Flyers sign defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen to five-year, $25.5 million extension
Ristolainen, who was acquired from Buffalo in the offseason, has brought size and physicality to the Flyers blueline, and was previously set to become an unrestricted free agent this summer.
As the Flyers approach the March 21 trade deadline and navigate which pending unrestricted free agents will be a part of the team’s future, at least one of them will not hit the open market.
On Thursday, the Flyers signed right-shot defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen to a five-year, $25.5 million extension ($5.1 million average annual value). The 27-year-old blueliner was in the final year of a six-year, $5.4 million AAV deal, which he signed in 2016 as a member of the Buffalo Sabres.
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“I think what he brings to our blue line, we didn’t have a lot of size and physicality,” assistant general manager Brent Flahr said. “He’s been a real good teammate. He’s fit in well with our guys.”
Ristolainen’s hard-nosed style of play lends itself to the “tough to play against” approach that general manager Chuck Fletcher has sought to instill within the team through certain roster additions. Fletcher acquired Ristolainen from Buffalo via trade this offseason in exchange for a 2021 first-round pick (No. 14), a 2023 second-round pick, and defenseman Robert Hägg.
In January, Fletcher said that he traded for Ristolainen with the goal of eventually signing him to a long-term deal. Despite the high price Fletcher paid for Ristolainen, former Flyer and NBC Sports Philadelphia color commentator Keith Jones thought the trade brought an important element to the Flyers’ defensive corps.
“I liked it immediately, just because in my eyes, he provided something that the team lacked,” Jones said. “And that being a physical presence that was capable of knocking people around, was not shy about taking hits, and could clear the front of the net effectively.”
Similarly, former Flyers goalie and ESPN analyst Brian Boucher believed Ristolainen had the potential to be the type of player who would make other players feel more comfortable when they were on the ice together.
“I try to put myself in a position of when I played and what I liked in front of me and he’s a guy that I would have loved to have in front of me,” Boucher said. “A guy that just is big, plays hard to clear the front of the net for you.”
Before joining the Flyers, Ristolainen spent eight tumultuous years with the Sabres, who drafted him in the first round, eighth overall, in 2013. During his time in Buffalo, Ristolainen played for six head coaches and never made the playoffs. In 2018-19, Ristolainen finished a league-worst minus-41.
Despite the challenges in Buffalo, Ristolainen’s upside made him an attractive addition to any blue line at the time, according to former Tampa Bay Lightning general manager and NHL Network analyst Brian Lawton.
“What all the GMs are trying to do is take it in context relative to what was going on around them — you could see a lot of promise in a player of Rasmus’ ability,” Lawton said. “And I would think that in the Flyers’ case, when you’re looking at a guy that’s 6-4, 220 pounds that can move, there was a lot of excitement about bringing him into Philly.”
In 49 games this season, Ristolainen has two goals, 11 assists, and is a minus-11. He leads the team with 177 hits and has racked up 90 blocks, ranking third on the Flyers.
Ristolainen has been a fixture on the second defensive pairing alongside 25-year-old Travis Sanheim. Most recently, interim coach Mike Yeo has been utilizing Ristolainen on the second power-play unit as a net-front presence.
“I think he’s lived up to what I expected him to be,” Jones said. “I think he’s showing that, offensively, he has skills, that he can make some plays in the offensive zone as well. It’s probably been underutilized in that regard.”
Despite the Flyers’ lowly 18-28-10 record, Ristolainen has been happy in Philadelphia to this point. Part of the reason why is his partnership with Sanheim.
Yeo has heavily relied upon his second pairing, who have played together for a team-high 706 minutes and 22 seconds so far this season. Top-pairing defensemen Justin Braun and Ivan Provorov are just shy of Sanheim-Ristolainen’s total by 16 seconds. Among Flyers defensive pairs that have played at least 100 minutes together, Sanheim and Ristolainen lead the team in expected goals for percentage (48.07).
“If I think a little bit [to the] future and what kind of player he is, he’s the type of player I could play with the rest of my career as a D pair,” Ristolainen said. “That’s a good sign. And I think it’s already been good and we haven’t really ... only [played together] a few months, or this year. I hope we stay together, we play together and he’s a player I could play with forever.”
Early the season, Sanheim acknowledged that it took a little while for the chemistry to develop with Ristolainen. More recently, however, Sanheim said they’ve been playing better together and feel more comfortable as a duo.
“I think we complement each other well,” Sanheim said. “We play a little bit different style of game and just the way his presence is on the ice kind of opens it up for me a little bit and allows me to do what I do best and use my skating and vice-versa. I’m sure that allows him to play more freely as well.”
From an advanced analytics standpoint, Ristolainen individually has graded out poorly. Among 108 defenseman who have played at least 800 minutes this season, Ristolainen ranks 78th in expected goals against (42.35), according to Natural Stat Trick.
“The eye test, to me, is pretty strong for Rasmus,” Lawton said. “The analytics test is pretty weak. I would say that your answer is somewhere in between. He still ranks out as a top-four D. Go around the league and you look at what other people have, on the majority of the teams, he clearly is in the top four, and that makes him a commodity.”
Ristolainen ultimately decided to sign with the Flyers instead of reaching unrestricted free agency, where he could have driven up his asking price. However, Lawton estimates that the market is going to be depressed this summer, especially for a player of Ristolainen’s caliber.
Several factors will lead teams to be cautious when signing free agents, according to Lawton — “There’s a lot of people that don’t have salary cap space, there’s a pandemic, a war, there’s a lot of things that are causing the tide to wash out a little economically.”
“I think players are going to find it tougher this summer and harder, particularly players that are not very, very, very, very top of the free agent market,” Lawton said. “Rasmus, in my opinion, is a good player that [would] have a lot of interest from other teams. But he’s not at the very, very top of the market.”
Alternatively, had the Flyers decided to trade Ristolainen instead of re-sign him, Lawton said it would be unlikely that Fletcher could have fully recouped what he gave up in the deal last summer. In what Lawton called a “buyer’s market” leading up to the trade deadline, the Tyler Toffoli trade may be the one exception to what the public can expect to see before March 21.
“There’s just a lot of teams selling,” Lawton said. “And there are not that many buying. I’ve seen this situation before, I have to go back to 2009, when at least in terms of number of buyers and sellers, it was somewhat similar. And that was a tough, tough trading market for the teams that wanted to sell.”
With interest to make it work on both sides, Ristolainen and Flyers were able to reach a deal. Now, while Ristolainen will miss the playoffs for the ninth time in nine career tries, he is optimistic that the Flyers will find success in the future.
“Going through this with all the guys here, I hope we all learn from this year and we never want to go through this again,” Ristolainen said. “So I think it brings a lot of good energy for next year. I don’t think any of us want to be in this same position ever again.”