This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →
Travis Sanheim
Philadelphia Flyers Defense
Fourteen hundred five-on-five minutes at the 25th percentile of chance share, and one goal on sixty-one long shots.
| Season | Team | GP | G | A | PTS | +/- | PIM | PP | SH | GW | S | S% | TOI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017-18 | PHI | 49 | 2 | 8 | 10 | -6 | 20 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 72 | 2.8 | 15:35 |
| 2018-19 | PHI | 82 | 9 | 26 | 35 | -4 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 121 | 7.4 | 19:34 |
| 2019-20 | PHI | 69 | 8 | 17 | 25 | +4 | 32 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 110 | 7.3 | 20:09 |
| 2020-21 | PHI | 55 | 3 | 12 | 15 | -22 | 23 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 100 | 3.0 | 21:53 |
| 2021-22 | PHI | 80 | 7 | 24 | 31 | +9 | 34 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 123 | 5.7 | 22:58 |
| 2022-23 | PHI | 81 | 7 | 16 | 23 | -5 | 40 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 111 | 6.3 | 20:24 |
| 2023-24 so far | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| Career | — | 416 | 36 | 103 | 139 | -24 | 171 | 2 | 1 | 5 | 637 | 5.7 | 20:19 |
This Season So Far
The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.
Last Season
7 goals and 16 assists in 81 games — 23 points — at 20:24 a night, across 1,420 five-on-five minutes, the most of any Flyer. Minus-5, 111 shots, one shorthanded goal, 40 penalty minutes.
45.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 25th percentile, with his ice at 46-50 against an expectation of 52.75-62.66 — seven goals short at the attacking end and twelve and a half better at the defensive, which is Carter Hart.
He started 46.9 per cent of his shifts in the attacking zone, the 32nd percentile: 377 attacking draws against 426.
Six seasons, 416 games, 139 points, a career minus-24, all of it here.
The Finesse Game
111 shots at a median of 46 feet, and seven goals.
Beyond forty feet: 61 shots on goal and 1 goal — 1.64 per cent, half the league rate for defencemen of 3.17. From twenty to forty: 29 shots and 3 goals, 10.34 per cent, above the positional rate. Inside twenty: 18 shots and 3 goals.
Six of his seven goals came from inside forty feet, and the sixty-one from beyond it produced one. That is a defenceman who should stop shooting from the blue line, and the slap count says he already mostly has: 22 slap shots out of 152 tracked attempts, a 14 per cent share.
93.7 mph at the 68th percentile.
103 career assists against 36 goals. The outlet is the offensive file and sixteen assists from twenty minutes a night is a modest return on it.
The Physical Game
6-4 and 222, with 40 penalty minutes.
Top speed 22.6 mph, the 66th percentile; 0.9 bursts a game, the 47th; 3.00 miles a game, the 80th.
Above the league in mileage and speed, from a 6-4 defenceman — a genuinely good athletic profile for the position, and it makes the chance share harder to explain rather than easier.
He closes gaps with his feet, defends the rush well, and finishes checks without being punishing.
What the 25th-percentile share says is that the play breaks down after the rush is defended, and 1,420 minutes is far too many for that to be a sample problem. This is the most-used defenceman on a club that finished twenty-third in chances and he is a large part of why.
The Intangibles
Seventeenth overall in 2014, and 416 games without ever having played anywhere else.
The point totals read 10, 35, 25, 15, 31 and 23, on a club that has finished outside the playoffs for most of them.
He is twenty-seven, signed long, and playing the most minutes on the team. The skating and the frame are top-pair equipment; the record of what happens on his ice has been below the league average for four straight seasons, and at some point that stops being the roster.
What kind of player
The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.
- measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
- a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
- ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
- he lacks itraised, and he does not have it
Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.
- slot-man· shoots from where goals are scored
23.5% of his attempts in the slot, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
- durable· was available
81 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
“He closes gaps with his feet, defends the rush well, and finishes checks without being punishing.”
“What the 25th-percentile share says is that the play breaks down after the rush is defended, and 1,420 minutes is far too many for that to be a sample problem.”
“The outlet is the offensive file and sixteen assists from twenty minutes a night is a modest return on it.”
The numbers underneath
On the ice
Five-on-five, 2022-23 · 1,420 minutes
- Expected goals
- 45.7%
- 25th pct
- Shot attempts
- 46.9%
- 29th pct
share of the chances while he was out there
share of the attempts while he was out there
Goals while he was on the ice: 46 for, 50 against. Expected: 52.8 and 62.7.
The eye and the numbers
HindsightThe report ranks him 23 points above where the numbers do. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.
Both bars are percentiles among the 638 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 65 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.
Tracked
NHL Edge, 2022-23 · 81 games
- Top speed
- 22.6 mph
- 86th pct
- Bursts over 20 mph
- 0.85 a game
- Distance
- 3.00 miles a game
- Hardest shot
- 93.7 mph
- 59th pct
fastest he was clocked all season; the league's average best is 21.5
how often he reaches that speed, not how fast he goes
skated, all strengths
one shot; the league's average best is 90.0
A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.
Usual linemates
2022-23 · 1420 minutes at five-on-five
- Justin Braunoff the roster24%
Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.
Why the numbers land there
Five-on-five, 2022-23
- The club
- PHI took 47.2% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 45.7% — 1.5 below the club he did it on.
- The role
- First pair, 1,420 minutes at five-on-five — 94th percentile in ice time.
With and without
| Teammate | Together | Him apart | Mate apart |
|---|---|---|---|
| Joel Farabee | 41.4% | 47.6% | 48.0% |
| Owen Tippett | 49.4% | 44.1% | 49.3% |
| Rasmus Ristolainen | 46.8% | 45.3% | 49.7% |
41.4% together, 47.6% for him apart and 48.0% for Farabee apart. Both were better apart than together — the pairing was doing neither of them any favours.
Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.
Where he shoots from
goal on goal missed
149 unblocked shots in 2022-23, 7 of them goals. His median goal came from 24 feet. 18% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 55% from beyond forty.