Flyers Place Helge Grans On Waivers

The Philadelphia Flyers have placed defenseman Helge Grans on waivers, reports Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.

The Flyers have a full 23-man active roster, so placing Grans on waivers paves the way for the team to be able to reassign him to their AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, if he clears.

Philadelphia is carrying eight defensemen on their roster including Grans, so a reassignment would drop them back to seven defensemen, not including veteran Rasmus Ristolainen, who was placed on IR on Saturday.

Grans began the season with an injured, non-roster designation, and was activated in the same series of transactions that saw Ristolainen land on IR. He made his season debut on Friday against the Boston Bruins, skating 12:26 in a 5-1 loss. The team then made him a healthy scratch for their loss yesterday against the Carolina Hurricanes. It appears Philadelphia is now looking to send Grans down to the AHL.

His placement on waivers today is not a very surprising development for Grans, who has just seven NHL games to his name. The 2020 second-round pick is a 6’4″, 205-pound right-shot defenseman who arrived in Philadelphia as part of the three-team trade that sent Ivan Provorov to the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2023.

Since 2021-22, Grans has been a steady defensive defenseman at the AHL level, featuring regularly on his team’s penalty kill at that level. Over the course of his half-decade spent developing in the AHL, Grans has steadily earned the trust of coaches, moving from a third-pairing role in his first few years to a top-four role in each of the last two campaigns.

But despite legitimate development at the AHL level, he does not seem to be a true NHL option at this point in time. Charlie O’Connor of PHLY Sports called the Flyers’ decision to waive Grans “unsurprising,” and wrote that “it was clear on Saturday that he’s not ready to be an NHLer.”

At the start of last season, the team at Elite Prospects ranked Grans as the No. 17 prospect in the Flyers’ system, with lead scout David St-Louis projecting some potential for Grans to become a “late-blooming, bottom-pairing defenceman” if he could “unlock more explosiveness and agility and work on his finer defensive reads.”

Grans does not appear to have made those major developmental strides over the past year, so he’ll stand a good chance of clearing waivers, which will allow the Flyers to continue to try to develop him in the AHL.