March 06, 2026
Friday's NHL trade deadline came and went, and Rasmus Ristolainen is still here with the Philadelphia Flyers.
There was interest in the defenseman, league insiders circulated for weeks, and especially after his excellent performance for Team Finland in the Winter Olympics.
But general manager Danny Brière had his price set, too, and believed from the buzz that went around to be at a first-round draft pick at minimum.
And he didn't budge, not in the weeks that saw the Flyers go sliding out of the playoff picture and back into an expected sell mode, not as the hours to Friday's 3 p.m. ET cutoff dwindled into minutes, and certainly not after the deadline time had passed and questions from the press followed as to why Ristolainen was kept.
"Look, at the end of the day, Risto adds a lot of value to our team," Brière told the reporters assembled upstairs at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees. "I wasn't trying to dump Risto. I wasn't trying to get rid of him. I think the media turned it into a little bit of a circus, to be honest – and that's OK, I get it. It's part of the job, part of my job, to deal with that."
"But the reality is Risto is an important part of our defense," Brière continued, noting that the 31-year-old is still under contract for next season, and is, after all, a tough, top-four caliber right-handed defenseman within a league landscape where those kinds of players are even tougher to come by.
He never said Ristolainen was off the table, though. It was more so that he never got what he was looking for in an offer.
"We saw it on the market, and yes, when that came out, I did get a lot of calls," Brière said. "We took them seriously. We went through all the teams that were serious, but at the end of the day, it just did not make sense value-wise. There's nothing that made [enough] sense to trade him for what he brings."
So Ristolainen is still here. He'll remain with the Flyers to close out a season that isn't totally done for them yet, but with a six-point gap between them and the Bruins for the second Wild Card spot in the East playoff race, a pretty lifeless shutout loss to Utah on Thursday night, and the trade of established winger Bobby Brink to Minnesota earlier Friday, they're not looking great for the rest of the way either.
Even so, this route to keep Ristolainen was better than settling for whatever was out there as of Friday, Brière indicated.
"All I can tell you is the value wasn't as high as we needed for us moving forward," the GM said, declining to reveal whether a first-round pick was ever offered in any trade discussions.
"Risto is an important leader in our room," Brière said at another point. "I can promise you that our guys prefer having him on their side than playing against him. He's the type of defenseman that brings guys to the fight because, you know, he runs around, he hits guys, and he pisses off opponents. There's a lot of value to that."
But apparently nothing out there that matched that value as the clock ticked down Friday on the deadline.
Inevitably, Brière's words are going to irritate pockets of the Flyers fan base. More than likely, they already have.
The organization is looking at Year 6 without the playoffs, has a team on the ice that is still in dire need of a true top center, among other talent-starved holes in the current lineup, and still seems a few years and a few more high-end prospects off from resembling anything truly competitive.
Plus, Oliver Bonk, the right-handed defensive prospect they drafted 22nd overall in 2023, is in the system with the Phantoms down in the AHL. David Jiříček, the former sixth overall pick from 2022 and another right-shooting defenseman who came back to the Flyers in the Brink trade with Minnesota, is going to be there with the Phantoms now, too.
So why not get the draft capital Ristolainen could net right now, and clear a path for either of those two younger pieces?
Brière didn't see it as that black and white.
"I can't say that David and Oliver Bonk are ready today, to come in especially in a top four position," he said. "It's one thing to come in and play in a bottom pairing as they start, but they haven't even done that yet. So I think they need a little bit more time, and we need to protect them a little bit.
"You ask those two young guys to come in and play, I mean, Risto is playing top pairing with [Travis Sanheim] right now. I don't think it would be fair to ask David or Oliver to play those minutes yet.
"We hope that at one point, it comes to that, but I don't think they're ready for that role yet, and Risto has shown since he's come back that he can handle those minutes. He's shown at the Olympics as well how valuable he can be for a team."
"So we hope they get there, but we want to protect them as well along the way."
And trading away Ristolainen, for Brière, wasn't worth compromising on that plan. There wasn't an offer to him, at least on Friday, that went above that.
So Ristolainen is still here.
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