Following the trade of Shayne Gostisbehere, it seemed as if Philadelphia was clearing cap space to make another splash on the back-end. This offseason is moving so fast that it's easy to forget that they've already picked up Ryan Ellis from Nashville.

Well, they did indeed add another defenceman, and it came way out of left field:

Weekes would later explain that the picks are a first-rounder this year and a second in 2023. This is, uh, a bit weird, and we'll need some time to explain.

What Philadelphia gets

Rasmus Ristolainen is truly one of the few remaining divides in the online hockey community. A lot of 200 Hockey Men proponents see a big body playing 22-25 minutes a night and think he's an absolute lock to be a fringe top-pair guy. People who are more into underlying numbers have seen Ristolainen drown in the deep end for years and are wondering what everyone else sees. Below is his entire career by offensive and defensive impacts. Offence is the top row and defence is the bottom row. Having positive numbers in the top row is good – it indicates a positive offensive impact – and having negative numbers on the bottom row is also good – it indicates you're below the league average for shot rates/quality allowed. So, red on the top row is good, and blue on the bottom row is good. Got it? (from HockeyViz):

There are 16 individual tiles, and only one is a positive impact at either end (offensively in 2016-17). He has been atrocious almost his entire career. I will say that his latest years show some improvement on his right side specifically, so maybe there’s *something* there defensively. But he’s still a black hole offensively so even getting some defensive value out of him isn’t enough to balance it out.

Before anyone says, "well, yeah, Buffalo has been awful the entire time," that is true. But these measurements also take line mate and opponents into context, which is why Rasmus Dahlin has a positive offensive impact in 2/3 seasons and yet Ristolainen in only 1/8; Dahlin is good and Risto is not.

The other side of the coin is whether he can turn his career around in his new environment. He will be going to learn under Michel Therrien and Alain Vigneault. Call me skeptical.

This is also terrible from a fantasy perspective for Risto. Though his ice time had come down in recent seasons, it was the power-play production that gave him any value besides his hits+blocks. Not that it was a ton of production, but he had 16 PPPs in his last 118 games, or 11-12 every 82 games. He is now going to a team with Ivan Provorov, Ryan Ellis, and Travis Sanheim. He is not going to sniff the power play with regularity unless there's an injury. There is a big difference between being a 35-40 point guy with huge peripherals in multi-cat leagues and being a 20-25-point guy with huge peripherals in multi-cat leagues. Both are useful, the former has top-10 upside. The only hope is that with Philly being a higher-scoring environment than Buffalo, he picks up points he wouldn't get otherwise, and it offsets the power-play loss. It might be enough. We'll see.

Either way, in real life, this is a massive loss for the Flyers, and in fantasy, this appears to be a loss for Ristolainen owners. I suppose, on the upside, if Philly's goaltending rights itself, the days of Ristolainen going minus-30 or minus-40 in a season and thus murdering his fantasy value are over with.

On the flip side, this is great news for Dahlin owners. I mean, it could be some tough sledding for a few years until they fully re-tool, but Dahlin his now the lock on the top PP unit, whereas Ristolainen had been eating into his minutes at times. If he’s not traded, Colin Miller should also pick up some more minutes and maybe PP2 status.