Even a rebuilding team like the Philadelphia Flyers have some players for whom training camp and the preseason will be a mere formality. Everybody knows who they are. Travis Konecny is a clear-cut top-six forward. Carter Hart is the starting goaltender. Garnet Hathaway is the fourth-line right winger.
There are other players for whom a good or bad start to the year won’t dramatically change the team’s outlook. For example, if Nick Seeler regresses a bit from his solid 2022-23 season, that would be suboptimal, but wouldn’t drastically hurt the organization. It would be great if Tyson Foerster makes the opening night lineup, but what matters most is what he does with his next NHL opportunity, whenever it arises.
But there are some players with quite a bit at stake as the new season approaches. Some are looking to restore their careers after injury scares. Others are prospects running out of time to establish themselves as NHL-caliber players. Still others are just that, but have seen their stock plummet over the last season or two and desperately need to right the ship. Every player has something to prove as a new campaign dawns, of course. But here are the four Flyers who have the most at stake heading into 2023-24.
Travis Sanheim
In 2021-22, Travis Sanheim was arguably the Flyers’ best defenseman. He was tied for the team lead in points by a blueliner and put up solid underlying numbers despite spending most of the season next to analytical anti-darling Rasmus Ristolainen. His efforts and solid track record in his first five NHL seasons earned him an eight-year, $50 million extension just before the start of last season, complete with a full no-trade clause.
That clause might be the only reason Sanheim is still a Flyer. The 27-year-old sputtered out the worst season of his NHL career in 2022-23. He rarely looked comfortable under the demanding presence of John Tortorella, who notably scratched him for a road game against his hometown Calgary Flames. His once-calculated aggressiveness was replaced by an ineffective timidness that made nobody happy – not Sanheim, not the fans, and certainly not Tortorella. Whether his best timeline involves him moving onto greener pastures or becoming a long-term solution in Philadelphia remains to be seen. But neither is possible unless he can return to the form he showed before last season and restore his value in the organization.
Joel Farabee
Unlike Sanheim, there is a clear and perfectly reasonable explanation for why Joel Farabee struggled in 2022-23. The 2018 first-round pick underwent neck surgery after suffering a pinched nerve early last offseason, and though he beat his initial timeline by returning for opening night (and staying healthy the entire season), he was invisible far too often to justify the six-year, $30 million extension he received after a breakout 2020-21 campaign. He scored 20 goals in 55 games that season; he has just 32 goals in 145 games since.
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Farabee did show signs of life late in the season, scoring 13 points in his final 21 games. Tortorella even softened his criticisms of him, admitting the injury played a bigger role in his struggles than he initially acknowledged (from ‘What Joel Farabee needs to do to take a step forward for Flyers in 2023-24,’ The Athletic, Aug. 8, 2023). With the dearth of young wingers in the team’s pipeline, the Flyers need to figure out what they have in Farabee. With the 23-year-old finally back at full health, 2023-24 should provide the answer, whether they like it or not.
Cam York
It may be a bit surprising to see Cam York on this list given how well he played last season. He led all Flyers (minimum three games played) in expected goals percentage and was the only defenseman not to be outscored at 5-on-5. He also notched 20 points in 54 games, showing high-end puck-moving ability at both even-strength and on the power play. No matter the metric, he undeniably played well in 2022-23.
However, there’s one little caveat among those accolades – the number of games played. No, York wasn’t injured last season; he just didn’t play his first NHL game until Dec. 9 because he bombed a training camp he entered as the front-runner for a roster spot. That allowed fellow prospect Egor Zamula to briefly jump him on the organizational left-defense pecking order.
York almost certainly won’t be as much of a disaster this September. But there’s a huge difference between a strong second half and a full season’s worth of high-end results. He has proved he can accomplish the former; now, he has to prove he’s capable of the latter. And he’ll have to achieve it without playing alongside his most frequent partner, Ivan Provorov, with whom he registered a 50.55% expected goals share in 548 five-on-five minutes played largely against other team’s top lines.
Sean Couturier & Cam Atkinson
I’m cheating a bit here and selecting two players for the last slot, but only because they enter 2023-24 in nearly identical situations. Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson both began the 2021-22 campaign as bonafide top-six players with elite results in their track record. Couturier has reached the 70-point plateau twice and won the Selke Trophy in 2019-20; Atkinson scored 41 goals for Tortorella and the Blue Jackets in 2018-19, a total no Flyer has reached since Jeff Carter in 2008-09, and has been a top-six caliber winger for over a decade. Both largely played well in 2021-22 but saw their seasons cut short (way short, in Couturier’s case) due to injury.
The good news was that didn’t happen to either player last season – but only because their seasons never began. The duo, which has a combined cap hit of $13.625 million, suited up for a combined total of zero games in 2022-23. Couturier has undergone multiple back surgeries since he last took the ice in December 2021. Atkinson, after trying to rehab and return to the ice last season, underwent neck surgery in December.
At 30 and 34 years old, respectively, it’s fair to wonder what level the two will be at to start this season. But returning to at least close to old form would be very important for the Flyers. Atkinson has two seasons left on his contract, and if he shows he can be a 45-50 point winger with feistiness and special teams upside, the Flyers could probably acquire a decent asset or two for him at the trade deadline or next offseason.
The Flyers have much more at stake with Couturier’s case. Like Sanheim and Farabee, he too is trying to live up to a pricey extension – one that carries a $7.75 million cap hit through 2029-30. If he can bounce at least mostly back, suddenly the Flyers have a legitimate center core anchored by Couturier, 2022 fifth-overall pick Cutter Gauthier, and 24-year-olds Noah Cates and Morgan Frost. If he doesn’t, however, the Flyers could be staring down one of the sport’s worst contracts for the rest of the decade. No pressure.
It’s no secret the Flyers aren’t exactly in a great position heading into 2023-24. Their future outlook is steadily improving thanks to the additions of Cutter Gauthier and Matvei Michkov to their prospect pool and the emergence of players like Owen Tippett and Noah Cates last season as potential building blocks. Not all is lost if this group of players can’t live up to expectations. But the Flyers have been seemingly unable to buy any measure of good luck for years now. These players turning things around in 2023-24 would be a great place to start.
Advanced statistics via Natural Stat Trick
