The Philadelphia Flyers were riding high and off to a better-than-expected start to their 2025-26 season. They were winning hockey games, some key players were scoring timely goals, and everything seemed fine. Then a double dose of misfortunes hit Philadelphia: A weekend with two big losses that sunk them down to the bottom of the Eastern Conference, and winger Tyson Foerster going down with a fluke lower-body injury thanks to him blocking a shot.
Foerster was placed on injured reserve backdated to Nov. 1 and will miss at least three more games because of it. The 23-year-old has been such an important player for how this Flyers team has earned any wins they have — his four goals and seven points in 11 games isn’t leading the team or anything, but the ability to destroy defenses and apply so much suffocating offensive pressure on the opposition with his linemates Noah Cates and Bobby Brink, has been an extreme bright spot.
Now that he’s going to be gone, and the Flyers are looking down the barrel of a schedule that features them playing the Montreal Canadiens, Ottawa Senators, and potentially the Edmonton Oilers without Foerster in the lineup, they are going to need some players to step up and make his absence less impactful.
Owen Tippett
The prime candidate to take advantage of this opportunity has to be Owen Tippett. The 26-year-old winger was instantly put in as Foerster’s replacement next to Cates and Brink and while he has found success earlier in the season, starting the year with five goals in the first six games, he has been held to just one single point in the following six. It’s been two different seasons for Tippett already and he may just get lost in the shuffle if he isn’t able to come to the forefront with Foerster out.
Tippett may not have earned his spot alongside Foerster’s regular linemates since head coach Rick Tocchet was quick to shuffle up the lineup during the miserable experience that was Sunday’s game against the Calgary Flames. He virtually split his game between being with Cates and Brink, and then linked up to Christian Dvorak and Trevor Zegras to be their triggerman. Neither trio really felt comfortable — it was either losing the possession battle in the 6:51 TOI on the third line, or allowing a goal against while with Zegras and Dvorak — but it wouldn’t surprise anyone if Tocchet returned to Tippett being Foerster’s direct replacement.
In theory, with Cates and Brink doing their typical hard work along the boards and immense forechecking pressure to snatch possession back as quick as possible, Tippett can be the play-ending shooter and potentially get his game going again.
Matvei Michkov
It’s been repeated so often that it’s almost boring at this point: Matvei Michkov needs to do more for the Philadelphia Flyers right now. It’s a statement that has rung true for the entire season but now more than ever, with one of the main offensive weapons that this team has out on the sidelines, for him to finally get back to taking over games like we saw scattered throughout his rookie year.
It doesn’t necessarily help that in Foerster’s absence the lineup was shuffled so dramatically that it had Michkov linking up with Dvorak and Rodrigo Abols on the same line, but if Tocchet approaches his plan with some new ideas in Montreal maybe some juice will get flowing. Michkov didn’t have a fantastic game against the Flames, with just four shot attempts and one shot on goal in the 13:40 TOI he played, but there just needs to be some built-in trust to hand him a prime opportunity.
Maybe, just maybe, Michkov should be the one that gets to directly replace Foerster on that line with Cates and Brink — he could make so much magic happen if those two do all the dirty work for him. It won’t be perfect since Brink and Michkov are natural right wingers, but hell, it’s worth a shot to just see if anything can work during this sophomore year.
Travis Konecny
Konecny has been slowly returning to form with a four-game point streak of exactly one point in each of those games, but his overall impact on the game has been severely lacking. We’ve seen other players play exceptional hockey and will the Flyers to wins but any production that has come from Konecny’s stick has felt either inconsequential or just by being on the ice and not driving any play.
It’s never really been Konecny’s game — that’s why the Flyers value Foerster so much as a counterbalance — but if we see at least a couple multi-point performances or some clutch moments that tilt the ice in the Flyers’ favor over the next week or so with the absence, then maybe there’s some more hope. Right now, we’re asking questions about whether or not the Flyers should really be worrying about this start from Konecny.
While we can look out for other players to specifically step up and provide the same amount of drive and impact that Foerster did on a nightly basis, it will be difficult to replace him. It might just end up needing to be on the entire team to make a concentrated effort to not make the hole left in the lineup that obvious.
