This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Travis Sanheim

82 games at 24:30 a night, and the only defenceman here whose on-ice goals came out ahead of the chances.

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	PHI	81	10	34	44	-20	48	0	1	3	146	6.9	23:48
2024-25	PHI	82	8	22	30	-6	40	0	0	0	139	5.8	24:30
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	579	54	159	213	-50	259	2	2	8	922	5.9	21:24

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 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

8 goals and 22 assists in 82 games — 30 points at 24:30 a night, the largest assignment on the club, with 40 penalty minutes.

53.5 per cent of the expected goals at five-on-five, the 85th percentile, across 1,626 minutes — the most five-on-five ice of anybody in this chapter. His ice went 65-81 against an expectation of 69.20-60.24, which is a defenceman who came out slightly ahead on both sides of the ledger. On this roster that makes him unique.

The Finesse Game

139 attempts at a median of 40 feet with 16 per cent from inside 20 and half from beyond 40 — a defenceman who joins the rush and does not live at the point. 8 goals is a real number for a player used this way.

The skating is the foundation. He exits his own zone with the puck under pressure and he is quick enough to recover when the first read is wrong, which at twenty-four and a half minutes a night he needs to be.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 222 and genuinely heavy. He defends the front of his own net, he closes a rush by stepping up rather than backing off, and he is not moved off a puck in the corner.

40 penalty minutes in 82 games at that ice time is an ordinary rate. He is not an agitator and he does not take liberties; the physicality is structural.

The Intangibles

Seventeenth overall in 2014, 579 games, and a career that took six seasons to become what it is — he was a healthy scratch in a playoff series in 2018.

He is 29, on a long contract, and last season he played every game and led an over-matched defence in every category the club counts.

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
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
21.9% of his attempts in the slot, 94th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.69) · 44% keep it
hard-shot· beats a goaltender from range
5 of 104 attempts from 40 feet or beyond, 4.8%, 95th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.21) · 16% keep it
durable· was available
82 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
workhorse· carries the load at even strength
19:50 a game at five-on-five, 99th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“He exits his own zone with the puck under pressure and he is quick enough to recover when the first read is wrong, which at twenty-four and a half minutes a night he needs to be.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He defends the front of his own net, he closes a rush by stepping up rather than backing off, and he is not moved off a puck in the corner.”
hard-to-movea strength· cannot be shifted from where he decides to stand
“He defends the front of his own net, he closes a rush by stepping up rather than backing off, and he is not moved off a puck in the corner.”
takes-libertieshe lacks it· crosses the line and knows where it is
“He is not an agitator and he does not take liberties; the physicality is structural.”
agitatorhe lacks it· gets under the skin; draws the retaliation
“He is not an agitator and he does not take liberties; the physicality is structural.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,626 minutes

Expected goals: 53.5%; 82nd pct
Shot attempts: 49%; 43rd pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 65 for, 81 against. Expected: 69.2 and 60.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

84th

Numbers

82nd

The two rank him within 2 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 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 79 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, 2024-25 · 82 games

Top speed: 22.4 mph; 79th pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.51 a game
Distance: 3.65 miles a game
Hardest shot: 93.4 mph; 70th pct

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

2024-25 · 1626 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, 2024-25

The club: PHI took 52.1% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.5% — 1.4 above the club he did it on.
The role: First pair, 1,626 minutes at five-on-five — 100th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Cam York	55.2%	51.4%	51.8%
Travis Konecny	53.8%	53.3%	47.1%
Sean Couturier	57.2%	51.6%	48.1%

55.2% together, 51.4% for him apart and 51.8% for York apart. Both were worse apart, so whatever the two of them had together was doing real work.

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

210 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 8 of them goals. His median goal came from 43 feet. 16% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 50% from beyond forty.