No Flyers player in recent memory has seemed more divisive than Rasmus Ristolainen. The 27-year-old defenseman has somehow divided the entirety of Flyers fandom into two separate camps, both willing to die for their beliefs. Especially on social media, either Risolainen is considered the missing physical piece the team has been missing for generations or is “objectively” the worst defenseman in the league by a wide margin.
Ristolainen came to the Flyers carrying some pretty lofty expectations due to the price it took to put him in the Orange and Black. Long-time fan favorite Shayne Gostisbhere was shipped off with picks to Arizona to clear team cap space, and Risto’s acquisition itself led to the Flyers handing over a great deal of draft capital, including defenseman Robert Hagg.
The Ghost deal itself cleared cap for other places as well, so the entirety of that specific deal doesn’t fall solely on his shoulders. That said, the sheer volume of assets given up, especially the two defensemen, shows that Chuck Fletcher viewed Ristolainen as a potentially missing piece that could put the Flyers over the edge. If anything, Fletcher’s decision to retain Ristolainen at a 5 year, 5.1 million dollar AAV price tag only solidifies that.
Onto the man himself, Ristolainen has garnered himself a reputation as being a big physical player. Standing at 6’4” and weighing in at 215 pounds, the big man has more than an adequate frame for that role. And when push comes to shove, he often lives up to his reputation, regularly piling up massive hit totals both in Buffalo as well as in Philadelphia.
Speaking of Buffalo, when talking about Ristolainen, it is impossible to ignore the sheer amount of baggage he brings with him when it comes to evaluating his career. Ristolainen was drafted 8th overall in the 2013 Draft and was an incredibly hyped prospect for the Sabres to get. But the Sabres of the late 2010s were anything but competitive, with the team producing some truly putrid seasons, and many of their highly touted prospects failing to live up to their potential.
Ristolainen was far from an exception. He struggled mightily in Buffalo, with a number of reasons cited for his poor play. Blaming the Sabres development team, or simply the awful play of the team around him became a common source for Ristolainen’s poor play as a Sabre. Ristolainen has found himself a common piece of trade bait in this time, being openly unhappy with Buffalo’s losing ways, while also being sold more as a player with “intangibles” rather than on-ice performance.
Before we dive deeper into Ristolainen as a player, and what his statistics may say, zooming out may provide a slightly clearer picture of Risto’s time in Buffalo. While counting statistics like goals and assists can certainly be dramatically affected by the quality of a player’s team, there are a number of additional statistics that can take into account the poor play of teammates, to determine the individual quality of play for an individual.
Take a player like Sam Reinhart for example. An admittedly younger player at a different position, Reinhart has spent time on a number of the same Buffalo Sabres teams that Ristolainen did. Despite Reinhart’s counting numbers never leaping off of the page in these times, when his more advanced statistics were monitored, he found himself far more of an analytical darling than Ristolainen ever managed. And by that, I mean statistics showed Reinhart was a quality top-six forward on a bad team. Ristolainen’s statistics painted a much worse picture.
And it’s here that I must make a plain statement. Statistically, Rasmus Ristolainen is not a good defenseman at the NHL level. Through a staggeringly high number of advanced analytics, Ristolainen routinely places not only at the bottom of the truly incompetent Flyers defensive corps but of all players in the NHL.
Contrary to this, there are a number of arguments in favor of Ristolainen’s play that have become prevalent not only in Sabres circles prior to his trade but especially in Flyers circles during his times in Philadelphia. I have no intentions of ignoring these arguments, but first I feel it important to set a baseline on what advanced statistics generally say about Ristolainen’s play.