Prospect Emil Andrae could bring competitiveness and smarts to the Flyers’ blue line

Long before Flyers’ 2020 second-round pick Emil Andrae had dreams of playing in the NHL, he just wanted to snag the coveted seat at his family’s kitchen table.

Growing up in Västervik, Sweden, Andrae and his older brother, Carl, turned day-to-day minutiae into fierce competition. Who would be first to get out of bed and grab the seat closest to the window for breakfast? Who would get first dibs on riding their prized yellow bike? Despite being two years younger than Carl, Andrae often emerged victorious in these duels.

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“As long as I remember, he has always been competitive and a very bad loser,” Carl said. “He loves to win, but he hated to lose.”

But in brotherhood, competitiveness coexists with admiration. Emil wanted to pursue any activity that Carl, his role model, took up. So when Carl started playing hockey at age 6, Andrae tagged along, too. Andrae soon learned to skate and joined his older brother’s team.

That brotherly competitiveness helped fuel Andrae’s rise to the top levels of both Swedish and international hockey, prior to his joining the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in mid-March for their stretch run. At the conclusion of the AHL postseason, the 21-year-old defenseman will shift his sights to achieving his primary goal.

“I want to improve my game and end up being a good player on the Flyers,” the 5-foot-9, 176-pound Andrae said. “That’s my goal. That’s stupid to have another goal, I think.”

Every year in Sweden, the top 15 and under hockey players from each district participate in a national tournament called TV-pucken. In 2017, Andrae captained his regional team and registered 16 points (most by a defenseman) in 11 games.

At the time, 15-year-old Andrae measured 5-foot-5 and weighed 170 pounds. But for agent Micke Rosell, who would add Andrae as a client when he turned 16, the young defenseman had a bigger presence about him.

“He plays like he is 6-foot-2,” Rosell said. “Because he threw his body in there.”

Earlier in Andrae’s hockey career, he could rely exclusively on his raw talent with the puck to succeed, even when playing up with his brother’s age group. But once he turned 12 and his opponents had grown larger, Andrae figured out that he’d have to outwork them to compensate for what he lacked in height.

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An early passion evolved into a pursuit of a professional career in Sweden. Andrae drew interest from elite clubs, including HV71, but he first needed to prove himself with a more competitive junior program than the one in his hometown. That led him to Oskarshamn, a club roughly 40 miles south of Västervik, where Carl was already playing for their Under-20 team.

Every day after school in Västervik, Andrae took a one-hour bus ride to Oskarshamn for training, practices, and games, primarily with the U18 team. He took the bus back afterward, arriving home around 10 p.m. On weekends, Andrae would stay in Oskarshamn and crash at Carl’s apartment.

“I don’t think a lot of guys at that age would have taken that effort to make [that] progress,” Per Andrae, Carl and Emil’s father, said. “He sacrificed a lot in his childhood, but he had a goal: I want to be a professional ice hockey player.”

His hard work and persistence paid off – Andrae made his senior team debut on Nov. 11, 2017. He was just 15 years and 9 months old, making him the youngest player ever to compete in the Allsvenskan, Sweden’s second-tier pro league.

“I knew when he came to Oskarshamn that he would do great things, because it was the time that he had to show HV71 that he was capable of playing for them,” Carl said.

Andrae joined HV71 the following season, playing for their junior team for the next two years. He initially came onto Flyers assistant general manager Brent Flahr’s radar playing for Sweden, first with the U17 team in 2018-19 and then captaining the U18 team the following year.

Even though Andrae was shorter for a defenseman, Flahr noted that he was a “tank” who had the puck the entire game and controlled play, especially at a younger age.

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“I think any time you have a smaller defenseman in height, you have to be strong, you have to be very smart, and you have to be competitive,” Flahr said. “He’s all of those. So, with the puck, his reads, even without the puck, his willingness to get involved. But also his stick detail, his understanding, his anticipation. He’s had to be a smarter player than everybody else his whole life.”

Not only did the Flyers like the player Andrae already was, but they also liked his potential to grow as a defenseman in a league known for cultivating them. So when the 2020 draft rolled around and Andrae was still on the board at pick No. 54, then-general manager Chuck Fletcher decided to take a chance on him.

“He’s done everything he can so far to prove us right,” Flahr said.

Andrae played against grown men in the Allsvenskan the next two years, first on loan with Västervik in 2020-21 and then with HV71 in 2021-22. In 41 games with HV71, he posted nine goals and 24 assists to help HV71 earn a promotion back to the Swedish Hockey League. While his postseason was cut short after he fractured his hand, it was a season of highs for Andrae.

“I was involved so much, so then I [was] kind of like, ‘OK, this is how to play’”, Andrae said. “So I kind of get into my head, this is how I play pro hockey.”

This year, Andrae got his first sustained taste of being a difference-maker in the SHL. He averaged 20-plus minutes and maintained his special-teams responsibilities despite moving up a division. Even as HV71 struggled, Andrae continued to produce (26 points in 51 games, second among HV71 defensemen).

Not only has Andrae been a leader among peers his own age, captaining Sweden’s World Junior team to a bronze medal in August, but he also emerged as a leader with HV71. Andrae helped the club avoid relegation by playing a “simple game” while under pressure, according to assistant coach Per Gustafsson.

“We had a bunch of guys with no confidence,” Gustafsson said. “But Emil was one of the guys who stood up and talked and competed every day.”

Andrae leads by setting an example on the ice and treating his teammates with kindness off it. According to his father, he learned that from Carl, who always included his younger brother among his own friends and encouraged his early interest in hockey.

“He likes to take care of people,” Andrae’s father said. “He likes to see that no one is outside the group.”

Before the start of the season, Flahr visited Andrae in Sweden and discussed his potentially coming to Allentown at the conclusion of the SHL season. Since he was drafted, Andrae hadn’t been in the area for a development camp or rookie camp, and Flahr wanted him to get acclimated to the organization.

HV71 played its final game March 9, and Andrae, who is regarded as one of the organization’s top defensive prospects, traveled from Stockholm to Philadelphia just four days later to start the next chapter of his journey. He made his AHL debut on March 25, signed his entry-level contract on March 27, and has collected six points (two goals, four assists) in 10 regular-season games. He’s currently playing on the top pairing for the Phantoms in their first-round playoff series against the Charlotte Checkers.

“It’s weird,” Phantoms coach Ian Laperrière said. “He hasn’t been part of our team at all, but he cares. I think his future, and it’s [a] really, really small sample, but I’m very impressed with what I’ve seen so far.”

That sense of caring, that willingness to compete, is at the foundation of who Andrae is as an athlete.

“When I do something, I just want to do the best I can,” Andrae said. “I don’t want to be out there and just be out there. I want to do something.”