The first sizeable trade of the NHL's offseason, and the first of the John Chayka era of the Toronto Maple Leafs, saw them move goaltender Joseph Woll and defenceman Simon Benoit to the Philadelphia Flyers for defenceman Emil Andrae, goaltender Samuel Ersson, and a 2026 third-round pick, according to the Flyers' official Twitter account. This is a notable deal in many respects so let's break it down.

What Philadelphia Gets

At this point, Woll has 117 career games across five seasons, with over half of those coming in the last two campaigns. Per Evolving Hockey, among 59 goalies to face at least 3000 shots across the last five years, Woll sits 14^th by shots against per Goal Saved Above Expected (GSAx). Overall, he's needed about 89 shots for every GSAx, and the league average is about 156 shots per GSAx. He has been considerably above average and doesn't turn 28 years old until next month.

The big issue for Woll is staying healthy as he's averaged under 40 starts per season across the last two years. The good news for him is he's going to a Flyers team where Dan Vladar can take at least half of the workload. If Vladar plays anywhere near as well as he did in 2025-26, Woll won't be expected to make 50+ starts. If he can get to 40, that's great, but they may not need him for more than 30. A lighter workload should, hopefully, help the injury concerns.

On the flipside, this is not great news for the fantasy values of either Vladar or Woll. If both are healthy and playing well, we could very well see a split workload between the two netminders. Vladar made 51 starts last season, and the expectation is that is the upper limit of what he'll play in 2026-27. They could genuinely split starts as more teams have been doing, leading to a 55/45 split, or somewhere thereabouts. Woll is going to a better defensive team, so that should help his ratios, but it's going to be hard to rack up wins consistently if he's splitting starts, and the same goes for his new net-minding teammate.

Benoit is a bruising defensive defenceman in every sense of the word. He is a poor puck mover who will lower the offensive upside of every skater that shares the ice with him, and that's not great news for the Flyers' fantasy-relevant forwards and defencemen. The Flyers also have Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Rasmus Ristolainen, and Jamie Drysdale clearly ahead of Benoit on the depth chart. Outside of those four, the next three Flyers defencemen skated 17:41, 15:20, and 13:49 per game, according to Frozen Tools. It seems unlikely that Benoit skates more than the 17:18 per game he got last season with Toronto, and he may even lose a couple of minutes. That is not good for his fantasy value, which he has in banger formats, so this is a double-whammy where his fantasy value declines, and he also drags down the fantasy values of his new teammates.

What Toronto Gets  

Samuel Ersson has been one of the more unreliable NHL goalies for years now. Of the 59 goalies mentioned earlier, he is 1 of 11 to have a negative GSAx over the last five campaigns. He has also had three straight years of a negative GSAx, and while that could be put on the team in front of him in prior years, the fact that Vladar was so good in 2025-26 while Ersson still struggled is not a good sign. As always, the caveat is that Goalies Are Voodoo, so who knows, maybe Ersson turns things around in Toronto. That would be a reversal of a long track record of underperformance, though.

The real interesting name in this trade is Andrae. He never seemed to find the trust of the Flyers coaches, but I wrote back in March about how some of his offensive tracking data this season put him in the same range as names like Lane Hutson, Jakob Chychrun, and Morgan Rielly. That is a wide range of outcomes, and it's not to say that Andrae will be any of those guys, but he did have better goal-driving numbers over the last two years than York and Drysdale, and better expected goal-driving numbers than any Flyers defenceman not named Drysdale or Sanheim. Andrae is going into his age-24 season and has just 107 games to his name, and a young defenceman showing some solid offensive promise on a team that was below-average offensively over the last two seasons is not nothing. Maybe he doesn't pan out – at 5'9, he's a smaller defenceman, and those types of guys have to prove they belong, whereas if he was 6'3, he'd have to prove he doesn't – but this is a smart bet to make. With this kind of profile, Andrae is either out of the league in three years, or he evolves into a reliable puck-moving blue liner. Those have been few and far between in Toronto in recent years, and if he can become that, it gives them a more dynamic blue line, which is paramount in the NHL.

Even if Andrae is just replacement-level offensively, that is a huge upgrade over Benoit, who is one of the worst offensive defencemen in the league. Whatever we think of the defensive skills, fantasy hockey is about offence, and Andrae has more of that on his worst day than Benoit does on his best. Even if Andrae doesn't play a big role, Andrae replacing Benoit's minutes should help Toronto's offence create more consistently at 5-on-5.

Who This Helps

Emil Andrae

Toronto Forwards

Samuel Ersson

Who This Hurts

Philadelphia Forwards

Joseph Woll