From Cam Atkinson’s goals to Ryan Ellis’ availability, how have Flyers’ new additions looked so far? (2024)

Philadelphia Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher entered the 2021 offseason with a clear purpose: improve his team by both adding players and by shaking up the roster as a whole.

With Wednesday night’s 5-3 win over the previously unbeaten Edmonton Oilers in the rearview mirror, it’s fair to say that the early returns on Fletcher’s shakeup are looking positive.

Through five games, the Flyers are 3-1-1, which may be good for only sixth in the brutal Metropolitan Division at the moment, but qualifies as the ninth-best points percentage in the NHL as well. It’s still extremely early in the season, but Philadelphia looks competitive again.

And those new adds? They’re not merely helping. In many cases, they’re driving the bus along with the team’s established stars.

Now that the first quintet of 2021-22 is in the books, let’s take a quick look at how all nine of Philadelphia’s newest players (with at least three games played) have performed thus far. Spoiler alert: they’ve done pretty well.

Cam Atkinson

Who is the last player to get off to this hot of a start in his Flyers career? Atkinson hasn’t just been good through five games — he’s been game-changing.

He’s a key cog on Philadelphia’s best line thus far. He’s already scored a shorthanded goal, a specialty of his for years. He’s brought a welcome shooting mentality to the Flyers’ forward mix — through four games, he was the team’s only forward with more shots (seven) than setups (five) at five-on-five per Corey Sznajder’s tracking. Oh, and he’s scoring a ton of goals — six, after Wednesday night’s two-goal barrage that earned him the nickname “Honey Badger” from Keith Yandle in his postgame media availability.

Everyone knows that Flyers fans value grit in their players, but one of the surest alternate ways to their hearts is to light the lamp a bunch of times; players with a dramatic pass-first mentality who pile up the assists often grate on Philadelphians over time (just ask Jakub Voracek). Which is part of why the swap of Voracek and Atkinson made so much sense stylistically for the Flyers. They’re both good-to-great forwards, just in diametrically opposed ways, at least in terms of offense creation. And the Flyers desperately needed a player with an itchy trigger finger.

They’re not identical players by any means — Atkinson is much more of a pure shooter — but Atkinson’s start is reminiscent of that of Danny Briere, who launched into his Flyers career in 2007-08 with four goals and seven points in his first three games. Six goals and seven points in five games isn’t quite that pace, but it’s close.

Perhaps if Atkinson goes cold from a goal scoring standpoint, frustration will start to mount. That can also happen with goal scorers in Philly. But he’s bought himself quite a lot of goodwill with this start.

Ryan Ellis

The good news for the Flyers: when Ellis has played, he’s thoroughly lived up to the lofty expectations that accompanied him to Philadelphia.

The bad news? He’s already missed two games.

Ellis’ quality as a player was never in question when the Flyers acquired him last summer, at least for anyone who has paid the slightest bit of attention to the Nashville Predators over the past decade. But his ability to stay on the ice — especially at age 30 with six more years left on his contract — absolutely was. Ellis missed 37.5 percent of last season (largely with a shattered knuckle), 29 percent of the previous year (concussion) and 46.3 percent of his 2017-18 season (offseason knee surgery). That’s a lot of recent time missed for a player who Philadelphia justifiably planned to rely upon quite heavily.

In fairness to Ellis, many of these injuries were fluky. The shattered knuckle was the result of taking a Patrik Laine shot right off the hand; his concussion came as the result of a questionable hit by Corey Perry in the Winter Classic. Even his knee surgery came after a grueling run to the Stanley Cup Final. But when a player who has only appeared in 72.7 percent of all possible games over the past four seasons misses 40 percent of his new club’s first five contests, yeah, it’s going to raise some red flags.

But as noted, Ellis has been quite impressive when he has been able to dress. He’s already racked up four points (including his first Flyers goal) and the fundamentals of his game are all sound. Entering Wednesday’s game, no Philadelphia defenseman had done a better job of preventing controlled entries when attacking one-on-one (45 percent Controlled Entry Against rate) and his smoothness on zone exits and passes in general has been obvious.

So far, the Flyers have held that Ellis’ issue is relatively minor, though Alain Vigneault did apparently admit to the traveling media on Tuesday that they expected the issue would have resolved itself sooner. For now, the expectation is that Ellis will return shortly to solidify the Philadelphia blue line corps — he did make the trip to western Canada, after all. But some concern on the part of the fan base is understandable.

Rasmus Ristolainen

Ristolainen can best be called a work in progress.

His first game was rough. I broke it down in detail in my mailbag over the weekendand noted that it wasn’t quite as poor as it may have seemed, but don’t be mistaken — it wasn’t an impressive debut. Ristolainen’s mistakes led directly to one goal against and contributed to a second. He wasn’t quite as error-prone on Saturday, but his play with the puck was less confident and the Flyers were yet again crushed from a territorial standpoint at five-on-five with him on the ice.

Wednesday, however, was much better from Ristolainen.

It wasn’t perfect. Ristolainen had a few egregious turnovers, including a particularly ugly one up to the point that nearly led to a Jesse Puljujarvi goal midway through the second period. But for the most part, Ristolainen was fine. It was his efficient puck retrieval that sent the Flyers up ice on Giroux’s game-opening goal, for example. And his physicality (six hits) and willingness to sacrifice his body (four blocks, including one that sent him to the dressing room for repairs) actually manifested itself in solid play-driving results (55.28 percent expected goals share at five-on-five). This version of Ristolainen can handle the kind of role that the Flyers envision for him.

It was just one game. But in fairness, the two not-so-good games aren’t large samples either, and Ristolainen was being asked to quickly get back up to speed after missing significant practice time (and the season’s first two contests). Wednesday at least proved there is a plausible path for Ristolainen to succeed in Philadelphia to a degree that he didn’t in Buffalo. Now, we find out if he ultimately continues down said path.

Keith Yandle

So far, Yandle has delivered everything the Flyers could have reasonably expected he would when they signed him this summer.

Now, that doesn’t mean Yandle has been perfect. Unsurprisingly, he’s made a few glaring mistakes that have led to goals against — his poor rush coverage on Goal No. 1 vs. Vancouver and his turnover leading to Florida’s game-winning shorthanded goal last Saturday immediately come to mind. But that’s just part of the Keith Yandle experience. He’s always been a creative, offensively oriented defenseman and there are going to be times that fact will lead to goals by the opposing team. The bet by any team employing Yandle is that he’ll do enough with the puck to counteract his defensive drawbacks and occasional big mistakes.

Through five games, he’s basically done so. Yandle is sitting on five points thus far, the power play that he quarterbacks holds a 30.8 percent success rate (NHL rank: fifth) and he’s been the defense’s most effective player in terms of driving controlled zone exits, with 75 percent of his exits coming with possession of the puck (through last Saturday). In addition — and this wasn’t a foregone conclusion given his struggles in the area over the past few years — the Flyers have handily won the shot quality battle at five-on-five with Yandle on the ice (56.3 percent xGF%). Yes, the coaching staff is doing their best to keep Yandle away from top line competition. But they’re not giving him a ridiculous zone start split like Joel Quenneville did last season in Florida and Yandle’s still grading out well by advanced stats. That’s a great sign.

Basically, Yandle has provided exactly what the Flyers wanted Shayne Gostisbehere to provide the last couple seasons — plus power play impact and a bunch of points in sheltered minutes to outweigh his inherent defensive flaws — except for a fraction of the cost. Yandle isn’t a star anymore, but through five games he sure looks like a useful piece in the right role.

Nick Seeler

Speaking of role players playing their roles well, Seeler certainly qualifies.

The first five games of the Flyers’ season speak to just how often a No. 7 defenseman has to play in the NHL. He stepped in for Ristolainen the first two games and now Ellis the last two, so he’s missed just one of Philadelphia’s five games (the Boston game). And in those games, he’s done pretty much exactly what a fill-in defenseman should do — he hasn’t killed the Flyers. His best moment in the fans’ eyes, of course, was when he dropped the gloves with towering Seattle defenseman Jamie Oleksiak and then screamed at an appreciative Wells Fargo Center crowd in the wake of the bout in a successful attempt to further fire them up. If you’re going to be a depth player in Philadelphia, you might as well be able and willing to fight and Seeler has already checked those boxes.

Seeler is still just a depth defenseman who shouldn’t be playing further up the lineup, as a particularly harrowing shift on Saturday alongside Ristolainen reminded. But so far, the Flyers have outscored opponents 4-2 with Seeler on the ice in limited third pair usage, so he’s not hurting the team from a results or a process (61.1 percent xGF%) standpoint. He’s done his job and if he provides a few more of those Oleksiak-type moments in the near future, there’s folk hero potential here.

Derick Brassard

Atkinson has been the best performer out of the Flyers’ new additions. But he was expected by most reasonable observers to be a very effective player — just not this effective. On the other hand, no one quite knew what Philadelphia was going to get out of the 34-year old Brassard when he signed a one-year, $825,000 contract with the club in late August.

Thus far, what they’ve gotten has been a perfectly acceptable 2C stopgap while Kevin Hayes works to return from his September surgery.

Brassard’s helper on Atkinson’s game-winning goal on Wednesday gives him six points in his first five games. It’s an assist-heavy point total (five assists to one goal) but that makes perfect sense — he’s playing on a line with Atkinson and Joel Farabee, two shooters. He should be the distributor on that line.

It’s fair to say that out of the three players, Brassard has probably been the least impactful in terms of truly driving positive outcomes. But Brassard isn’t holding back his linemates in any way; in fact, he’s complementing them. It’s fair to wonder how long this can last, but the Flyers have already made it halfway through Hayes’ best-case-scenario absence timeline and Brassard is still plugging away and showing few (if any) signs of slowing down. He’s sure looking like a useful cog at a bargain-basem*nt price right now.

Nate Thompson

Thompson is stretching the limit of “new” adds, since he was a trade deadline acquisition in 2020 and played in every single playoff game for the club in the bubble. But this is the first time the Flyers are getting 37-year old Nate Thompson, which brings a whole new set of questions regarding how much he has left in the tank.

In the first two games of the season, the Flyers got the best version of Thompson possible. No, he’s not going to deliver much in the attacking third of the ice. But neither Vancouver nor Seattle created much of anything when Thompson skated (combined 0.35 worth of expected goals at five-on-five) and Thompson even burnished his “intangible” credentials by delivering a revenge beatdown to Nathan Bastian after the Kraken depth forward tried to challenge Claude Giroux. Well, that’s intangible from an on-ice impact standpoint. For Bastian, the impact surely was very tangible.

In the final two games of the homestand, however, Thompson’s line spent more time trapped in its own zone while still not providing much in the way of offense. Thompson himself even took a bad third period penalty in a post-whistle scrum that noted exaggerator Patric Hornqvist baited him into doing so. A fourth-liner receiving limited minutes can’t afford to make those kinds of mistakes.

In short, Thompson has basically looked like Thompson — a low-ceiling bottom-sixer with penalty kill value (he had a very strong PK game versus Florida in particular) who will stick up for his teammates and contribute to the on and off-ice culture that the Flyers are trying to foster. Would they be better off with a fourth line built to provide more offensive punch? Probably, but given the team’s injuries at the moment, that’s not really an option anyway. In the meantime, get used to Thompson as the 4C for quite a while.

Zack MacEwen

Well, MacEwen has certainly appeared in games for the Flyers. Three of them, to be exact, since he was claimed and completed the visa process.

Beyond that? There hasn’t been much to show for his play.

MacEwen is what he is — a big, physical winger with some puck skills but limited in terms of skating ability at the NHL level, which makes it significantly tougher for him to score at this level vs. the AHL (where he’s thrived). His minutes have been limited (under 10 in each of his three appearances) and he really just hasn’t made much of a mark as of yet. And with Patrick Brown now traveling with the club, it’s fair to wonder if MacEwen might not have much more time to prove himself to the Philadelphia coaching staff.

Martin Jones

You’d have thought that Jones was an AHL-caliber goaltender based on the social media meltdown from many fans when Vigneault announced that Jones would start last Wednesday’s game against the Boston Bruins. It made sense to a degree — many fans were skeptical of the signing in the first place due to Jones’ poor final three seasons as a starter in San Jose and their fears were not assuaged by Jones’ preseason play, either. Vigneault made the case that he wanted to get Jones a start during the homestand so that he wouldn’t be coming in cold during the western Canada back-to-back this week (when he would essentially have to start), but that explanation was met with grumbling as well.

Then, Jones went out and did the best thing he could to boost the way that Philadelphia fans perceive him: he had a really solid debut.

That’s not to say that Jones was spectacular. He even acknowledged after the win that the team defense had played a strong game in terms of keeping the Bruins to the outside and giving him clean sightlines to see the puck and that he finished with just a +0.13 Goals Saved Above Expected mark (per Evolving-Hockey) supports that claim. But performing about at expectation is more or less what a team is looking for a backup to deliver and Jones did exactly that.

No one should be judging Jones on just one game — he’ll get his second crack at a start on Thursday vs. the Canucks — but at the very least, his solid Game 1 has dialed down the degree of panic from the fan base regarding his quality — at least for now.

All statistics courtesy of Evolving Hockey, Natural Stat Trick and Corey Sznajder.

(Photo of Derick Brassard, Cam Atkinson and Nick Seeler: Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images)