It is the most obvious hole on the Philadelphia Flyers lineup and it’s something that general manager Danny Briere clearly wants to address, and now might be the perfect time to do so.
Scrolling down the lineup for the Flyers, their third defensive pairing on the blue line sticks out like the sorest of sore thumbs. Glowing red with the word “Yee-ouch!” animated over it, a rotating cast of characters like Noah Juulsen, Adam Ginning, Egor Zamula, and not until recently Emil Andrae, gives little hope that this team has a very solid blue line for the rest of the season. The top four is virtually locked in place with Cam York, Travis Sanheim, Nick Seeler, and Jamie Drysdale not being a problem whatsoever for this team, but there lacks stability beyond that.
Rasmus Ristolainen being hurt doesn’t help but the biggest takeaway from training camp and is that head coach Rick Tocchet and Briere were generally unimpressed and disappointed that no defenseman really stepped up to claim the opportunity. Players were sent down early and someone like Andrae was viewed as too short to really be one of the favorites for the front office and coaching staff. Just all around, not a good scene.
With that, the Flyers have been fairly open with possibly making a trade to address this issue and some recent reports have narrowed in on them looking for a young blueliner that can fit with the current long-term timeline for this team. That could mean a whole lot of things — whether it’s targeting a team’s prospect in a future move, or looking for someone a bit older that could at least supplement their blue line — but it’s clear that they at least know it’s a problem that they want to solve.
One of the avenues that the Flyers can stroll down is taking advantage of another team’s logjam on the blue line and that might be exactly what is happening for the Edmonton Oilers.
On Tuesday, the Oilers announced that defenseman Alec Regula has been activated from injured reserve. That would mean absolutely nothing over here unless it suddenly meant that Edmonton has eight healthy defensemen on their roster — someone who is a pretty decent blueliner is not even going to be able to get on the ice for a team hoping to compete for the Stanley Cup.
While the easiest answer might be for the Oilers to just send Troy Stecher down on waivers (who is very familiar with the waiver wire), they could end up making a deal and the Flyers should be all over it if one specific defenseman is getting thrown around on the trade market.
Ty Emberson could be trade target for Flyers
Ty Emberson is someone that the Flyers should be looking into, and it just so happens that according to Frank Seravalli, the Oilers might not go the easy route and send Stecher on waivers as Emberson could be a trade piece teams are interested in (like the Flyers should be).
With Zach Hyman coming back, the Oilers will have to make changes to fit him in the roster.
Troy Stetcher has been in trade rumors, but @frank_seravalli says to also keep an eye on Ty Emberson 👀 pic.twitter.com/Gz0qW1z7o7
— B/R Open Ice (@BR_OpenIce) November 3, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Now, we would not blame anyone for having no idea who Ty Emberson is. Originally a third-round draft pick of the Arizona Coyotes in 2018, the 25-year-old defenseman has been bouncing around the league since then. Traded to the New York Rangers, claimed off waivers by the San Jose Sharks, and then traded again to the Oilers just over a year ago; Emberson has not really been able to find solid footing to ply his trade ever since he signed his first professional contract.
But now that he has been able to stay in one place for longer, his value as a depth defender on a good team is shining through and he’s starting to get noticed. The right-handed blueliner has played 90 games for the Oilers in the last two seasons and has been roughly fourth or fifth in the depth chart depending on who is healthy. During that time, he’s scored three goals and 16 points but it’s not production where Emberson is able to show his worth.
Emberson isn’t someone that lights the world on fire, but he’s just a stable force and has a couple attributes going for him. When he has been on the ice at 5-on-5 the last two seasons, the Oilers have 51.85 percent of the expected goals share, 50.64 percent of the shot attempt share, and 50.99 percent of the shot on goal share. He doesn’t have the most attractive numbers when it comes to actual goals — it’s just 46.12 percent of the goals share, but considering that Emberson rarely gets the opportunity to play with the actual stars of that Edmonton squad, that’s not bad.
The most common Oilers forwards that Emberson has been on the ice with through the past two seasons has been Adam Henrique, Mattias Janmark, Connor Brown, and Vasily Podkolzin. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is the only player with some amount of skill when it comes to the top eight forwards that the 25-year-old defenders got to share the ice with. Of the 1,173 minutes that Emberson has played for Edmonton, 125 of those were shared with Connor McDavid (and he dominated in those minutes, too).
Beyond the on-ice metrics, Emberson has a very interesting toolkit. The 6-foot-2, right-handed defenseman isn’t necessarily some sluggish, do-nothing player. According to NHL EDGE statistics, Emberson is in the 79th percentile of skaters when it comes to maximum skating speed, the 81st percentile in speed bursts over 20 mile per hour, and has been in the 53rd percentile of skaters when it comes to total skating distance (which is impressive given his depth minutes). Basically, he’s a very good skater.
Additionally — just to add more fuel to the fire of desire — Emberson doesn’t shy away from contact. According to StatMuse, Emberson leads all Oilers defensemen with 5.5 hits per 60 minutes on a blue line that doesn’t tend to be very physical.
What adding Emberson could mean for Flyers
But what could this mean for the Flyers? Adding another defenseman isn’t a clear answer to a whole lot of problems, but it could at least provide them with a much more stable force on the back end. Given that he’s right-handed (although he has played on the left side before), Emberson will automatically be in the lineup as it currently stands, but when Ristolainen comes back it will only get messier.
But given his age of just 25 years old, and if things go well while Ristolainen remains off the ice, Emberson could certainly be considered a long-term replacement for the Finnish veteran. Maybe not as physically dominant as Ristolainen can be, but geared towards more of the high-pace game that the Flyers want to play with, the current Oilers blueliner is someone that can be an improvement for now and someone to just supplement the future blue line.
Do we all hope Oliver Bonk leaps over Emberson if this move is made? For sure. But having this sort of benchmark player for him to aim to be better than might only be a good thing. And if he’s not? Well, the Flyers then still get an above-average depth defender.
Depending on the cost (like every single trade in existence), it seems like a win-win for the Flyers to go out and grab Emberson. He doesn’t change much of their current plans but he would be such an improvement over who they currently have clogging up the bottom of the right side. Oh yeah, and Emberson is signed through next season at just $1.3-million AAV. Another big box ticked.
The Flyers clearly want to get better in this area and for the right balance of age, contract, availability, acquisition cost, and ability, it feels like no one in the entire NHL fits the mold as well as Emberson. If this happens, come back to this blog.