The Flyers' workhorse was a glaring omission for a second-straight year.
Team defense was the biggest strength of the fairytale 2025-26 Philadelphia Flyers, but national media isn't as willing to give them that kind of recognition just yet.
On Sunday, the NHL Network released its list of the top 20 defensemen in the NHL right now, but no Flyers players managed to appear on that list, and questionably so.
Many of the names were the top dogs you would come to expect: Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, Lane Hutson, Miro Heiskanen, Rasmus Dahlin, Zach Werenski, so on and so forth.
The second half of the list, however, featured a young newcomer in Jackson LaCombe from Anaheim, Minnesota's Brock Faber, and ageing veteran Victor Hedman, who was a superstar in his day.
That day has passed, however, and miraculously, No.1 Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim was excluded from the list entirely.
Hedman, 35, is a two-time Stanley Cup champion and former Norris Trophy winner, but his inclusion ahead of the Flyers' Sanheim makes the NHL Network's list patently false.
This ranking is meant, by their own admission, to be of the best defensemen in the NHL "right now", yet Hedman, as the most egregious example, played just 33 games last season, scoring one goal and 17 points in just 33 games while averaging a career-low 18:52 of ice time.
The hulking Swede was producing at his worst offensive pace in over a decade, for his standards, while battling injury and Father Time.
As for Sanheim, the 30-year-old spearheaded the Flyers to their first playoff berth in six years, scoring a career-high 11 goals in addition to his 37 total points, averaging a whopping 24:13 a night, and finishing the season with a career-best +12 rating and a career-low 20 penalty minutes.
Sanheim's 24:13 ranked 16th in the league amongst qualifying defensemen, doing everything the Flyers asked of him at both ends of the ice while playing in every regular season game this season except for the meaningless season finale, as the Flyers had already solidified their place in the Stanley Cup playoffs with his help.
And in addition to his NHL exploits, Sanheim was also called upon to represent Canada at the 2026 Winter Olympics, tallying one assist in five games and taking home a Silver Medal after a heartbreaking loss to the United States in the Gold-Medal Game.
It's harder to argue for Sanheim against the more prolific defensemen and the established superstars, but the 6-foot-4 defender not featuring at all in the ranking of the 20 best defenders in the NHL is a dubious choice at best.
