Glad Sanheim will get some more playoff games this season. I just wish he had gotten two more (at least) with the Flyers.
I watched him pretty closely in the four games he had in the Pittsburgh series and thought he played well.
He sometimes gets criticized for a lack of strength in his board play, but he's improved in this area. He's not as strong as he'll be in a couple of years, but he's learned to use his speed to get to loose pucks in the corners and move them up ice quickly, which is usually better than getting bogged down in a board battle anyway.
In his four playoff games, the Flyers allowed 18 goals. Sanheim was on the ice for two of them.
The goal against that seemed to punch his ticket to the press box was Kessel's in the first period of game four. As you can see in the sequence starting at 0:52 in the video below, Sanheim didn't catch Kessel, but I'm not sure who could have, in that situation.
The play started with a good stretch pass from Manning to Laughton. After an attempted pass to Raffl failed, the puck came back to Laughton on the left boards. Then, we saw one of those blind, backward, diagonal passes in the offensive zone that the Flyers attempt too often (Jake does them; G does them; Simmer does them; even Couts does them. They drive me nuts.)
Anyway, Laughton's hail Mary pass to no one in particular was read by Kessel, who filtered it to Malkin and they were off to the races. Sanheim managed to get back enough to leave Kessel with only one option; a forehand shot that was stoppable. Unfortunately, Elliott let it leak through and the Pens went up 2-0.
After the game, Dave Hakstol said one of the biggest problems in the Flyers' poor start was "early in the game, until the first power play, our D didn't move the puck well, we weren't sharp and crisp with it back there ... that's where a lot of our issues started."
If you go back and watch the start of that game, until the first power play that Hak mentioned, you'll see MacDonald falling and giving the Penguins possession in our end. You'll see Manning losing the puck in the neutral zone, which gave Pitt a great opportunity. You'll see turnovers from Filpulla, Read and Weal. You'll also see MacDonald take an unnecessary penalty that created the first power play which led to the Penguins' first goal.
Did Sanheim do anything wrong during this part of the game that Hak focused on? Nope. He also made a nice recovery of the puck behind our goal and passed it to a wide open AMac for an easy zone exit.
Was he at fault for the Kessel goal? I don't see it, but if he was he had company in Laughton and Elliott.
So, after that game Sanheim sat, and Hagg, Manning and Gudas played. For a coach who expressed concerns about a D-corps that didn't move the puck well, it was a really strange decision.