May 19, 2026
James Guillory/Imagn Images
Travis Sanheim came back better from 4 Nations and the Olympics.
Travis Sanheim remembered feeling a switch flip.
It was the Flyers' first game back from the NHL's 4 Nations Face-Off, where Sanheim had just spent the previous two weeks skating with some of the league's very best for a gold medal-winning Team Canada.
And waiting for him when he got back to Philadelphia was arguably the world's best in Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers.
The defenseman knew he should've been nervous, but he wasn't.
"You're usually worried when you're playing them," Sanheim recalled. "But for whatever reason, I had the confidence that it was just another game, and that I could go out and play against him and have no issues."
And he didn't.
On Feb. 22, 2025, the Flyers beat the visiting Oilers, 6-3. Sanheim, in his return to the top Philadelphia defensive pairing, skated 23:03 of ice time. He did get caught on John Klingberg's first-period goal, but whenever McDavid hit the ice, nothing happened, and for the game on the whole, Edmonton was held to just 18 shots on goal while the Flyers piled on down the other way.
At that point, though, the Flyers were in a holding pattern. They were below .500, their roster was thin, and soon enough, their former head coach John Tortorella was on the path to getting fired.
But Sanheim was different.
He was a smoother skater, he was stronger, he was much more aggressive, a lot more confident, and for the first time in his career, the larger hockey world was really starting to take notice of him thanks to 4 Nations, which had him on Canada's radar for the Olympics the following year.
A switch flipped, and Sanheim realized that he could skate with – and match up just fine against – the league's very best.
He wasn't nervous anymore.
The Flyers were tied late into their first Stanley Cup Playoff game in more than five years.
From the outset of Game 1 against the rival Pittsburgh Penguins, current head coach Rick Tocchet was sure to keep Sanheim's pairing with Rasmus Ristolainen glued to star captain Sidney Crosby and his veteran top line, which held throughout the first-round series.
But with just shy of 10 minutes gone by in the third period came one of the fewer looks where Sanheim was on the ice while Crosby wasn't.
In the Pittsburgh zone, Ristolainen pinned the puck by the wall, then fed a pass across the blue line to Sanheim over the middle.
Two Penguins sluggishly closed in to try and take it, but Sanheim made a quick move to cut through both into the open, then stepped into a shot across his body that Pittsburgh goaltender Stuart Skinner couldn't see.
Sanheim scored the go-ahead goal, the Flyers went on to take Game 1, and though it would take five more games and a ton more minutes from him after, they eventually put away the Penguins for the series, 4-2, to mark another milestone in what became Philadelphia's unexpected breakout year.
TRAVIS SANHEIM WALKS AROUND SODERBLOM AND BURIES IT 😱
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) April 19, 2026
Flyers re-take the lead 🔥 pic.twitter.com/hhPiNN9iIH
Sanheim averaged a team-leading 26:04 of ice time through it, which included skating 31:20 deep into overtime of that clinching Game 6, before Cam York sailed the winning goal into the net and then his stick way into the stands.
He scored again in Game 5 and went an also team-leading plus-5 through the series, while Crosby had just a power-play goal, four assists, and a minus-1 rating, while getting kept off the board entirely in that last game.
Sanheim just always seemed to be in his way and wouldn't leave.
A few months prior, and back when the Flyers' playoff odds were slim, Sanheim made Team Canada again for the Olympics, and was back skating alongside McDavid and Crosby both in Milan.
Tocchet, who was also a member of Canada's national coaching staff for the past two years, saw the pieces of something special out of Sanheim during 4 Nations, which he highlighted upon taking up the Flyers' job behind the bench.
But at the Olympics, he saw another switch flip.
"I think the Olympics was huge for him," Tocchet said last Wednesday. "I think that, going into the Olympics, he didn't play the first game, and then when he got in the lineup, since that second game from today, he just gained leadership.
"His aggressiveness on the ice, just everything about him...You can tell that there's a motivation, 'I was on Team Canada, at the Olympics. I was one of the six defensemen.' I think that carried over his confidence coming here for the Flyers and helping our team out."
Crosby was going AT IT with Sanheim along the boards 😳 pic.twitter.com/nZaWS4WTrE
— Gino Hard (@GinoHard_) April 19, 2026
"I think that confidence that both those events gave me in my ability and the way that I can play makes it that I can go out and bring that consistency day in and day out, and compete against these guys," Sanheim said a day earlier. "I know there's challenges to go along with it, and there's gonna be games where it doesn't go your way, but I have the confidence now that I feel like I can do that night in and night out."
He isn't nervous much anymore.
The Flyers were swept out of the second round by the top-seeded Carolina Hurricanes.
Sanheim continued on as Philadelphia's leading skater, averaging 27:04 of ice time a night across those last four games, but a still-developing team had hit a wall and pretty clearly got overwhelmed.
But they did come a long way and had to be proud of that, before turning the page toward figuring out how to reach for more, Sanheim included.
During the Flyers' exit day last week, Sanheim sat before the press at the team's training center in Voorhees and talked about how many of his goals he had met this past season.
Mainly, he wanted to make Canada's Olympic roster, and he wanted to finally see the Flyers into the playoffs.
The 30-year-old checked both off his list, and then some.
"Usually, you don't hit all of them," Sanheim said. "I would say the majority of my goals were hit this year."
But just as much as it took the Flyers a revitalized Trevor Zegras, a more refined Jamie Drysdale, a subtler Cam York, a meaner Sean Couturier, an unshakable Dan Vladar, and a youth movement led by star rookie Porter Martone, among the dozens of other difference makers that all helped the team fully breakthrough, it took a much sharper and composed Sanheim to lead the blue line, too.
One more switch had to flip.
Travis Sanheim saves what would’ve been a game-tying goal for the Canes 😳 pic.twitter.com/ujRZ3ujaux
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) May 5, 2026
Sanheim had already gotten physically stronger and had worked up to taking on the regular and heavy top-pairing minutes for the Flyers' defense over the previous several years. But making the most of them – making them count – took one last push that's never quite so easily explained because it usually never moves in a completely straight line.
"Probably maturity," Sanheim said at exit day, speaking to where his game grew the most. "Just to be able to do it over and over and over again, like big minutes, playing against some of the best players in the world and having some success against them. I think it's hard to do.
"I've been trying to do it for a number of years now. The consistency level is really hard. You're playing against world-class players and guys that are, like I said, best in the world, best in our sport. I just think to have some of the success that I did means a lot for me, and something I'm continuing to strive to be better.
"I was really happy with some of the work that I did."
Because now it's at a point where, if a Sidney Crosby or a Connor McDavid are across from him, Sanheim isn't nervous about it anymore.
He can keep up.
SIGN UP HERE to receive the PhillyVoice Sports newsletter
Follow Nick on Twitter: @itssnick
Follow Nick on Bluesky: @itssnick
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
