The Rasmus Ristolainen Contract is a Mistake for Philadelphia
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.
The first and most basic number I think deserves taking a look at is W.A.R. or Wins Above Replacement. Baseball fans are likely more than familiar with the “catch-all” stat, but for those that may not be familiar, WAR is generally a guide used to determine the overall value of a player to their team, by comparing them to a generally league average player.
WAR as a unit can be difficult to quantify, so by extrapolating it to percentiles, you can compare a specific player to the entire field of the NHL, determining where they rank in comparison. Prior to this season, Rasmus Ristolainen sported a WAR percentile of 3%, which would place him as among the worst 2% of players in the league.
However, surprisingly enough, since joining the Flyers Ristolainen’s WAR has managed to fall from 3% to 1%, showing that compared to the league his play has actually dropped as a member of the Philadelphia Flyers, with him playing worse than he did as a Sabre. Miraculously, Robert Hagg, a player generally regarded as a liability also had a WAR of 3% at the time of the trade, indicating that the deal was more of a hail mary than it may have looked on the surface.
The biggest black eye of Ristolainen’s game is his defensive play. Something that, believe it or not, makes or breaks a defenseman. By similar percentiles to his WAR, Ristolainen is in the bottom 7% of the league defensively among all players, a horrible statistic for a player regarded as more valuable in his own zone.
Sheltered from powerplay minutes, and similarly ineffective on the penalty kill, Ristolainen has actually managed to take massive steps backward in his game from his days in Buffalo. He has become increasingly more undisciplined, played against weaker competition, and played with one of the best partners he has had in his career. And despite this, he still has struggled mightily to make a positive statistical impact while other members of the Flyers defensive corps have.
Despite all of this, the single most indicting statistic that plagues Ristolainen is technically two complementary statistics. Expected Goals For (xGF) and Expected Goals Against (xGA) are a pair of statistics dedicated to determining how many quality scoring chances are being registered while a specific player is on the ice. xGF would be positive chances in favor of the given player’s team, and xGA would be chances against. Both of these numbers are formed by taking into account chances directly created by positive offensive and/or negative defensive plays to indicate whether a player is forcing his team to play more in the offensive or defensive zone.
Ristolainen’s xGF and xGA are fairly unilaterally awful for his entire career. Not once in his nine years in the NHL so far has he contributed more positively than he’s allowed negatively, with some years being massively poor due to missing time throughout the season. This season overall is one of the best seasons of his career by this metric. And despite this, he is holding tight in the company of every other defenseman in the Flyers organization not named Keith Yandle or Travis Sanheim.
The argument of “Ristolainen is one of our best defenders” is technically true so far this season. He’s firmly locked in at third if you discount Kevin Connaughton and Cam York who both played far fewer games. In fact statistically, the Flyer he is closest to this season by this metric is Nick Seeler, which is infinitely more concerning when this version of Ristolainen has been the best version of Ristolainen the league has seen so far.
Defensemen are particularly noteworthy because they, not unlike goaltenders, tend to hit their primes later than forwards. Ristolainen sits currently at the age of 27, an age beyond where a player is expected to develop far more beyond what they are. The best version of Rasmus Ristolainen the league has ever seen came in his age 27 season, and Ristolainen seemingly at his best amounts to essentially a defensively worse Andrew MacDonald.
So overall, it’s been established Rasmus Ristolainen is bad, but now it’s time to begin considering some of the positives he has brought to the Philadelphia Flyers. I believe the most obvious and most notable aspect that Risto brings to Philadelphia is a touch of physicality many believe has been missing, as the team around Giroux’s captaincy has gotten “soft”.
The Giroux’s captaincy argument is a separate discussion, but the belief that the Flyers haven’t had any physicality since the days of Lindros is flat out untrue. Chris Pronger was a massive physical presence for the team from 2009 to 2011 before his injury led to his retirement. Scott Rinaldo took over the physicality role from there until 2015. By the time Rinaldo was being moved by the Flyers, the dedicated goon role had been all but phased out of the game, with the Flyers arguably being late to that trend. By the time Rinaldo was shipped off, Wayne Simmonds had reached his feisty-est and Radko Gudas was doling out the hits hard on the backend, something that continued until Robert Hagg stepped into that position with and later in replacement of Gudas.
All of this is to say that the argument that Ristolainen brings a physical edge to the Flyers that wasn’t there before is untrue. The Flyers have always loved their big-bodied players, often too much, and Ristolainen is just a replacement for an outdated archetype that the Flyers have never been lacking, despite the fanbase’s assertations otherwise.
Going even further with this point, Radko Gudas was actually better overall, both as a Flyer and still today, than Ristolainen has ever been in his career. Yet, Ristolainen’s physicality is regarded as some never-before-seen asset, while Gudas’s style of play received constant criticism even though he unilaterally outplayed Ristolainen despite been hit for suspensions Rasmus has so far avoided.
Now, with the knowledge that Rasmus Ristolainen is, at the very best, a generally poor defenseman, I would like to continue on by addressing a number of the platitudes that are floated out by hardcore Ristolainen supporters to try and prove his value.
Ristolainen Clears The Crease: One of the biggest arguments in favor of Rasmus is his ability to clear the crease in front of the goalie. People that fight on this hill argue that the Flyers have a soft net-front presence until Ristolainen joined the team. I think it is important to add that not only is this untrue, but the Flyers’ net-front presence has actually weakened.
For instance, take a look at the following heatmap of shots on Flyers’ goaltenders when Ristolainen was on the ice:
Rasmus Ristolainen (5x5.1m extension with Philadelphia) is a grievous harm to his team in virtually every facet of the game. This deal covers his age 28 through age 32 seasons. May God have mercy on all our souls, especially those of the players who deserve his minutes. pic.twitter.com/HVqxJtgl2v
— Micah Blake McCurdy (@IneffectiveMath) March 10, 2022
The bottom two of these heat maps are designed to show where most of the opposing team shot the puck on net from. As is visible on these charts, the highest concentration of shots when Ristolainen is iced come immediately in front of the net, both on the penalty kill and even strength. The only area that can even hold a candle to the same volume of action is just behind the dot on the right side. This is especially concerning as Ristolainen is a right-handed defenseman, and should thus be shutting down the right side, rather than leaving both it, and the crease wide open.
Ristolainen Is Hard to Play Against: The argument that other players consider Ristolainen “hard to play against” is an interesting one. Interesting because it is true, many different polls both among the general players, and those asked about the Flyers specifically say so. To many, this would be a massive weight in favor of Ristolainen’s style of game, since even star players in the league have deemed him a difficult opponent.
However, this argument isn’t necessarily made as a statement of Ristolainen’s play. Of course, Ristolainen is “difficult to play against.” He physically injures his opponents. Ristolainen makes hits. Hard hits. That much has never been in question. However, the circumstances in which he makes these hits are far from equal.
There are an incredible number of times that can be pointed to, argued both in and against Ristolainen, where the defenseman lays the body down for a big hit. The issue is more often than not, Ristolainen is taking himself out of position to make these hits, leaving other players to make up for the missing defenseman, often resulting in either a goal or a quality scoring opportunity.
The Travis Sanheim Defense: It would be unfair to discuss Rasmus Ristolainen’s play without at any point touching on his defensive partner in Philadelphia: Travis Sanheim. In their time together, both Sanheim and Ristolainen have seen a much greater amount of praise than either was used to.
Ristolainen was suddenly given credit for every quality play Sanheim made, and conversely, Sanheim gained a ton of credit for covering up Ristolainen’s mistakes. From an objective and analytical standpoint, the truth is clear, but the eye-test crowd finds themselves unconvinced.
By every potential analytic, Travis Sanheim is the best defenseman on the Flyers by a comfortable margin. Offensively keen, and defensively good, Sanheim has emerged in the 21-22 season as a defenseman that the Flyers should build around more than any other, especially considering his contract and age.
I don’t attempt to claim Sanheim is a flawless player, he isn’t, but his play has indicated, both by the eye-test and advanced analytics, that he is the best defenseman on this team, and that trading him would be a mistake. Despite this, people still argue in favor of Ristolainen as a better player than Sanheim, and those people are analytically wrong in every potential metric.
If the Flyers were to trade Sanheim in favor of keeping Risto? Sanheim is earmarked as the most recent Flyer to suddenly become elite after leaving Philadelphia.
Rasmus Ristolainen is a plug, I know that may seem aggressive now, but the 27-year-old defenseman has only deteriorated defensively since joining the league, and has not once shown signs of improvement.
Offensively, of course, Ristolainen has more value. He is certainly no stranger to the odd highlight-reel play. But when the entire season is viewed as a whole, those highlight plays truly are few and far between, and are only exacerbated by a social media presence determined to see him succeed.
If you ask me, when every other fanbase laughs at you for acquiring a player, laughs at you for keeping the player, and clowns you for extending that player, everyone else isn’t wrong. You are trying to cope with yet another bad decision by the Flyers front office. Ristolainen would have been better off traded for a bag of pucks at the deadline, now he’s the Flyers’ #3 for the next five years.