The short is answer yes and the long answer is also yes but it’s understandable why it could be a question on the minds of many Philadelphia Flyers fans as we enter another season.
There is no argument that the health and well-being of Sean Couturier is of the utmost importance for the betterment of the Flyers moving forward. The team is already razor thin down the middle, there is very little depth in the minors or within the pipeline at the centre position, and the intangibles that Couturier brings to the table are almost unmatched by anyone else on the roster – maybe with the exception of Scott Laughton but he’s been littered in trade rumours for half a decade and his future standing with the organization is another question for another day.
A recurring back injury has essentially engulfed Couturier’s present standing, almost taking over completely and allowing some of us to forget about his astonishing run between 2017-18 and 2020-21. In 276 games played, Couturier accumulated 104 goals and 252 points, was +53, he won 56.6% of his faceoffs, averaged 20:56 TOI, had more takeaways than giveaways, and won a Frank J. Selke Trophy in 2020 after finishing in 6th place in 2019 and in 2nd place in 2018. Health was not an issue either as he only missed 2 games between 2017-18 and 2019-20.
Couturier was back to his old tricks at the beginning of the 2021-22 season after he scored 5 goals and 12 points in the team’s first 10 games. He slumped to the tune of just 1 goal and 5 points in his next 19 games, which coincided with a season-ending back injury in the middle of December. After undergoing surgery, Couturier was ruled out for the rest of the season and was expected to be healthy for training camp in the summer of 2022.
Unfortunately he suffered a setback to the same exact spot that ailed him in the first place and his return to game action in 2022-23 became murky at best. There was very little news trickling out of either camp but the initial diagnosis was not a positive one with the likelihood of extended time on the sidelines. He ultimately missed the entire 2022-23 season, effectively costing him 1.5 seasons, dating back to the 18th of December, 2021.
Heading into the 2023-24 season, there was a lot of skepticism on whether or not he would he even be playing. He proved a lot of his doubters wrong almost immediately and returned to his Selke-winning form right off the hop. Couturier started the season with 2 goals and 8 points in his first 9 games while averaging 19:38 TOI and leading into the half-way mark he had totalled 10 goals and 30 points in 41 games while averaging 19:59 TOI. The Flyers were thriving in large part because of his two-way game and his return to the lineup was a boon not many anticipated.
Unfortunately and alarmingly, Couturier finished the season with just one goal and 8 points in his final 33 games, was a minus-22, had averaged just 15:08 TOI, and had been made a healthy scratch a couple times before being fully relegated to fourth-line duties. All the while he was named captain on the 14th of February. The difference was staggering and as he was rounding into form again near the end of the season, his ice-time remained in the low teens as John Tortorella kept him in the bottom-6.
Couturier later revealed at the end of the season while appearing on the Nasty Knuckles podcast that he had undergone sports hernia surgery and that the injury had impacted his game throughout the season – which would be a pretty good indication as to why he struggled at such a rapid pace. Hernia injuries can be felt from the lower back all the way down to the legs, which correlates to his initial back injury from 2021.
While it’s very easy to dismiss a comeback from the “oft-injured” veteran, Couturier showed us front and centre what a healthy version of himself can still do. He was the 1C the Flyers lacked after his departure, he played in all situations, was a force on both ends of the ice, was a key cog in the offensive zone, and even displayed a proclivity to score in penalty shot/shootout situations – which has very rarely been a boon for the Orange and Black.
Last year’s arrival was coinciding with Cam Atkinson‘s as well and while he is no longer with the club, the top-6 does look somewhat better after essentially replacing the veteran with Matvei Michkov. Couturier should slot himself back as the 1C and possibly play with Tyson Foerster and Travis Konecny – under the assumption that Morgan Frost centers Owen Tippett and Michkov.
You can do a little juggling around with the wingers in the top-6 but Foerster and Konecny will provide the perfect platform for Couturier to thrive once again. There’s a lot of familiarity between Konecny and Couturier and they were playing very well together last year by the half-way mark of the season. Then with Foerster, he’s not only a shoot-first player but he plays a similar 200-foot game as Couturier to give him a complimentary winger off the puck just as much as he is on the puck.
The Flyers didn’t address the centre position this off-season and it looks as if they’ll roll with Couturier, Frost, Laughton, and Ryan Poehling/Noah Cates down the middle. It’s a not the worst quartet but it lacks a little “je ne sais quoi” compared to their league counterparts.
The power play is where the Flyers desperately need Couturier to take over as the alpha-male, whether that’s playmaking or scoring, they need a better showing out of their atrocious man advantage. Michkov is going to be expected to handle the brunt of the playmaking and skill on the power play, they also have creative players in Frost and Konecny, shoot-first guys in Tippett and Foerster, and quarterbacks in Cam York and Jamie Drysdale – but someone needs to captain the sinking ship and who better than the actual captain of the team.
The Flyers don’t have a Claude Giroux patrolling the corner boards and assessing what the defense is offering anymore. Couturier needs to become that player with the Flyers lacking veterans, firepower, and centres.
A healthy Couturier is more than capable of handling a large workload but back injuries are as fickle as they come and he’s now dealt with one over the last 3 seasons. Give credit where credit is due, Couturier did manage to play in 74 games despite dealing with a nagging injury by the end and there’s no doubt in mind that Couturier will come out of the gates blazing hot – as he usually does – but maintaining that pace over the course of an 82-game season is a different story altogether.
