The Philadelphia Flyers will be without James van Riemsdyk for the next while, as head coach John Tortorella announced today the veteran winger will have finger surgery on Friday. While Tortorella doesn’t think it is “season-ending”, as Giana Han of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, there won’t be a real timeline until after the procedure.
On Cam Atkinson, another injured Flyers forward, Tortorella explained that while he doesn’t expect it to be a month-to-month thing, Atkinson isn’t ready to practice yet.
After a nice start to the season, things weren’t nearly as rosy in Philadelphia on Sunday. The team was shutout 3-0 by the San Jose Sharks, while Travis Konecny and Kevin Hayes were both benched in the third period. Tortorella is clearly making an impact on the team (one way or another) but the loss of van Riemsdyk will test their forward group even more.
The 33-year-old forward was off to a good start with five points in his first five games, before exiting just five shifts into his sixth. A free agent at the end of the year, van Riemsdyk still has the ability to put the puck in the net and is coming off his seventh 20+ goal season in 2021-22. An injury like this will certainly not help any thought of another multi-year contract on the open market, especially because of how important his hands are to his overall game. Not the fleetest of foot, van Riemsdyk has always scored from close to (or in) the blue paint of the crease.
For his and the Flyers’ sake, hopefully, this surgery doesn’t take away any of that in-tight touch. Given how long he’ll be out, the Flyers could move van Riemsdyk to long-term injured reserve to gain more flexibility, though they already have $7MM of that space with Ryan Ellis and Patrick Brown on the shelf.
Is Ellis coming back or is he done?