Source: Flyers center prospect Jett Luchanko to miss time with a lower-body injury
The Flyers are hopeful Luchanko won't miss too much time, per a team source. The injury is unrelated to the core procedure he underwent in the summer.
The Flyers’ injury woes have permeated down to the American Hockey League.
Center prospect Jett Luchanko, 20, missed Lehigh Valley’s Wednesday night 5-4 overtime win against the Laval Rocket with a lower-body injury.
While there is no timeline for his return, according to a team source, the Flyers are hopeful he will not be out for too long, and the injury is unrelated to the procedure performed on Luchanko’s core near the start of June. That injury caused the speedy center to miss his second straight development camp.
» READ MORE: The Flyers’ ‘rewiring’ of Jett Luchanko and a hot start for a couple of ‘The Jacks’ | Prospect Corner
“It’s been lingering for about a year and a half. It’s been a problem,” assistant general manager Brent Flahr said at the end of development camp in July.
Luchanko, 20, was back on the ice not long after development camp and flashed his speed and hockey IQ in rookie and main camp in September. Although he did not break camp with the Flyers for the third straight year — the plan was always for him to head to Allentown, anyway — the Flyers remain high on the 2024 first-round pick, especially with him in one spot for the year.
“We’re excited to see him turn pro [full-time]. I think that’s great. … Stability will probably be a good thing for him,” Flyers general manager Danny Brière told The Inquirer at the beginning of June. “... The big thing with Jett is he has an elite skill in skating that is almost unmatched from anyone in the organization, other than maybe Owen Tippett. So that’s always going to have a lot of value for anybody to have a player like that.”
This season with the Phantoms, Luchanko has a goal and six points in 10 games. The Flyers have wanted him to focus on shooting the puck more this season, and he already has 20 shots on goal, compared to just the seven he put on in nine regular-season games with Lehigh Valley two seasons ago.
Known as a gifted passer, Luchanko said in early October that his process this year is to rewire the way he thinks and get shots on goal.
“In a game, I think it’s just so automatic and so fast that you don’t have time to think about things like that, and I think it just comes from experience of playing the game,” he told The Inquirer recently. “Things you would do automatically; you see the lane and it just kind of happens.
“I think it definitely happens from reps in practice. In practice, if you get in that situation, just shooting it no matter what, maybe, or passing it, no matter what, to be able to get yourself in a position where you shoot it instead of pass it. When maybe, even if you should have passed it, you still get the puck on net and [it] creates a rebound or something.”
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