games and was a minus 5. According to MoneyPuck<\/a>, the 23-year-old defenseman is third on the team in On-Ice Goals percentage at 58.9 percent and ninth in On-Ice Expected Goals percentage at 51.9%.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, he has been getting sheltered minutes on the second or third defensive pairings, while averaging just 16:54 time on ice, which ranks sixth among Flyers defensemen this season.<\/p>\n Where does he fit on the depth chart?<\/p>\n The concern with Andrae moving forward isn\u2019t about whether he can handle the NHL game; it\u2019s where exactly he fits on this team long term. At 5-foot-9, Andrae doesn\u2019t fit the physical profile the Flyers appear to be prioritizing along their blue line. He\u2019s currently behind the Flyers\u2019 other smaller defensemen \u2013 Jamie Drysdale, who is 5-foot-11, and Cam York, who is 6-foot \u2013 on the depth chart. <\/p>\n As of recent, Andrae hasn\u2019t just fallen behind those two guys on the depth chart; he has been acting as the Flyers\u2019 seventh defenseman in head coach Rick Tocchet\u2019s system. Noah Juulsen played the last five games before the Olympic break over Andrae, who was a healthy scratch and watched from the press box. Tocchet noted the healthy scratching as an attempt to get Noah Juulsen into the lineup because of the Flyers\u2019 struggling penalty kill; however, in those 5 games, Juulsen only saw 1 minute and 51 seconds of penalty kill time according to NHL stats<\/a>. Has Andrae fallen out of favor with yet another Flyers coaching staff?<\/p>\n With Oliver Bonk, Ty Murchison, Helge Grans, and Christian Kyrou all pushing for an opportunity at the NHL level, the Flyers have a slight logjam of young defensemen pushing for one spot. And with Andrae \u2013 now three seasons and 80-plus games into his NHL tenure \u2013 could he be the guy the front office looks to move to clear a roster spot?<\/p>\n Andrae could be moved at the trade deadline, but a trade in the offseason seems more likely \u2013 especially with Ty Murchison being out for the season with an upper-body injury, and Oliver Bonk, Helge Grans, and Christian Kyrou still developing at the AHL level. It wouldn\u2019t surprise me if, during the offseason, Andrae is packaged in a trade to try to acquire either a top 4 defenseman or a top 6 center \u2013 both of which the Flyers severely lack.<\/p>\n Whether it\u2019s at the trade deadline or later this summer, Emil Andrae\u2019s future with the Flyers hangs in the balance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NHL trade deadline always delivers a surprise or two, and with the Flyers stuck in a precarious…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-468118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}