Earlier today, Philadelphia Flyers President of Hockey Operations and General Manager Chuck Fletcher announced that the Flyers have placed defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen on injured reserve and also called up forward Zack MacEwen and defenseman Louie Belpedio.
Ristolainen, according to Flyers PR, is out with a lower-body injury and they had to place him on injured reserve. He missed the first two games of the season as well and only appeared in two preseason games on the 28th of September against the Washington Capitals and on the 1st of October against the Boston Bruins.
At first glance, it appeared as if the injury wasn’t going to be too serious as the Flyers sounded rather optimistic about his return, let alone mum about the injury itself until there were only a few days left before the season started.
Ristolainen now joins forward Owen Tippett, who also landed on IR a few days ago after his collision with Ondrej Palat in the first period during their tilt on Thursday night. Following the trend, Cam Atkinson who almost missed the first two games of the season with an undisclosed injury, has yet to practice with team as of today. Atkinson won’t be going on the team’s upcoming road trip, but Ristolainen will be.
Subsequently, the Flyers recalled Zack MacEwen and Louie Belpedio but as of today’s practice they served as extras. The lines remained the same:
Scott Laughton – Kevin Hayes – Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee – Noah Cates – Wade Allison
James van Riemsdyk – Morgan Frost – Tanner Laczynski
Nicolas Deslauriers – Jackson Cates – Olle Lycksell
Zack MacEwen
Tony DeAngelo – Ivan Provorov
Travis Sanheim – Justin Braun
Egor Zamula – Nick Seeler
Louie Belpedio
Carter Hart
Felix Sandström
John Tortorella had a few quips during his presser today as he was quoted as saying, “This is a young, dumb league…you can pay attention for a little while. It’s hard to teach thinking. When you have a player who has the smarts and goes to the right places, that guy is well on his way to being a good pro,” in reference to Noah Cates and Joel Farabee.
In reference to MacEwen, Bill Meltzer tweeted out that Tortorella was pleased that MacEwen went down to the Phantoms with a good attitude, had a chance to work on his game, play in different situations, and all that, but at the same time he shouldn’t get credit for a positive attitude either.
He said that players of his status are generally on the bubble and it’s part of hockey and the nature of the game. Tortorella was quoted as saying, “Well, his attitude better be right, or he’s not coming back up. I didn’t expect that at all and that’s not what happened. If we’re gonna worry about attitude and about being sent down here, they’ll get stuck down there.” He finished it off by saying that Chuck Fletcher liked his games with the Phantoms and got the call up by merit.
Ian Laperriere chimed in on MacEwen as well and said, “Sometimes when you have guys like that come down from the Flyers and play all year last year in the NHL, they’re grumpy. He’s the opposite, he’s positive, he looks at it as an opportunity. He wants to get better. He made a couple mistakes that I told him about on the bench and he was like “yes, coach”, no attitude. Sometimes we wonder if they have entitlement and he didn’t have that at all. As long as he is here, he will be a part of this team. To help with the young guys.”
Tortorella remains unsure whether or not he is going to play MacEwen on Tuesday night when they face off against the Tampa Bay Lightning. He liked Olle Lycksell’s game and said it was hard to truly evaluate him due to lack of ice time, but he did say that he needs to simplify his game if he wants to remain in the lineup moving forward.
The Flyers are set to play in their first back-to-back set of the season against the Lightning and the Florida Panthers on Tuesday and Wednesday.
