The hope that the Philadelphia Flyers could ice a fully healthy lineup for Friday’s season opener in Vancouver against the Canucks, is starting to dwindle.
At Tuesday morning’s practice in Voorhees, Flyers defenseman Nick Seeler was not on the ice. It could be anything, but this is now his fourth consecutive missed practice as the team starts to rev up and get ready for the 2024-25 NHL season to begin.
This absence is most likely — we’re roughly 99.9% sure — due to him blocking a shot during the Flyers’ penultimate preseason game on Oct. 1 against the Boston Bruins. He has not attended practice since then and was considered out day-to-day with a lower-body injury. Seeler was even seen on the ice during the intermission of that game, testing his skating out, and played one shift to open the third period last Tuesday, but was gone for the rest of the game.
And since then, he’s not been skating at practice and with the trip to Western Canada starting this week, things are uncertain. Seeler will most likely make the trip — unless something is terribly wrong — but if he’s out of the lineup, what happens then?
If Seeler is close to returning and will return on the trip, then no transactions are probably needed. Erik Johnson will come into the lineup and the six healthy blueliners will be formed into some figuration that might be a little foreign and could leave us asking a couple questions. Does John Tortorella separate the Travis Sanheim-Cam York pairing since he will have three left-handed defensemen and three right-handed defensemen? If not, how will the four remaining blueliners of Egor Zamula, Jamie Drysdale, Rasmus Ristolainen, and Erik Johnson be partnered up? What about the penalty kill? Who will block a billion shots?
Here’s hoping that Seeler is not out for long and the team doesn’t need to think anything further than putting the veteran Johnson on the ice for the season opener. Because if not, there is no real defenseman down in the minors that can replace what Seeler does in shot suppression and general toughness.
We will see.
