VOORHEES, N.J. \u2014 Please excuse Rasmus Ristolainen if he makes a big deal about his Olympic bronze medal with Finland.<\/p>\n
After all, the 31-year-old Flyers defenseman has played 13 seasons in the NHL and never competed in so much as one Stanley Cup playoff game. Participating in the Winter Olympics in Milan is about as close as he\u2019s gotten to hockey greatness.<\/p>\n
Tuesday, Ristolainen returned to Flyers practice thrilled at his Olympic moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a lot of fun, very exciting,\u201d Ristolainen said. \u201cI thought I played pretty well. Obviously you go there to win. We were close but it still feels pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Playing against the best players in the world and holding his own should only build Ristolainen\u2019s confidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hope so,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel really confident in my game. Hopefully I can bring it here and we have a good run here.\u201d<\/p>\n
The whole experience, he said, was positive, including getting to see friends he grew up with come out to support him.<\/p>\n
Ristolainen, who\u2019s been paired with Nick Seeler for the Flyers, has one year left on a contract that pays him $5.1 million annually. He\u2019s been the subject of trade rumors, but there\u2019s not much a player can do about that unless he has an iron-clad no-trade clause.<\/p>\n
This is nothing new for Ristolainen. He\u2019s been down this road before.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose are things you can\u2019t really control,\u201d said Ristolainen, who was acquired from Buffalo in 2021. \u201cYou try to do your part, get better every day. What happens, happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would like to be around for a possible push to the playoffs, though the Flyers could be headed to a possible franchise-record sixth straight season out of postseason play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve shown in the past that we\u2019re confident,\u201d he said. \u201cI heard the guys here had a really good week of practice. So I think we\u2019re ready to make a push.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ristolainen would also like to get finally get into a playoff game after 13 long years split between Buffalo and Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s why you play the game, you play to win,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s when I feel I\u2019m at my best. It was nice to play in the (Olympic) tournament where the games mean so much. The bigger the stage, the better I perform.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ristolainen said he\u2019s keeping the treasured bronze medal at home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just happy I didn\u2019t lose it after the game,\u201d he said. \u201cThat would have been tough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"VOORHEES, N.J. \u2014 Please excuse Rasmus Ristolainen if he makes a big deal about his Olympic bronze medal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470298,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5112],"tags":[1468,5,4,1467,56,5205,43,5095],"class_list":{"0":"post-470297","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-flyers","8":"tag-flyers","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","13":"tag-philadelphiaflyers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116128182778996510","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}