Travis Konecny Sidelined With Upper-Body Injury Ahead of Tonight’s Game Against the Edmonton Oilers

Philadelphia Flyers leading scorer, Travis Konecny, has been ruled out for tonight’s game against the Edmonton Oilers due to an upper-body injury.

The 25-year-old forward was injured in the second period of their game yesterday against the Calgary Flames when he was pushed from behind by defenseman, MacKenzie Weegar.

Here's the hit from MacKenzie Weegar that sent Travis Konecny to the dressing room. pic.twitter.com/I2Dw2vfcOD

— Ryan Quigley (@ryanquigz) February 20, 2023

It’s unclear what exactly is ailing Konecny, but he was seen grimacing and wincing in pain right away and was escorted off the ice with the medical trainers. He did not return for the third period and the Flyers have announced that he will be undergoing further tests when they return back to Philadelphia with the road trip coming to an end tonight.

Konecny has been enjoying a relatively successful campaign with a career-best 27 goals and a team leading 54 points in 52 games. He just recently snapped his 13-game goal drought on Thursday night when the Flyers lost 6-2 to Seattle to start their 4-game road trip. The Flyers were down 5-0 entering the third period but Konecny kept playing until the bitter end and was rewarded with 2 goals to finally get him over the hump. He then followed that up with an assist against the Vancouver Canucks in another 6-2 loss on Saturday, and then he scored a goal and added a helper before having to leave the game due to injury yesterday.

The Flyers have been struggling to score goals to begin with and will now be without their leading goal scorer and their offensive leader against the vaunted Edmonton Oilers. Kieffer Bellows has been an extra forward for a few weeks, has played 3 games sporadically this month, and with the Flyers playing on the road and in a different country, look for him to step into the lineup unless head coach John Tortorella wants to experiment with 7 defenseman again. Travis Sanheim was made a healthy scratch yesterday with Justin Braun coming in and playing with Ivan Provorov on the second pairing.

The Flyers snapped their 4-game losing streak yesterday with a narrow 4-3 victory against the Flames, have lost 8 of their last 11 games, and have only scored 35 goals in their last 15 games for a paltry 2.33 goals per game average. Several key players like Joel Farabee, Scott Laughton, Morgan Frost, James van Riemsdyk, and Owen Tippett have found themselves in scoring slumps or droughts and will need to pick up the pieces with Konecny out of the lineup for at least one game.