Four story lines to watch as Flyers training camp starts Thursday

Training camp No. 2 for Flyers coach John Tortorella starts Thursday at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees, and so begins a season in which the Flyers, under new general manager Danny Brière and president of hockey operations Keith Jones, have fully acknowledged that development and building for the future are the top priorities.

But despite it being a season of rebuilding, there is plenty of roster intrigue. Here are four key story lines to watch as camp gets underway.

» READ MORE: Flyers training camp schedule and roster released

Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson are healthy to start training camp. In terms of impact to the Flyers’ win-loss record, no sentence about them is more critical than that one.

Couturier, 30, hasn’t played in a game since Dec. 18, 2021 due to a back injury. And Atkinson, 34, injured his neck in training camp last season and didn’t play a single game after collecting 50 points in his first season with the Flyers.

» READ MORE: Flyers ‘not tanking,’ says Danny Brière, but how will the rebuild impact roster decisions?

The Flyers, obviously, could use their veteran leadership on a team that is building and developing for the future, but Brière also described how their on-ice presence impacts some of that development, too.

“Obviously, on the ice, it’s a big change,” Brière said Tuesday. “We put a lot of stress on guys like Noah Cates and Morgan Frost last year because of [injuries] and I’m sure it was great for their development to have to face top-six players or centers all year long. But at the same time it’s going to be nice to give them a little bit of help and strengthen that position and let them breathe a little bit.”

Both Couturier and Atkinson have been skating with their teammates in informal scrimmages in recent weeks.

What will be interesting to pay attention to, especially when it comes to Couturier, is how he responds to taking contact.

Couturier, who has played his entire 11-season NHL career with the Flyers, is entering the second year of an eight-year, $62 million contract ($7.75 million AAV). And as he prepared to enter it, he was left with the lingering contact question that he couldn’t answer at the end of last season — when the Flyers decided it was best to keep him out of what were meaningless games.

“It just made my summer a little more miserable, just questioning myself all the time,” he told The Inquirer recently.

Soon enough, he’ll have his answers.

» READ MORE: Inside Flyers star Sean Couturier’s 21-month journey to get back on the ice

There will be a few roster battles to watch in camp (more on those later), but the goalie situation is an interesting one.

Carter Hart is the clear No. 1, Brière reiterated Tuesday, but behind Hart is a real open competition between three players: Sam Ersson, Cal Petersen, and Felix Sandström.

That battle will likely last the duration of camp.

Ersson, 23, played well last year in Lehigh Valley and was impressive in 12 appearances — minus two stinkers that dramatically skewed his numbers — with the big club. Petersen, who turns 29 next month, was acquired from Los Angeles in the Ivan Provorov trade as a salary-cap dump — the AAV on his contract is $5 million through next season. He was brutal in 10 games with the Kings last season, running up a 3.75 goals-against average before being shipped to the AHL.

Then there’s Sandström, 26, who was drafted by the team in the third round in 2015 and has yet to really break through in a big way.

“I think it’s fair to say that it’s wide open, and we’ll see who steps up,” Brière said of the backup battle.

The backup job is even more intriguing as we await the findings of the investigations into an alleged 2018 sexual assault involving members of Canada’s World Juniors hockey team, which Hart played on.

“We don’t know much,” Brière said of the ongoing investigations. “At this time, we’re moving forward. They’ll tell us when they’re ready to tell us something.”

The roster math was easy for Tyson Foerster when Couturier and Atkinson weren’t healthy. But with those two back, it’s a bit more complicated for the 21-year-old. The 2020 first-round pick played well in Lehigh Valley last season (20 goals) and had seven points in eight games with the Flyers.

Of the three Flyers forward prospects pushing for a roster spot — Foerster; Elliot Desnoyers, 21; and Bobby Brink, 22 — Foerster seems most likely to get one. After him, it’s Desnoyers and then Brink.

Brière said Tuesday that the Flyers won’t be forcing any of their prospects onto the opening-night roster if they don’t appear to be ready. Expect to see Foerster and probably Desnoyers make a strong push for a spot, however.

» READ MORE: Flyers hopeful Tyson Foerster already showing NHL ‘swagger’ at rookie camp

“Torts wants people to compete — if someone gets beat out and has to go on waivers, so be it,” assistant general manager Brent Flahr said. “That’s just the reality.”

On paper, the Flyers have three defensemen who are seemingly locks to play almost every night: Travis Sanheim, Cam York, and Rasmus Ristolainen.

Then there are three veterans: Marc Staal, Nick Seeler, and Sean Walker.

Tortorella loves him some Seeler, who at 29 last season had a turnaround year and shined in many advanced metrics. It would seem unlikely that Seeler’s job is impacted much in camp.

Staal was brought in to be another veteran presence on a team that needs it. But he turns 37 in January and is entering his 17th NHL season. Then there’s Walker, who was also in the Provorov trade. Walker, 28, is a good skater but has been a pretty average NHL defenseman since he debuted in 2018 with the Kings. Plus, he has the added bonus of being a right-handed shot.

It would be rather surprising if any of those three — Seeler, Staal, Walker — end up being a roster casualty after camp, but it would be a lot less surprising if one of them finds himself in the press box on opening night as a healthy scratch.

The push from the youth will come in the forms of Egor Zamula, 23; Ronnie Attard, who at almost 25 years old we can all agree is no longer in the “prospect” category; and two Swedes, Adam Ginning, 23, and Emil Andrae, 21. Fellow Swede Helge Grans, 21, has an outside chance of making a push, too.

Assuming the Flyers carry seven defensemen, it would seem like a grouping of Sanheim, Ristolainen, York, Staal, Seeler, Walker, and either Zamula or Attard being the favorite to be the defensive corps on opening night.

But that’s what camp and exhibition games are for.