Flyers’ van Riemsdyk Back in Vigneault’s Doghouse Yet Again!

The Flyers thought they had a real impact player when they drafted winger James van Riemsdyk (JVR) in the 1st round of the 2007 NHL Entry Draft with the 2nd overall pick, and for the most part they were right. During his first tour with the Flyers (which lasted three seasons) James had some rather decent success (in the stats column at least). He was a presence in front of the net, and even achieved a year in which he surpassed the twenty-goal mark. The only knock on JVR at that time was his skating ability (or lack thereof). Many nights when you watched the Flyers you would notice van Riemsdyk gliding around the ice never taking a full stride. When the Flyers decided that James was not developing into the elite talent that they thought he would be, the Flyers opted to send him to the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2012 in exchange for a physical defenseman (whom you might remember) named Luke Schenn. 

After six productive seasons with the Leafs, then-thirty-year-old James van Riemsdyk (an unrestricted free agent at the time) and the Flyers decided it was a good idea to reunite. The two agreed to terms on a lucrative five year thirty-five million contract that pays JVR Seven million dollars a season until the end of the 2022-2023 season. With van Riemsdyk just coming of a year with the Maple Leaf’s in which he amassed thirty-six goals, the Flyers thought this was going to be a monster of a signing; Especially seeing that the 6’3 217 pound van Riemsdyk looked to offer a great net presence and a substantial amount of goals from the wing position (both of which the Flyers were lacking). 

Upon his return to the Flyers roster in 2018, van Riemsdyk was an immediate stand-out on the former Flyers’ Head Coach Dave Hakstol’s team by scoring twenty-seven goals last season for the Flyers. The only problem was that Philadelphia was mediocre at best: Finishing the season with a record of 37-37-8 for 82 points, which left them as the bottom dwellers of the Metro Division. This record cost both then-General Manager Ron Hextall and then-Coach Dave Hakstol their jobs. 

Fast forward to this season: The Flyers saw the introduction of the new powers-that-be. General Manager Chuck Fletcher and the highly acclaimed Head Coach Alain Vigneault (AV). This is when van Riemsdyk’s underachievement really started to get exposed. Now JVR is under the watchful eye of Vigneault, whose methodical systems demand his men to be complete players and work as hard in their defensive zone as they do in the team’s offense zone (a 200 ft. player if you will). Something that the career -39 player JVR is not! Earlier on in the season this writer was present in the locker room after practice when James was asked for his thoughts on his new head coach. He gave a quick but polite response (that you would expect) but his face told a different story. This interview took place after van Riemsdyk found out he was to be moved down in the lineup. 

While most players on the team bought into AV’s new systems from day one of Training Camp, JVR and a few others struggled with adapting to these systems over the course of the year. Players like Jakub Voracek and Shayne Gostisbehere were also victims of Vigneault voicing his displeasure in their play, line demotions and being labeled healthy scratches. The only difference is that these actions got through to Voracek and have seemed to get through to Gostisbehere at times as well, thus they receive ample playing time when their play models that of Vigneault’s system. 

van Riemsdyk, on the other hand, may have still had some pretty respectable stats this season totalizing nineteen goals and forty points on the year, but he still didn’t put forth the effort necessary in his own zone to ensure himself a respectable spot in the Flyers lineup most nights. JVR was brought back to Philly to play top six minutes, but his inability/lack of effort most nights to get back on defense to prevent a goal leaves James hopping over the boards with players with far less skill  and potential but still more heart than he! A fine example of this is watching a replay on a Flyers’ broadcast of the opposing team scoring. If van Riemsdyk happens to be on the ice when the other team scores you will notice him most of the time gliding into the zone with his head down after the puck is already past Hart and in the back of the net. Him skating like he has cement blocks on his feet is simply unacceptable!

When the season reconvened for the playoffs, this writer- like most of you- hoped that van Riemsdyk would come back with a different mindset. Turns out he didn’t! In the six games that van Riemsdyk has dressed for this post season he has amassed a whopping zero goals, zero assists, for a total of zero points, while averaging a minus one for his efforts (or lack thereof). To go along with that, JVR has shown a continued lack of will to want to participate in any play in his defensive zone. For his efforts this post season this SEVEN MILLION DOLLAR A YEAR PLAYER has found himself as a healthy scratch on multiple occasions in exchange for the young (twenty-two-year-old) rookie Connor Bunnaman to take his place in the lineup. A player who only makes $736,666.00 a season. While Connor has not been able to produce anything in the stats department either, he does at least show heart, drive, and willingness to do everything in his abilities to help his team win when he is out on the ice. The same can’t be said for van Riemsdyk currently.

Vigneault’s decisions this year on reducing JVR’s playing time or making him a healthy scratch were meant to try and motivate him to want to do better when given his next opportunity; Unfortunately those efforts have been vastly ineffective up to this point. Now I know there are a lot of Flyers fans out there especially on Twitter that still stick up for JVR and will apparently defend him to the end, sending this writer replies to tweets saying “Bunnaman just fits the need for tonight’s game better”, or “James is playing on the fourth line, how do expect him to produce playing with Nate Thompson?” etc. etc. But at what point are these individuals and van Riemsdyk himself going to start to put some blame on him/himself? There is no way a player in the NHL that is making seven million dollars a year should be taken out of the lineup for anyone making 700K unless that player being inserted into the lineup is the second coming of Wayne Gretzky himself. If van Riemsdyk is as good as some say he is, it shouldn’t matter who he plays on a line with. Most players who make the salary that JVR does are able to make plays happen on their OWN- especially if they were lining up against fourth line talent!  

van Riemsdyk is in Vigneault’s doghouse for sure and has been there for some time now. JVR’s unremitting ability to ignore his duties on defense might be met with a serious effort this off-season to move him to another team. You would have to think that Vigneault has expressed his displeasures with van Riemsdyk’s play numerous times over the course of the season to Fletcher judging by the amount of times he has moved JVR down in his lineup. 

Regardless of whether Fletcher can move James’s mountain of a contract in the future, Chuck may have already quietly signed his replacement for next season when he brought in Swedish winger Linus Sandin.  Sandin’s style of play offers up the same great net-front presence whether it be when his team is on the power play or just cycling the puck in the offensive zone. The opposing team’s crease is where Linus sets up shop and does all his best work. Scoring redirections, deflections, and putting in rebounds is Sandin’s bread and butter. This is not all Sandin is set to offer the Flyers next season though: He is also a force while on the forecheck and can back check well too. Linus is comfortable on both the power play unit (where he often leads the rush, skating by most everyone on the ice), and can play on the penalty killing unit where he likes to pick off a D to D pass across the blue line. Sandin shows an extreme hustle every shift while he is out on the ice and plays the 200ft game Vigneault has come to demand from his players.  

If the Flyers are unwilling to put that much pressure on Sandin, might they look elsewhere for a trade partner? Arizona has the biggest prize in all free agency with Taylor Hall becoming an unrestricted free agent at season’s end. If Arizona is unable to resign Hall, who has been rumored to be looking to for a big pay day, and he decides to go elsewhere, it might not be such a bad idea to offer up the former thirty-six-goal-scorer James van Riemsdyk to them. If so, they can try and fill that huge offensive gap in production left behind by Hall’s sudden departure. Hell, the Coyotes traded for Phil Kessel so it would stand to reason they would not mind another guy that can’t get back on defense, right?  Arizona has plenty of cap space to take on van Riemsdyk’s contract and would be desperate to find a replacement if Hall did leave town. If such a trade would ever be discussed, a player the Flyers should be asking for a deal to highlight in return is winger Lawson Crouse- a big-bodied winger who hits, is able to stand up for his teammates when needed, and who totaled 15 goals this year while playing on the third line. Making such a trade would cost the Flyers 5.5 million dollars less annually. 

    In the end, will Sandin come in and solve all the Flyers’ problems on the power play? Probably not. Will Sandin be able to produce the kind of goal totals in the NHL that James van Riemsdyk has over the years? Probably not. But what Sandin will do is offer the Flyers a net-front presence that has the ability to not only screen the goalie but put the puck in the net, while at the same time bringing an effort and passion for the game to the rink every day that will be hard to match. If Vigneault has shown us anything, it is that a guy who puts forth an effort (despite being slightly less talented than others) will always receive more playing time than a jaded star that expects ice time based on his previous statistics. And, if not Sandin, then a possible trade could see van Riemsdyk leave Philly if the Flyers find a team that is desperate for scoring like Arizona might be soon enough. 

With the difference in AV’s coaching style vs. JVRs skill set, it’s becoming clear that JVR is at an impasse: Either he buys into the system that AV has created and adjusts his style, or the Flyers need to locate a team who will showcase him as-is. Who knows how it will play out. Let’s just hope that, for now, van Riemsdyk can pull it all together for this next series against the New York Islanders and contribute on a nightly basis like we all know he is capable of.