Flyers announce opening night roster

It’s happened! The Flyers have announced their roster for opening night, and it’s got a couple of surprises. Let’s see the roster first:

Forwards

Travis Konecny

Michael Raffl

Kevin Hayes

Sean Couturier

Scott Laughton

Oskar Lindblom

James van Riemsdyk

Claude Giroux

Carsen Twarynski

Connor Bunnaman

Defensemen

Travis Sanheim

Robert Hagg

Ivan Provorov

Matt Niskanen

Shayne Gostisbehere

Samuel Morin

Justin Braun

Goalies

Brian Elliott

Carter Hart

And for those keeping count, that is 11 forwards and seven defensemen. Presumably Tyler Pitlick will be back soon, but with he and Nolan Patrick occupying IR space and still counting against the cap, this is what they had to do in order to be compliant. Assuming he’s back for opening night, this will at least give them a “complete” roster. But they were going to have to do a bit of gymnastics. That’s not a surprise.

That considered, neither is the news that Philippe Myers has been cut. As the only defenseman waiver exempt, he was likely going to be the one who would have been sent to the AHL. We kind of expect him to be back in the relatively near future.

The surprise, though, is that Joel Farabee has been cut. He’s had himself a good preseason, seeming to be doing just about everything right, short of putting the puck in the back of the net. And it looks like, despite the overall sound process (and knowledge in the back of our minds that, shall we say, his ceiling is much higher than some of the players he was competing with), that was the death knell. And with, again, Pitlick likely returning soon, and the Flyers being so tight against the cap, this is the real open question, how soon we’ll be seeing him back with the big club.

*sad trombone noise*