Earlier Monday, the Philadelphia Flyers made several roster changes that included Matvei Michkov’s return from a 2-game absence as a healthy scratch as well as Jamie Drysdale coming out of the lineup with was deemed an undisclosed injury. Several hours later, the team has placed the young defenseman on the injured reserve with what is being labeled an upper-body injury.
Ahead of their home tilt against the San Jose Sharks, the Flyers made a laundry list of changes. Morgan Frost will come out of the lineup as a healthy scratch after a few warnings from his head coach, Ryan Poehling returns from his short stint on IR, Erik Johnson comes back into the lineup for Drysdale, and Samuel Ersson has earned the start.
For Drysdale, it hasn’t been the transformative year that everyone involved was hoping for. The young right-handed shooting defenseman has struggled with injuries over the last few years dating back to his days in Anaheim. He missed over a month last year due to a shoulder injury, which in turn was the same shoulder that kept him out for almost a full season in 2022-23.
Acquired from the Ducks for Cutter Gauthier in a trade that shocked the hockey world, Drysdale has put up 3 goals and 8 points in 39 games with a -28 rating, 55 blocked shots to 20 hits, and has averaged 19:29 TOI across parts of two seasons with the Flyers. This year has been more of the same, despite the season being 15 games young, but Drysdale has had 4 different defensive partners and they’ve all yielded poor returns.
With Drysdale now on IR, he’s expected to miss at least a minimum of one week, and as for tonight’s game the pairings got changed a little bit with Emil Andrae sticking by Travis Sanheim and Johnson playing with Egor Zamula. Cam York is close to returning from IR as well, which would be a boost for the Flyers, considering his standing with the club.
The Flyers play the Sharks on Monday before finishing off the week with games against the Ottawa Senators on Thursday and the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday. Sanheim played a game-high 30:19 in this past Saturday’s shootout loss to the Florida Panthers and 28:21 the game before against Tampa Bay as John Tortorella continues to lean on the 28-year-old with injuries plaguing the back-end.
Drysdale’s absence will leave a void on the top power play unit that could be given to Andrae, who has been manning the second unit, or Zamula, who has been given power play minutes aplenty in the past. Given Sanheim’s ice-time on even-strength and the penalty kill, it doesn’t seem like they would give him power play time at this stage.
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