The Flyers can't even escape the injury bug in June.
The club did not have positive news Friday afternoon when it announced Joel Farabee underwent disc replacement surgery in his cervical region during the morning at Penn Medicine.
Farabee's recovery is expected to take three to four months, which means the 22-year-old winger will miss most — if not all — of training camp and potentially the start of the regular season around mid-October.
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Not good.
Camp and the preseason are always important, but even more so under a new head coach. Every player other than Cam Atkinson will be experiencing something different as they learn how new bench boss John Tortorella likes to do things.
"I am going to coach that team hard right away," Tortorella said a week ago. "It’s going to be a very difficult camp, a high volume of skating. They will be told about this during the summer here as far as how we're going to approach this. We’re attacking it, we’re attacking it."
When Farabee is cleared, he'll have to get up to speed.
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More: Giroux sets the example for Farabee, tells him to break his records
This season, Farabee missed 19 games with two different occurrences of an injury to his left shoulder area. He was out for close to two weeks in December after initially injuring the shoulder. He then missed a little over a month because of the second injury suffered in January.
Farabee didn't look like himself down the stretch, recording just one point (a goal) and a minus-13 rating over his final 12 games. He finished with 17 goals and 17 assists in 63 games.
"Shoulder feels good," Farabee said at his end-of-the-season press conference April 30. "I think coming back the first time, it definitely wasn’t in great shape. Definitely tried to play through it a bit, but I think coming back from the second time, I felt a lot stronger. Ever since then, it’s been good.
"Obviously it gets a little sore with the schedule, playing back-to-backs and stuff like that, it can get a little sore. But at the end of the day, the strength was there and I felt pretty good the last few weeks of the season there."
It's uncertain whether the news Friday is related to Farabee's issues in the left shoulder area. Clearly, the timing of the surgery means an issue developed somewhat recently.
More: 'I didn't know what to say' — Farabee's neck injury total surprise to Flyers, winger
The Flyers went 25-46-11 this season. They were ravaged by injuries to critical players. They're set to aggressively retool this offseason and are hoping for better health as they open training camp ahead of 2022-23.
First-line center Sean Couturier is expected to be healthy after back surgery. Ryan Ellis is hopeful for training camp. The top-pair defenseman is amid a difficult summer recovery from a multilayered injury in his pelvic region. Kevin Hayes was able to finish this season on a high note after abdominal issues, including an infection, wreaked havoc on the second-line center.
But the Flyers' hope for better health took a hit Friday with the Farabee news.
More: Quick-climbing Farabee a reminder of a few important things for Flyers
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