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Zack MacEwen Undergoes Surgery

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The Philadelphia Flyers won’t have Zack MacEwen in the lineup for a while, announcing that he underwent surgery today to repair a broken jaw, according to Olivia Reiner of the Philadelphia Inquirer. His recovery timeline has been set at five weeks.

MacEwen likely suffered the injury during his fight against Minnesota Wild forward Marcus Foligno on Thursday, one of the three-straight fights that the two teams were involved in. He didn’t see a shift after that, and now will be out through the trade deadline.

Claimed off waivers from the Vancouver Canucks in 2021, MacEwen has established himself as one of the identity players that the organization is relying on to try and turn things around. He has played 121 games since the start of last season, racking up 164 penalty minutes in the process. While he doesn’t offer much offensive production – just nine points so far this season – head coach John Tortorella has significantly increased his ice time from a year ago.

MacEwen now averages more than 12 minutes a night and has even seen some powerplay time as the net front option on the second unit. On a contender, that likely doesn’t happen given his lack of scoring. But Tortorella is trying to install a culture that rewards hard work, something MacEwen has never lacked.

Undrafted he fought his way up the Canucks depth chart and debuted in 2018-19 in just his second professional season. Now with 176 games under his belt and a regular spot in the Flyers lineup when healthy, he heads into RFA negotiations this summer with a chance at a multi-year extension. The 26-year-old is one year away from unrestricted free agency, and currently carries a $925K cap hit.

Philadelphia Flyers Recall Cam York

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The Philadelphia Flyers have recalled defensive prospect Cam York from the minor leagues, sending Yegor Zamula back down in his place. The team is headed out on the road for stops in Vegas, Arizona, Colorado, and New Jersey, meaning they needed an extra defenseman. It is somewhat surprising that York was the one getting the call, given how it didn’t seem like the team would be inserting the extra body into the lineup.

York, 21, was the 14th pick in 2019 and is still seen as a top prospect in the Philadelphia organization, even if his opportunity at the NHL level has been limited. He played 30 games with the team last year and was pushed hard by head coach John Tortorella in the preseason, but ended up failing to make it past the final cuts. After putting up 13 points in 20 games with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, perhaps he’ll get another chance to show he can help the Flyers.

In yesterday’s loss to the Washington Capitals, Nick Seeler and Justin Braun each played fewer than 16 minutes, with the former not seeing any time on special teams. It would be a difficult spot for York to make his season debut tomorrow, against the 19-8-1 Vegas Golden Knights.

Zamula, meanwhile, has played in just 11 games with the Flyers this season but continues to be given practice time with the club. His demotion today was planned to give him the opportunity to play big minutes in Lehigh Valley while Philadelphia was on the road, since he wasn’t expected to get in the lineup.

Scott Laughton Activated From Injured Reserve

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The Philadelphia Flyers have some good news on the injury front for once, as Scott Laughton has been activated and will play tonight. The veteran forward has been out since November 19. Jackson Cates has been loaned back to the AHL to make room.

As with everything else when it comes to the Flyers right now, there is also some not-so-good news to go along with Laughton’s return. Tony DeAngelo left the optional morning skate early to meet with the medical staff and is a game-time decision, according to Charlie O’Connor of The Athletic.

Laughton, 28, had seven points in 18 games before going down, adding his trademark physicality and penalty-killing prowess to the lineup. He was averaging more shorthanded ice time than any other forward on the team, while also seeing ample powerplay exposure. Despite a career-high of just 32 points, he is one of the team’s most important forwards, and one that head coach John Tortorella obviously trusted, given the more than 19 minutes he was getting every night.

Signed to a five-year, $15MM contract in 2021, Laughton will try to help turn around a sinking ship in Philadelphia that has lost ten in a row. The Flyers sit ahead of only the Columbus Blue Jackets in the Metropolitan Division and Tortorella is showing his frustration, breaking out a classic “up and down like a toilet seat” line to describe Morgan Frost’s play (Columbus fans might remember those words from a few years ago).

The club is now at home for the next five, and if they can’t turn things around soon, the Philadelphia faithful will certainly let them know about it. Not a great situation for Laughton to try and get back into game action.

Scott Laughton Placed On Injured Reserve

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The Philadelphia Flyers will be without Scott Laughton for the next little while and have placed him on injured reserve. Laughton is dealing with an upper-body injury and is expected to miss two weeks, according to Adam Kimelman of NHL.com.

In his place, the team has recalled Jackson Cates from the AHL. The team also released injury updates on several other players. Travis Konecny will be out 10-14 days with an upper-body injury, Wade Allison is out two or three weeks with a hip pointer, and Cam Atkinson remains week-to-week. Sean Couturier and James van Riemsdyk are still on their respective schedules after surgery.

Laughton, 28, was seeing more ice time than ever before in his career, averaging more than 19 minutes a night through his first 18 appearances. That resulted in seven points on the year to go along with his regular brand of physical hockey.

He had been moved to wing recently, a move that the team also made with Kevin Hayes last night, with head coach John Tortorella explaining that he trusted Noah Cates more defensively in the middle of the ice.

That position has been a challenge this season for the Flyers, who don’t have a single center even above 48% on faceoffs and few players living up to their potential. Hayes and Konecny lead the team in scoring with 19 points but beyond those two and Owen Tippett, no other player even has five goals on the year.

Jackson Cates, the older of the two brothers, was scoreless in three games with the Flyers earlier this year. In 11 contests with the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, he has scored four goals and seven points.

Snapshots: Three Stars, Blackwood, Ristolainen

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The NHL released its Three Stars for last week, with three Western Conference superstars making the cut. Jason Robertson is on top after scoring four goals and eight points in three games. After missing training camp, Robertson has picked up right where he left off last season and now has eight goals and 18 points in 12 games.

Second and third went to Nathan MacKinnon and Erik Karlsson, who each had their own impressive weeks. The Colorado Avalanche center had seven assists in the two games overseas, both wins in Finland, to become the league’s all-time scoring leader in games played outside of North America. Karlsson meanwhile had four goals and eight points in three games including a hat trick and has already matched his goal total from last year (ten) in just 14 games.

  • Mackenzie Blackwood has been diagnosed with an MCL sprain, and will meet with doctors tomorrow for further evaluation according to New Jersey Devils team reporter Amanda Stein. Blackwood left a game against the Edmonton Oilers on November 3, leaving the Devils with Vitek Vanecek and Akira Schmid as their tandem for the time being.
  • After being scratched on the weekend, some wondered whether Rasmus Ristolainen was still dealing with the effects of his previous injury. Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella told reporters including Giana Han of the Philadelphia Inquirer that Ristolainen’s injury isn’t the issue and that “everything about his game needs to be better” when he gets back into the lineup.

Sean Couturier “Not Ready” To Continue Skating

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While the word setback wasn’t used, it sure seems like that’s what John Tortorella suggested when speaking about Sean Couturier today. He told reporters including Giana Han of the Philadelphia Inquirer that Couturier is “just not ready” to continue his rehab and has stopped skating for the time being. As Jordan Hall of NBCS Philly points out, the veteran forward recently said he was feeling good in his recovery while getting on the ice.

Couturier is not close to returning. Meanwhile, Cam Atkinson is “one frustrated young man,” who isn’t expected to be back anytime soon.

This will sound like the same old song and dance for Flyers fans who have lived in a world of injury setbacks and additional surgeries over the past few years. Ryan Ellis, last year’s offseason prize, played just three games for Philadelphia before ending up on the shelf, and then just one more before being shut down for the year. He hasn’t played at all this season.

Kevin Hayes underwent several surgeries to correct multiple issues and ended up playing in just 48 games. Even Nolan Patrick, the high draft pick that was supposed to help usher in a new era of Flyers hockey, could never get over his migraine and concussion issues to stay in the lineup on a consistent basis.

Couturier, arguably the team’s most important forward, only played 29 games last year. Despite his obvious injury concerns, the team signed him to an eight-year, $62MM contract extension in August 2021 – one that he is only just starting this season. The deal carries a cap hit of $7.75MM through 2029-30. Already 29, Couturier will turn 30 in December and now hasn’t played a full season in several years.

Hopefully, this setback only means that it will take him a little longer to return from his back injury. But with whispers in September of him missing the entire season because of the potential need for surgery, and now keeping him off the ice, there are bad vibes coming out of Philadelphia.

James Van Riemsdyk To Undergo Surgery

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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.

Philadelphia Flyers Claim Lukas Sedlak

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The Philadelphia Flyers have nabbed another forward, claiming Lukas Sedlak off waivers from the Colorado Avalanche, according to Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet. To make room, they’ve loaned Olle Lycksell to the AHL.

Sedlak, it should be noted, has quite a bit of familiarity with head coach John Tortorella from their time with the Columbus Blue Jackets. It was under Tortorella that the versatile Czech forward ascended to the NHL, and under whom he played more than 160 games.

The 29-year-old signed with the Avalanche after playing the last three years in the KHL (where he was a star) but hadn’t found any consistency playing a handful of minutes on the fourth line. He’ll now join a Flyers team that has gotten off to a 3-0 start, defeating the Devils, Canucks, and Lightning to begin the year. Given his ability to play all three forward positions and familiarity with the coaching staff, Sedlak should be able to slide directly into the lineup whenever he joins the Flyers on the road.

Philadelphia is set to take on the Florida Panthers this evening, before heading to Nashville for a Saturday night matchup.

Sedlak will avoid the minor leagues again with the claim; he hasn’t played in the AHL since the 2015-16 season with the Lake Erie Monsters, going out on top by winning the Calder Cup that year. He’ll now be kept on the Flyers roster, at least for the time being, and try to find some more consistent playing time in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia Flyers Officially Name John Tortorella Head Coach

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9:02 AM: The Flyers have officially announced the hiring of Tortorella, but did not confirm the financial terms. The Athletic’s Arthur Staple reports that the finalists for the job were Peter DeBoer and former New York Islanders head coach Jack Capuano.

4:25 PM: ESPN’s Kevin Weekes reports that Tortorella’s deal with the Flyers is a four-year, $4MM per year contract.

3:21 PM: After days of it seeming like an eventuality, John Tortorella is expected to officially be named the next head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. The Athletic’s Charlie O’Connor reported this morning that final negotiations were underway and that an official announcement could come tomorrow, but The Fourth Period’s Anthony Di Marco now reports that an official announcement could come as soon as tonight and that the organization is “moving forward” with Tortorella as their new head coach.

We’ve gotten an unusually extensive amount of reporting on the Tortorella hiring process. It’s been known for a few days now that the team had zeroed in on Tortorella as a candidate and that the hiring was likely, but negotiations between the two sides had not been completed. Now, it seems like that process is done, although it’s unclear whether the terms of the deal will be made public.

Tortorella joins his fifth NHL team as a head coach and his fourth Eastern Conference team, with his one season spent in Vancouver as his lone Western Conference head coaching experience (2013-14). He ranks 13th all-time in games coached (1,383), 14th in wins (673), and has a 2004 Stanley Cup ring with the Tampa Bay Lightning to show for his illustrious career.

After his second gap year in the past decade, Tortorella returns to the NHL with the goal of quickly restoring a competitive team in Philadelphia. Whether that happens is a different story entirely. Of note, in his first entire season as coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2016-17, he took a team that had finished below the .500 mark the previous year to their only 100-point season in franchise history. However, that was a team spearheaded by a list of quality young players, most notably Zach Werenski and Seth Jones on defense, that the Flyers simply don’t have to offer. Nor do they have a goalie with the track record that Sergei Bobrovsky had at that point, who earned his second Vezina trophy that season with a .931 save percentage and 41-17-5 record.

While a healthy Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis should give the Flyers a large boost next season, Tortorella will be tasked with the job of helping the team navigate their post-Claude Giroux era. He’ll be charged with restoring the ceilings of players like Travis Konecny and Oskar Lindblom up front and continuing the positive development of Joel Farabee. He’ll also need to institute a system that can help Ivan Provorov and Rasmus Ristolainen on the back end after some rough defensive seasons.

None of it will be an easy job in the Metropolitan Division. With the New York Rangers and Carolina Hurricanes poised to dominate again next season, they’ll also have the Blue Jackets and New Jersey Devils as on-the-rise teams to battle with.

Snapshots: Tortorella, Panthers, Avalanche

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When ESPN’s Kevin Weekes broke the news late Tuesday night that the Philadelphia Flyers had offered their head coaching vacancy to John Tortorella, there were plenty of mixed reactions surrounding the team’s potential hire of the controversial coach. Those in opposition likely hoped that the final set of negotiations required to complete the deal would fall through, and the Flyers would go in another direction.

According to The Athletic’s Charlie O’Connor, those hopes are all but gone. O’Connor notes that the negotiations between the Flyers and Tortorella are indeed “in the final stages,” and that an official announcement on the hire is expected to come tomorrow. It will be extremely interesting to learn what the terms of Tortorella’s contract are (if they’re released), considering the Flyers are still on the hook for $5MM to Alain Vigneault through 2024.

  • Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman notes on today’s 32 Thoughts podcast he believes that the Florida Panthers have been “talking to people” over the phone regarding their head coaching vacancy, and gauging their interest in the role. While it’s not a sure thing that they’ll move on from interim head coach Andrew Brunette, it shows that the team is at least interested in examining other options. It’s a bit surprising the team isn’t more committed to keeping Brunette around, especially considering how locked in the Edmonton Oilers are on extending Jay Woodcroft, who’s in a very similar situation to Brunette.
  • During a radio appearance this morning, Colorado Avalanche head coach Jared Bednar noted that both Nazem Kadri and Andrew Cogliano have “gotten better,” saying that it’s a possibility at least one of them will return during the Stanley Cup Final. It’s a positive assessment, and while they are both still labeled as day-to-day, Kadri has yet to even practice while holding a stick after his thumb injury. Colorado will be watching their health closely, as they’re two incredibly important pieces to their forward depth that could help swing the series in their favor.

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