We should have all seen it coming, honestly.
That’s not to say that it was a medical certainty that Sean CouturierAnother injury would occur before the 2022/23 season. He did everything right in his efforts to recover from back surgery. To give himself more time to prepare for the year ahead, he decided to have the surgery in February. He also accepted that his 2021-22 campaign was already over. His recovery was moving along smoothly and he was skating regularly with his teammates in April. Couturier said that he tried to limit his natural instincts to exercise as much as possible this summer in order to be patient with the injury and allow it to heal fully.
But this was still a predictable result. Why? To be blunt, it is possible to make a lot of money by simply betting on the worst outcome in any area related to the topic. Philadelphia Flyers.
Outsiders might dismiss this as nihilism or mere fatalism. People who have followed the Flyers over the past years know that rational prognostication should not be used. The organization has turned into the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law: if there is even a chance something will go wrong, it’s going to go wrong.
Couturier’s injury is the most serious thing that could happen to the Flyers 2022-23 team. Anthony San Filippo of Crossing Broad reported Monday afternoon that Couturier suffered a herniated disk at his back in pre-camp practice last week. This could mean Couturier will miss the entire season. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman added that the Flyers are currently seeking a second opinion, and while the issue is in the same area as his past back problem, it’s yet to be confirmed if it’s the exact same injury. The Flyers then announced that Couturier has an “upper-body injury” that will be re-evaluated during training camp and that he is on a “week-to-week” timetable. Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli later reported that the Flyers’ most optimistic hope is that their 29-year-old 1C will miss six-to-eight weeks, and that’s if another surgery isn’t required. He’d miss far more time if it is.
Yikes.
Couturier’s return was the single biggest reason for optimism surrounding the Flyers in 2022-23. He may not be a true dynamic superstar, but Couturier is one of the league’s best two-way centers, a Selke Trophy winner who elevates the play of all his linemates while also scoring at a first-line level. Couturier’s absence from the lineup in 2021-22 (he appeared in just 29 games, and was far below 100 percent in many of them) wasn’t the only reason the team finished with the NHL’s fourth-worst record last season, but it certainly played a major role. Chuck Fletcher, general manager, made few changes to the roster beyond adding defenseman. Tony DeAngeloThe enforcer Nicolas Deslauriers, the clear message was that they were banking on the return of Couturier to play a major role in improving the club’s on-ice results.
This plan may not be feasible.
And yes, it’s possible that another surgery proves unnecessary for Couturier. Maybe he’ll only miss six weeks, and be back for the start of November. This could be a temporary setback in his recovery. The Flyers will receive eight years of Couturier’s highly effective version, as Couturier plays the entire $62 million contract until the end of the decade.
(Norm Hall / NHLI via Getty Images
But what over the past three years would lead one to believe that anything will ultimately break the Flyers’ way that much?
The truth is, the Flyers have suffered a series of failures rivaling any other in hockey history. Hyperbole? Maybe. But let’s do a quick rundown of all of the negative events just since the start of the 2019-20 season that have at least in part been out of the team’s control.
- No. No. Nolan PatrickHead injury/issue that prevents him from playing the entire season, but he never plays again with the Flyers.
- Oskar Lindblom diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in the midst of a breakout season, unable to return to previous form with the Flyers.
- The 2019-20 season is paused due to a pandemic, halting the Flyers’ most sustained run of excellent play in close to a decade, form that they could not recapture in an unprecedented bubble playoff structure later than summer.
- While tied for the East Division lead, Team is hit with a COVID-19 epidemic in 2020-21.
- Starting goaltender Carter HartHis mental health problems caused by the pandemic led to an abrupt end to his on-ice performance.
- Second-line center Kevin HayesHe sustains a severe injury to his core muscles, which severely hampers his on-ice performance.
- Key 2021 Offseason Acquisition Ryan Ellis suffers a “multi-layered pelvic issue” and plays in just four games in 2021-22; his return remains in serious question.
- Kevin Hayes’ first core muscle surgery proves unsuccessful, and a second one is required just before the start of 2021-22 training camp.
- All of it Morgan Frost, Wade Allison, Tanner Laczynski, Tyson Foerster, Zayde Wisdom, Samuel Ersson Bobby BrinkOver a period 19-months, suffer severe injuries which impede all their development timelines and severely weaken the prospect pool as well as organizational depth.
- Couturier is injured in his back just before the $82 million mega extension begins.
- Hayes’ second surgery doesn’t work either, requiring a third procedure to truly get to the heart of the problem (an infection).
- The second large-scale COVID-19 epidemic in the team’s history occurs in just two seasons.
- Projected backup netminder Ivan Fedotov proves unable to leave Russia for the start of the 2022-23 season due to political complications arising from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Two division rivals win the draft lottery — New York Rangers2020 New Jersey Devils in 2022 — with the Flyers getting jumped in the draft order by the latter.
- Joel FarabeeA neck injury occurs while training in the 2022 offseason. The problem is treated with surgery.
This is insane.
Now, let’s make it clear: we’re not absolving the Flyers here. It could be argued that Flyers are guilty of different degrees of responsibility for some of these events. The Flyers could at least partially be responsible for the incessant injuries. Or, they could have a weakening medical/training staff or an organizational attitude that encourages players to get back to full strength faster than they should. Hart’s season-killing meltdown wasn’t helped by the lack of support he received from then-head coach Alain Vigneault, and the decision to roll with an aging backup in Brian ElliottIt is difficult to carry a heavy workload especially with a tight schedule. Ellis had injury concerns even though his pelvic problem seems to be new. Due to Ellis’ age (30 in December), and his knee problems, the Couturier extension came with a legitimate risk. The above list can’t all simply be chalked up to bad luck.
That said, there’s a wide range between “the Flyers should be blamed and held solely accountable for every piece of misfortune” and “they are completely blameless for all of this bad luck.” And in aggregate, their place on the scale is a lot closer to the latter than the former.
Events like Lindblom’s cancer, the pandemic and Russian politics are purely just awful luck in terms of how they ultimately impacted the Flyers. But moves like Couturier extension and Ellis trade are quite different. They’re calculated risks, as are surgeries in a sense. Each one has an inherent chance of a positive outcome. Perhaps, for example, the likelihood of a 30-year-old player of Ellis’ caliber to have the rest of his career ruined by injury is 10 percent; add in Ellis’ extensive injury history, and maybe that gets bumped up to 20 percent. Let’s make the same assumption for Couturier’s extension and the potential success of Hayes’ surgery. Negative outcomes for all of those situations were not inevitable — nevertheless, that’s exactly what happened. It is not uncommon for the worst outcomes to occur. But the Flyers find themselves living in a timeline where every time at the blackjack table, when they hit on 12 with the dealer showing seven or higher, they’re getting another face card and busting.
This isn’t giving Fletcher a pass. He’s made plenty of moves that have only served to make the Flyers’ situation worse, moves that in the moment came with serious red flags. The Rasmus RistolainenFor example, trade and extension. Vigneault being kept in the team for too long, after he had already lost the dressing area. The Keith Yandle signing. The “half-in, half-out” retooling strategy that in practice has played out as inconsistent and directionless. The Couturier extension, which in retrospect betrayed a lack of self-awareness regarding just how far this club was away from contention, given that after the debacle that was 2021-22, the Flyers don’t appear as if they will be ready to contend for a title until even a healthy Couturier is in his mid-to-late 30s.
Take, for instance, the Hayes signing. It was an overpayment? Probably. But it was an overpay necessary because of Patrick’s tough-luck injury, which resulted in (ultimately justified) uncertainty regarding his future. Now, Hayes’ contract looks even worse due to his core muscle issues, which again, were not destined to occur when the contract was signed in 2019. Yes, one could argue that the Hayes situation could have been avoided had Ron Hextall simply not selected Patrick in the first place, trusting his scouting department and being more wary of Patrick’s injury history. But it’s not like Patrick had a history of concussions prior to being drafted; his pre-draft injury concerns centered around his lower body. And it’s not like Cale MakarThe player that the Flyers should have picked at No. 2 was a forward-looking player named. 2 was a risky selection. There was no guarantee that his athleticism-centric style of play would translate into a lower-tier league like the AJHL. That it ultimately did doesn’t change that betting on it happening wasn’t a slam dunk. For the AvalancheThey got the best outcome possible. For the Flyers, however, it was the worst.
Fletcher certainly isn’t blameless for the Flyers’ current predicament. He’s made his fair share of mistakes, and it’s easy to argue that he’s made a bad situation worse. He deserves significant criticism. But given the circumstances, and the laundry list of misfortune that the team has faced since 2019, I’m unconvinced that any GM could have salvaged the situation given what fate has sent the Flyers’ way.
Perhaps the most salient piece of criticism that can be tossed at Fletcher is that somehow, he’s remained optimistic that at some point, the hockey gods will smile mercifully upon his team and finally stay their seemingly unyielding wrath, and he’s based his roster construction strategies on that assumption.
Monday’s news regarding Couturier sure seems to hint that those vengeful gods are not quite finished with the Flyers yet.
(Photo: Eric Hartline/USA Today
