Armchair Hockey Scout Beta

This is the 2024-25 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

6

Travis Sanheim

Philadelphia Flyers Defense

Forty-four points and twenty-four minutes a night, and twenty-one goals of goaltending lost behind him.

SeasonTeamGPGAPTS+/-PIMPPSHGWSS%TOI
2017-18PHI492810-620000722.815:35
2018-19PHI8292635-4222021217.419:34
2019-20PHI6981725+4320001107.320:09
2020-21PHI5531215-22230011003.021:53
2021-22PHI8072431+9340011235.722:58
2022-23PHI8171623-5400111116.320:24
2023-24PHI81103444-20480131466.923:48
2024-25 so far
Career49746137183-442192287835.920:53

This Season So Far

The 2024-25 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

81 games, 10 goals and 34 assists for 44 points, 1 shorthanded, 48 penalty minutes, 23:48 a night and minus-20, with 3 game-winners. He took 52.7 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five over 1,529 minutes, the 73rd percentile and the most five-on-five ice on the club, and his ice went 58-77 against an expectation of 62.22-55.88.

Four goals of finishing below what the chances were worth and twenty-one more conceded than they called for — the largest goaltending deficit of anybody on the club. Forty-four points, 34 assists and 10 goals are all career highs, and he finished minus-20.

The Finesse Game

211 attempts at a median of 41 feet with 53 per cent of them from beyond forty and 13 per cent from inside twenty, 146 of those on goal, converted at 6.8 per cent against a career 5.87 across 783 shots.

137 career assists in 497 games. He carries the puck out of his own end rather than rimming it and the first pass is the best on the club. Two career power-play goals in 497 games from a defenceman who has just had a 44-point season is a strange line on the page.

The Physical Game

He is 6-4 and 222 and took 48 penalty minutes.

219 career penalty minutes in 497 games is a very low rate for a man that size taking twenty-four minutes a night. He defends with reach and with skating and almost never with contact; the body is there and has never been the way he plays.

The Intangibles

Seventeenth overall in 2014, seven seasons, all of them in Philadelphia, 183 points in 497 games and a career minus-44.

He played 81 games in the hardest role on the club and came out on the right side of the chances at both ends of it. The minus-20 is a fact about the crease behind him and not about the twenty-four minutes.

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2023-24 · 1,529 minutes

Expected goals
52.7%
73rd pct

share of the chances while he was out there

Shot attempts
50.8%
61st pct

share of the attempts while he was out there

Goals while he was on the ice: 58 for, 77 against. Expected: 62.2 and 55.9.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight
Report
70th
Numbers
73rd

The two rank him within 3 points of one another. 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.

Both bars are percentiles among the 437 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 70 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.

Usual linemates

2023-24 · 1529 minutes at five-on-five

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, 2023-24

The club
PHI took 52.6% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 52.7% — 0.1 above the club he did it on.
The role
First pair, 1,529 minutes at five-on-five — 98th percentile in ice time.

With and without

TeammateTogetherHim apartMate apart
Cam York50.4%57.8%58.0%
Travis Konecny51.1%53.3%54.9%
Sean Couturier51.8%53.0%55.6%

50.4% together, 57.8% for him apart and 58.0% for York 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

211 unblocked shots in 2023-24, 10 of them goals. His median goal came from 34 feet. 13% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 53% from beyond forty.