Just when it seemed like things were starting to get rolling again for the Flyers, they were struck by another setback. The Flyers took a tough loss to the Penguins on home ice last night after sweeping their back-to-back on the road over the weekend, but even more distressingly, they lost Tyson Foerster to a strange looking injury in the second period — shortly after he notched his 10th goal of the season — and he was quickly ruled out to return to the game.
As of last night’s postgame, head coach Rick Tocchet wasn’t able to provide any updates on his status, and with practice cancelled for today, it looks like it will be a little while still before anything more concrete is laid out in the way of updates. Still, the big question looms — if the injury is anywhere near as serious as it looked at the time, what are the Flyers going to do to replace the red-hot Foerster over the long or short term?
Nikita Grebenkin
If the injury to Foerster is looking like it’s going to be of the more short-term variety, the easy solution to fill his place in the lineup would be to promote Grebenkin up off that fourth line and into the top-9, and keep Nic Deslauriers in the lineup on the fourth line, avoiding the need to make a call up altogether. It’s an opportunity that offers a bit of intrigue — that is, while Grebenkin has certainly cooled off in his game from where he was during the preseason and into the very beginning of the regular season, there remains a feeling that there’s something left untapped in his game, and one wonders if a stint playing more meaningful minutes with some more skilled linemates might be the key to unlocking that.
Grebenkin is still young and still has a lot of developmental runway ahead of him, and a big part of this season will be getting a better understanding of what they have in him, and having the chance to put him in some different spots in the lineup should move that process along. Can he be a good longer term option to fill in up in the top-9? Who knows, but this is a chance to find out.
Alex Bump
Of course, the bigger shadow looming over all of this is, simply, the Alex Bump of it all. If Foerster is set to be out longer term, the big question will shift to whether this is a better chance to recall a prospect from the Phantoms, and there’s been perhaps no prospect with more buzz surrounding him this season than Bump. It’s been a bit of a strange up-and-down situation around him through these early goings. When Foerster took his first injury early in the season, Bump might have seemed a good candidate to fill in for him, but still in the midst of his slow start to the season, the timing really didn’t seem right, but then when Bump started to pick up steam and strung together six really good games (putting up 10 points in that time) and the buzz picked up again, there was no spot in the lineup to be found for him. But now things have circled back around again, and after that hot streak, Bump has cooled down over these most recent six games, with his production coming back down to earth (no goals, three assists) and his overall level of lethality dipping again.
So while Bump has done well to get his game to a place better than what it was at the start of the season, there’s still work left to be done to find some more consistency and round out his game — because, what’s more, even when he has been producing at a higher rate, there have been times when he’s been cheating a bit for that offense, and that’s a particular something that will have to be worked out of his game before the NHL coaching staff gets their hands on him.
Of course, maybe the Flyers feel differently, and want to take a more aggressive approach to see what he can do in NHL minutes, but given the patient approach they’ve more often favored in other developmental situations, and the inconsistency in his play up to this point, it’s harder to envision Bump being the call they make, at least at the present moment.
Carl Grundstrom
The safer bet, then, is that the Flyers would consider elevating one of the more veteran players from the Phantoms to fill in for Foerster. So then, perhaps the most natural choice for this nod would be Grundstrom, who was called up to slide into the lineup when Foerster was out the first time around.
He only got in for one game with the big club in that first stint — against Ottawa on November 8, and it was a game wherein his line with Noah Cates and Travis Konecny did not fare great — but there might well be enough to like in Grundstrom’s game and potential to give him another run at it. He has a good amount of NHL experience under his belt — he’s played 50 or more NHL games in each of the last four seasons — and he’s put in some good work showing that he can get settled into the organization’s system and step up as a consistent contributor for the Phantoms, and this might well be enough to earn him a longer look.
Anthony Richard
All of that said, if the Flyers were looking to go the veteran route for a recall, there’s no hotter hand that they could target than Richard at the moment. As it stands, Richard is leading the Phantoms in both goals (seven) and points (17) on the season, and is riding a productive streak of 12 points over the Phantoms’ last 10 games (including three points and a dominant effort in their loss to Laval over the weekend), as his game is clicking very nicely through the first 20 games of their season.
Richard’s time with the Flyers last season was a little up and down — as was his usage, as it seemed that John Tortorella wasn’t wholly sold on him — but there’s no doubt that when he was given some more meaningful minutes to work with, he was able to bring a nice level of pop in his game, and it’s easy to envision this manifesting to an even greater degree under this new system that the Flyers are running. Like the Phantoms, they’ve been playing a little more uptempo and looking to wake up a bit more of their transition game, but they’ve still been struggling to get their offense going on a more consistent basis. They’re looking around for answers on that front still, but Richard with all of his speed and the finishing ability he can tack on to that, could be a prime candidate to offer them a bit more jump.
