Flyers send Emil Andrae back to Lehigh Valley

After Emil Andrae got caught standing still on the Los Angeles Kings’ fifth goal of the game on Thursday, Flyers coach John Tortorella appeared to tell associate coach Brad Shaw on the ESPN+ telecast not to play the defenseman anymore.

Shaw didn’t exactly listen. He did keep him on the bench for almost seven minutes but put Andrae out twice in the last four minutes with the game out of reach and the Kings on the way to a 7-3 victory.

Like Tortorella’s wave of his hand on the bench the previous night, the Flyers loaned Andrae back to Lehigh Valley of the American Hockey League, they announced Friday.

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Was it performance-based? There’s always a gleam of it, but the reality is the Flyers do not have an extra forward on hand. While sending a player to the AHL is not allowed during the NHL’s roster freeze — which started at 11:59 p.m. Thursday — teams can recall a player. This gives the Flyers some flexibility across the next two games before they embark on a five-game, 10-day road trip after the holiday break.

Forward Nicolas Deslauriers is on injured reserve, and the Flyers were carrying two extra defensemen in Andrae and Erik Johnson. They also have three goalies on the roster. According to Puckpedia, Andrae was one of only four Flyers on the roster who did not have to pass through waivers to be sent down. The other three are goalie Aleksei Kolosov and forwards Matvei Michkov and Tyson Foerster.

Andrae, 22, played 16 minutes, 45 seconds against the Kings and also was on the ice for Foerster’s second goal of the night. He was reinserted into the lineup after being a healthy scratch for the previous three games. The blueliner played in place of Cam York, who was taken out of the lineup after he was benched for almost half of the loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Wednesday.

Andrae’s scratches came after he was on the ice for two of the Columbus Blue Jackets’ goals in the Flyers’ 5-3 win on Dec. 10. He also was rocked in that game by Blue Jackets forward Mathieu Olivier, who was given a penalty for elbowing and then answered the bell with Nick Seeler after serving his two minutes. The Flyers play the Blue Jackets at the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday (7 p.m., NBSCP).

“One thing with Emil, he’s a quietly confident kid,” Flyers assistant general manager Brent Flahr told The Inquirer. “He’s always been undersized. He’s always played with a chip on the shoulder, but he’s very confident with what he does. He can make a mistake, and I think that’s what Torts likes about him — he’ll make a mistake, and it doesn’t impact him. Some guys make a mistake, and they kind of unravel a little bit with the young players, but he just plays.”

The 5-foot-9, 189-pound Andrae has shown a high level of grit, speed, puck movement, and hockey IQ. He helped the Flyers’ transition game but did have some miscues in his end.

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Since being recalled from Lehigh Valley on Oct. 26, Andrae appeared in 20 games and had one goal and five points, including two on the power play. He averaged 19:18 of ice time, the seventh-highest on the Flyers since the recall, and was tied with Garnet Hathaway and Travis Konecny for the fourth-best plus-minus (plus-3).

In that same stretch of games, in which the Flyers played 25 times, according to Natural Stat Trick, Andrae had the team’s top Corsi For percentage (54.7%) and expected goals for percentage (60.25%) and saw the Flyers outscore opponents, 14-10, at five-on-five.

“He came up, I thought he really showed what he could do as far as with the puck and his compete level and retrievals,” Flahr said. “Defending, he’s got some things to learn still, but I think he’s really impressed the coaches, and he’s established himself as a guy that’s going to be an NHL player for us going forward.”