As Flyers eye season opener, it’s Brian Elliott or bust
His return to full strength will dictate the team's fate in the early going this season. Rookie Carter Hart played extensively Thursday in an exhibition loss to the Rangers.
OK, has enough time gone by?
Can we talk about the goalies again?
Because really, that's what the start of this Flyers season boils down to. With Sean Couturier and Wayne Simmonds yet to see actual game action as they recover from their respective lower body surgeries, with Andrew MacDonald rushing back to action and looking that way, with Travis Sanheim looking to shake off an apparent shoulder injury incurred during the Flyers' last game against the Rangers — how the Flyers begin the season six days from now hinges on a goaltending situation that is as uncertain as it was when they last played a game for real.
Brian Elliott is the starter. Regardless of how he has looked so far, regardless of how he feels so far, it would take a tweak or two over the last few days of practice for the Flyers to start either of the goaltenders who dressed for Thursday night's 4-2 exhibition loss to the Rangers when the regular season begins in Las Vegas on Thursday.
But given the real possibility of that occurring perhaps, the Flyers played Carter Hart, the 20-year-old rookie they hope will someday replace Elliott in that starter's role, for the entire game against New York.
It was not a Wow event.
Hart saw only four shots in the first period, 12 in the Rangers three-goal second. He allowed a power-play tip-in and a second one moments later on what ended up being — after MacDonald fell not once, but twice — a two-on-none.
The Rangers made it 3-0 via another power play goal in the final minute of that lopsided period. As they had against a veteran-light Bruins squad Monday night, the Flyers staged a furious third-period rally, outshooting the visitors 16-2, getting goals from Ivan Provorov and James van Riemsdyk — both facilitated by the playmaking of rookie center Mikhail Vorbyev, the clear MVP of this preseason.
An empty-net goal accounted for the final score.
OK, so maybe goaltending isn't the only issue.
Aggressively ahead of schedule, MacDonald is trying to play himself into shape. After their own summer surgeries, Couturier and Simmonds have yet to even play — they hope to Saturday in Boston. Veterans who have undergone surgeries involving the lower extremities often say that it is their hands that give them the most trouble as they return to play. There is no substitute for the timing, the coordination required in catching and shooting pucks, they say.
Couturier did not dispute this. "We'll see how it goes, but that's why I kind of want to play at least one [game],'' he said during an optional practice for players not involved in Thursday's game. "To get a feel of the game, the pace, get the bad habits of summer hockey out of the system and be ready for the opener."
Elliott said similar words moments before. But his lack of work — four periods entering Saturday night's final exhibition game in Boston — does not translate into surety. Elliott, 33, may be in his 12th season, but there's no blueprint for what he's been through over the last seven months — rushing back from core muscle surgery to play in the playoffs, having additional surgery on his hip in early summer to further stabilize that core.
"You have to go back to trusting what got you here," said Elliott. "I use the analogy with a golf swing: You swing too hard, you're going to miss the ball. When you go out there, trying to be so aggressive, trying to stop each puck before it gets to you, that's when you get yourself in trouble. I found myself doing that in that last game, and as the game rolled on then you kind of relax a little bit and let the pucks come to you. That's what it's about, is finding that rhythm.''
It would be a good title for a preseason video, if they made such a thing.
So would this:
"It's a long season, it's a marathon,'' Couturier said. "We won't win the Stanley Cup in October. But you still have to be ready.''