One of the Philadelphia Flyers’ young wingers might be missing Monday night’s game against the Arizona Coyotes after going down with what is expected to be a minor injury over the weekend.
Tyson Foerster was absent from morning skate on Monday and when questioned about it, head coach John Tortorella mentioned that he is “not sure” about the player’s availability.
As NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jordan Hall mentioned above, the 22-year-old winger blocked a shot in the final minutes of the Flyers’ game on Saturday against the Seattle Kraken and was seen hobbling back to the bench in some pain. And according to The Athletic’s Kevin Kurz, Foerster left Saturday’s game in a walking boot. That is not a great sign!
While we might not know until puck drop on Monday if Foerster is part of the lineup or not, or how bad his apparent injury is, we are seeing some of his replacements in the morning skate lineup.
At practice, defenseman Travis Sanheim took Foerster’s spot on the second power-play unit and it certainly looks like the Flyers might be returning to playing with 11 forwards and seven defensemen after going back to the typical 12 forwards and six defensemen for just the latest game. Tortorella’s hand might have been forced with an absent Foerster, but it’s not like he’s against the idea of putting out this shifted lineup.
Currently, it appears that Nic Deslauriers will remain a healthy scratch, as he put in some extra work after practice. Still, everything is up in the air but we do know that we might be seeing a slightly different lineup; a less cemented group of forwards, certainly.
If Foerster does miss some significant amount of time because of a broken bone or weird ligament thing on his ankle (we are just listing possible injuries, we know as much as you do), then it might be coming at the worse possible time. The 22-year-old forward needed to find his spot in the lineup and get some consistent scoring chances, and in the last four games he has managed to score three goals, after scoring just three points in the 10 games before that.
Plus, the Flyers will be missing some of Foerster’s defense efforts as he has risen up the ranks of strong, two-way forwards on this team as players like Scott Laughton and Noah Cates have not been their normal selves in that category.
Here’s hoping he’s back soon, or not even injured at all.
