The injury bug certainly has not been kind to the Flyers over the past couple of seasons, but in a bizarre circumstance, it’s been things that didn’t happen in games that have been the costliest.
At this point, however, that trend seems to have settled down a bit, although the organization would please ask that you now turn and knock on the nearest piece of wood, or wood-like substance.
Here’s a look at some of the mishaps to befall some Flyers over the past couple years, and where they’ve come in their return to help the Flyers sit third (tied with NYI) in the Eastern Conference entering the holiday break.
SEAN COUTURIER
Nobody knew when Sean Couturier skated off the ice almost exactly two years ago, Dec. 18, 2021, that it was going to be his last game for more than a year and a half. He played a normal 19:44 in a 4-3 overtime win over Ottawa, assisting on Joel Farabee’s game-winning goal. That was still the COVID era, and the Flyers had their next game vs. Washington postponed due to Couturier and several other players entering the protocol.
But while Couturier eventually emerged from the protocol, he never returned to the ice – not that season, nor all of next season, while having his back surgically repaired twice. It certainly wasn’t planned that way, but that’s what ended up happening.
To be fair, Couturier was ready to return at the end of last season. But from a team perspective, it simply wasn’t necessary. The season at that point was nothing more than an opportunity for the Flyers to plan for the future, as the playoffs were long gone, and there was no reason for Couturier to take the risk of re-injuring himself.
So when Couturier returned to camp this past September, there was quite obviously a lot of excitement on behalf of the player. There was also some slight trepidation for Flyers fans, however – what would the player look like after so much time off? Would his back allow him to return to his Selke Trophy form?
Just over 30 games into the season, the answer is a definite yes. Couturier has missed a couple games this season and is probably a little banged up entering the holiday break, but none of it is related to the back. He is second on the team in scoring (tied with Travis Sanheim) with eight goals and 14 assists for 22 points, is a plus-6, and is averaging 19:52 of ice time per game – almost the same as his average in 2021-22, which was 20:23.
With that all said, both the player and the coach believe that Couturier still has some improvement left in him. It should be fun to watch how he handles the second half of the season.
CAM ATKINSON
Cam Atkinson completed a solid first season with the Flyers in 2021-22 and was one of the main advocates for John Tortorella’s hiring in the following offseason. He arrived in camp ready to be one of the main liaisons between his teammates and the coach he’d played for in Columbus for parts of six seasons.
But Atkinson only made it through the first day’s conditioning skate and the first skate of the second day of camp. Something wasn’t right, and the team’s medical staff set out to determine what it was.
That process, as it turned out, took a long time and a lot of doctors. Atkinson tried to rehab the situation, and as fall approached winter, it appeared he was nearing a return. But that return never happened. It wasn’t until December 19 – around a year ago at this time - that Atkinson had surgery to correct a herniated disc in his neck.
The procedure brought him immediate relief, but it meant he was out for the season. So the rest of his year was turned to rehabbing and regaining his strength for the current campaign.
Like Couturier, Atkinson was not expected to simply bounce back to 100 percent effectiveness. He had a great start, scoring his first night back and picking up eight goals in the first 17 games. But he hasn’t scored since November 11, and finished the Flyers’ win on Dec. 19 playing on the fourth line. However, both player and coach see it as a temporary slump.
"Honestly, I don't think about that," Atkinson told NBC Sports Philadelphia. "I'm not going to use any excuse. I just have to play with more energy. I feel good, I feel good enough. Just have to have more fun and smile a little bit more. There's no reason for me not to, especially not playing all of last year. I just have to get back to that."
JOEL FARABEE
Joel Farabee was just doing his thing at home in June of 2022 when he finished a weightlifting set and felt something funny in his neck. In almost the blink of an eye – a matter of several days – Farabee was back in Philadelphia having disc replacement surgery.
Farabee initially expected to miss some time at the start of the 2022-23 season, but was able to work his way back in time for opening night and ended up playing all 82 games. But he was nowhere near himself. An entire lost offseason of strength and conditioning clearly took its toll, and Farabee struggled to return to form almost for the entire season.
Things started to come around though late in the year, and then Farabee had a customary offseason to prepare for the current campaign. All seems to be perfectly fine now, as the winger has 11 goals and nine assists for 20 points and routinely establishes himself as a physical presence defensively. He’s well within range of career scoring highs if the season continues the way it’s been going.
TRAVIS SANHEIM
Travis Sanheim sneaks onto this list because of a revelation he quietly made at the start of this year’s training camp – that he’d broken his foot while playing for Team Canada at the 2022 World Championships. This bit of information had not been previously known to the public, and all of a sudden, a lot of the 2022-23 season made a lot more sense.
That year was not good at all for Sanheim – there was public criticism of his play, a healthy scratch in Calgary, and then persistent trade rumors in the 2023 offseason. It wasn’t until this past September fact that Sanheim matter-of-factly mentioned that the injury had cost him six weeks of training – and that’s six weeks from when the World Championships ended on May 29, not six weeks from when the Flyers’ season ended in early April. Sanheim wasn’t training again until mid-July at the earliest, leaving him only eight weeks before training camp.
To his credit, Sanheim wasn’t interested in using the injury as an excuse for his season.
“I got it healed up,” he said. “You go to Worlds and you come back and you’re already into June. You take six weeks off because you fractured your foot. It affects your summer training. But I’m not going to sit here and say it affected my season.”
Whether it did or not, Sanheim skipped Worlds this past year and focused on the new year ahead. He added 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason and came back, by Tortorella’s description, as a completely different player.
That combined with the departure of Ivan Provorov and Sanheim’s associated increase in responsibility has allowed the defenseman to thrive. He’s averaging 25:13 of ice time, which is by far a career high and slots him in the league’s top 10. What makes that even better is the way he’s been jumping in offensively – Sanheim has four goals and 18 assists for 22 points through 31 games after posting seven goals and 16 assists for 23 points in the entirety of last season. He is well on his way to eclipsing his career high of 35 points set in the 2018-19 season.
RASMUS RISTOLAINEN
Rasmus Ristolainen fought a lower-body injury through all of training camp and didn’t get into a game until November 25. But the 11 games he’s played so far have thrust him on the scene as the defenseman the Flyers thought he could become when he was acquired from Buffalo in the summer of 2021.
Ristolainen had a virtual revolving door of coaches, both head and assistant, during his time in Buffalo. He was forced into first-pair duty as soon as he hit the NHL the year after he was drafted, and the chances of success for the Sabres franchise were put on his shoulders. Understandably, he did not thrive, and the idea was that he could come to Philadelphia, experience some coaching stability, and grow in a role where he wasn’t the main guy.
But the 2021-22 season went off the rails quickly with some of the worst injury luck the Flyers have ever had. So Ristolainen and the rest of the Flyers basically started over in the summer of 2022 with the hiring of Tortorella, who brought longtime assistant Brad Shaw with him.
That may be what goes down as changing Ristolainen’s career. While the entire team focused on defensive play in Tortorella’s first season as coach, Shaw specifically zeroed in on Ristolainen. That’s continued this season, and after Ristolainen returned to the lineup, his play improved more and more up to the December 16 win over Detroit – a game that many called the best Ristolainen had ever played as a Flyer, and maybe ever in the NHL.
"I wish I had him when I was 18 coming in the league," Ristolainen said of Tortorella after that contest. "I feel like I've taken big steps under him."
