The Philadelphia Flyers, ladies and gentlemen. It was less than a year ago that they shipped Shayne Gostisbehere to the Arizona Coyotes, along with some draft picks, in what was a cap dump. Fast forward to July 2022 and they trade three draft picks for Tony DeAngelo, and then sign him for two years at $5M a season:

I honestly cannot get over this. You know that meme from 'The Office' where Pam says, "they're the same picture"? That is what we have here. Leaving aside the off-ice issues from DeAngelo – he fought his goalie 18 months ago! – they are more or less the same player. I believe that DeAngelo is the superior puck-mover, but Ghost is very good himself, and the defence from both players is horrific. Regardless, the Flyers did what they did, so let's break it down.

What Philadelphia Gets

As mentioned, DeAngelo is an offence-first, and offence-only, defenceman. This isn't conjecture, either. From Evolving Hockey, here are his offensive and defensive impacts over the last three years:

The goals-for are very strong, but he also played for two very good offensive teams in New York and Carolina. Having a lot of talented offensive players on both rosters played to his strengths and gave us the production he had.

As that graph shows, his offensive impact is very high. A couple reasons for that, according to tracking data from Corey Sznajder, is that he has excellent controlled zone entry rates, is great at finding teammates for shots in the offensive zone, and can play both off the rush and in a cycle situation:

He was elite in a lot of the important tracking stats in his 2021-22 season with the Hurricanes, something that has persisted for most of his career. His problem, as is very obvious by all those orange bars at the bottom of that card, is that his defence is bad. He can't exit the zone with control very often and when he tries, he often fails at it. He also gives up the blue line at will, which gives the opponent lots of chances to establish their own cycle, or get good shots off the rush. He is an offensive defenceman in every sense of the word and I, for one, cannot wait to see how that goes along with John Tortorella's defence-first mentality. It should go well, I think.

Philadelphia does get an excellent puck-moving defenceman that can run a power play, something they haven't had consistently at least since Gostisbehere left, and even before that. The Flyers were dead last in the NHL in 5-on-4 scoring, which highlighted their need to get a player like DeAngelo, who will quarterback the team's top PP unit. In that sense, this should help guys like Sean Couturier, Cam Atkinson, and Travis Konecny. It probably does put an end to any hope of Cam York stepping up as the PP1 QB.

It is at the other end that the problems start, and this is not a good team. They can try to aggressively re-tool, or whatever buzzwords they want to use, but they're relying on bounce-back seasons from a number of players. Their bottom-6 is still a work in progress and adding DeAngelo to a defence corps that includes Rasmus Ristolainen does not bode well for their in-zone defence. If DeAngelo's defensive problems really start being an issue at even strength, he will not be given a lot of minutes in a Tortorella system. As it is, he should be behind Ristolainen, Travis Sanheim, and Ivan Provorov for ice time, and he could fall further if York really asserts himself this year (which I think he could). DeAngelo could see 19-20 minutes again, including heavy PP1 usage, but this team will not be as good offensively or defensively as Carolina was. He's been swapped to a worse team but likely in the same role; a #4 with top PP minutes. In fantasy leagues with plus/minus, it may not look pretty.

There is the question as to what Carolina does with its power play. The outgoing DeAngelo was very good for them in that role, and they could try Jaccob Slavin or Brett Pesce as a PP1 guy. It seems like they could have done that last year if they wanted to, yet went out and got their PP1 guy. Are they going to be busy in the trade market? We'll see, I suppose, but this is a bump to those two guys for now.

Who This Helps

Jaccob Slavin

Brett Pesce

Sean Couturier

Cam Atkinson

Who This Hurts

Cam York

Tony DeAngelo

Ivan Provorov

Philadelphia's goaltending