Tyson Foerster is now going to be out for a whole lot of time and his season is most likely over. What was an injury that was originally expected to keep the Philadelphia Flyers winger off the ice for a few months, has now been extended to a miserable five-month timeline and that runs right up until this team is probably no longer playing hockey (unless there is a deep playoff run for some reason).
With that news, does this affect anything the Flyers were planning to do this season? How will they survive with a massive hole in their top nine now? Are they feeling more pressure to bring someone up who could have roughly the same amount of offensive talent?
It’s a tricky situation. The Flyers were not expected to be anything this season — optimists would say that they would be just about what they are so far this season, while pessimists were preparing for some more draft lottery watching, but there was not a whole lot of pressure to go one way or the other.
But now with one of their best forwards out for at least the remainder of the regular season, where do they go from here? We have some inklings for how the Flyers front office might have some plans affected by Foerster’s extended absence.
Affect on future trades
Maybe the easiest assumption almost every single person that pays attention to the Flyers can make is that if they are in a playoff spot at the trade deadline, they are not going to sell off their pieces. They’ve already done it before, with sending defenseman Sean Walker to the Colorado Avalanche two years ago when they were competitive — and that basically killed the possibility of making the playoffs. But this time around it doesn’t seem like that is in the cards at all.
That was already going to happen. But now, it is going to be an even harder ask to trade away some players at the deadline even if the Flyers are out of it.
The likely forward candidates to get shipped out are probably the likes of Christian Dvorak (although the Flyers re-signing the veteran center now seems likely), and maybe some peripheral moves like seeing if anyone wants a Carl Grundstrom or Garnet Hathaway for almost nothing. And the Flyers could have certainly stripped down the lineup if they were at the bottom of the standings come the trade deadline — but now it feels unlikely and even more unlikely considering Foerster is out.
Philadelphia won’t want to ice a lineup half made up of AHL veterans or have to call-up young prospects way too early because they just decided to sell off big time. It is now looking more and more likely that the Flyers will stand pat and just see how the team does without changing up anything too much — while it was probably going to happen regardless, without Foerster in the equation the Flyers don’t want to just go ahead and lose more forwards from the roster.
Extended timeline to give prospects a look
The other major aspect of the Flyers’ plans that could be affected with Foerster out for the season is just how they’re going to handle bringing up some young players to get more offense going. Of course, winger Alex Bump is the name at the front of everyone’s minds, but according to the most trusted voice when it comes to everything Lehigh Valley Phantoms, our Maddie Campbell, Bump isn’t ready quite yet.
During Foerster’s original injury timeline, there would really just be six more weeks of action for the Flyers to potentially give a big opportunity to a young player before Foerster would come back after the Olympic break. But now that Foerster is going to be out for much longer, the Flyers do have the ability to wait and offer up that opportunity much later in the season.
Maybe Bump needs two or three more months to really show that he can be an impact NHL player, he can now take that time and then be up with the Flyers in March or April, to potentially even finish out the season up in the bigs.
It’s all hypothetical, but now the Flyers don’t have this tight(ish) window to hand a young player the opportunity to play with Foerster’s minutes — now, there’s more flexibility with the knowledge that they’ll have that spot basically open for the rest of the year.
We won’t get a clearer picture just how much losing Tyson Foerster will affect the Flyers’ approach to more than just what happens on the ice this season, until trades are made (or not made). But for now, we can at least come up with some guesses.
