The Philadelphia Flyers elected to file for salary arbitration with restricted free agent defenseman Travis Sanheim on Monday. Club-elected arbitrations are a rarity, as it’s only occurred three times since 2019 between Sanheim, Minnesota’s Kevin Fiala, and St. Louis’ Ville Husso. The deadline for teams to file for salary arbitration was on Monday at 5:00pm ET, and the Flyers decided to take Sanheim’s pending deal to it.
Now despite the Flyers filing for arbitration, the team and Sanheim can still agree to a deal before their arbitration hearing. The hearing’s date is to be determined but it will take place between August 11th and August 26th. Sanheim is coming off a very poor season, as is pretty much the rest of the team too, but Sanheim individually was one of the team’s worst defensemen this season.
Sanheim scored three goals and added 12 assists for 15 points along with a -22 rating in 55 games this past season. The three goals are the lowest in a season for the Elkhorn, Manitoba native since his first NHL season in 2017-18 when he scored twice in 49 games. Sanheim’s Corsi-For Percentage topped out at 54.1%, good for fifth among Flyers skaters and tops among all defensemen with at least 23 games played, but his PDO was an abysmal 94.8. Only Nolan Patrick ranked worse in that department among qualified skaters. Philadelphia’s on-ice save percentage with Sanheim on the ice was also a measly .872, with only frequent linemate Phil Myers ranking worse on the back end.
In short, Sanheim had a bad season. He is coming off a previous contract where he earned $3,250,000 over the last two seasons after agreeing to the two-year contract in 2019. To Sanheim’s credit, over that time frame he is tied in even-strength scoring with Shea Weber, Mark Giordano, Brett Pesce, Alex Goligoski, Filip Hronek, and Sean Walker. Those are all proven players in the league who have solidified themselves as good two-way defensemen.
As far as the Flyers go, Sanheim ranks second in total defenseman scoring behind only Ivan Provorov over the last two seasons. He’s also led all Flyers blueliners in even-strength points and has skated the second-most minutes among Philadelphia defenseman who played both seasons under the duration of his prior contract. Sanheim also had seven points in Philadelphia’s 16 postseason games in 2020, once again ranking only behind Provorov among defensemen.
If the two sides cannot reach a deal before their hearing, Sanheim can only be signed for one or two seasons, with Sanheim’s party having the choice of how long the deal is if the dispute reaches the hearing. If it gets to that point and Sanheim’s camp elects for a two-year contract, the deal would take him directly to unrestricted free agency. The one benefit for the Flyers in that case would be that the average annual value may dip a bit with an extra year of term, but the next round of negotiations with Sanheim could be tougher since he could hypothetically walk for nothing in the 2023 offseason.
The Flyers only have $8,010,477, according to CapFriendly, to use on their pending RFAs in Sanheim and Carter Hart. In team-elected arbitration, if a player made at least $2,110,000 in the prior season, such as Sanheim, the arbitrator must award the player at least 85% of that salary and can award more should they choose to. This means Sanheim will make a minimum of $2,762,500, or 85% of his previous $3,250,000 salary if he and the Flyers can’t agree to a contract before the hearing.
Because it’s a team-elected decision, Sanheim can also hypothetically sign an offer sheet from a different team should a team be interested in him. Of course, offer sheets are incredibly rare and are generally frowned upon by NHL executives, and Sanheim is coming off a down year that killed a lot of his stock, but it’s not a total impossibility.
Only time will tell if Sanheim and the Flyers can reach an agreement, or if the two sides will meet in an arbitration hearing in the next couple weeks.