Shayne Gostisbehere will await the Flyers in Voorhees, New Jersey, ready to soon give the club a reinforcement on the back end.
Gostisbehere hasn't practiced with the Flyers since Jan. 8, when the team was still in training camp. The 27-year-old defenseman has missed all five of the Flyers' games because of COVID protocol, which consists of a number of factors that can contribute to a player's absence. As the Flyers traveled to Boston to open a two-game set against the Bruins, Gostisbehere was cleared. He has been taken off COVID protocol this week and skating since Wednesday at the practice facility while the team wraps up its Boston trip on Saturday night at TD Garden.
Head coach Alain Vigneault, who essentially revealed on Friday that Gostisbehere did in fact test positive for COVID-19 (which became clearer given the length of his absence), said the blueliner is expected to practice with the team Monday but his return to game action is to be determined.
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“He’s going to need a little bit of time here to get himself back into condition," Vigneault said. "He was basically at a standstill there for I believe it was close to seven days.
"The reports that I’m getting is that he’s feeling all right. COVID hits individuals differently — some don’t feel the effects, some have the effects and they feel a little bit more tired. In Shayne’s case, I do believe — and I haven’t talked to [Flyers director of sports medicine Jim McCrossin] — that he was feeling much better and working out with more intensity day by day. I believe he’ll be having his first team practice with us next Monday, but I don’t know when he’s going to feel right to be able to come back and help us play. It might take one practice, it might take a week, I’m not at liberty to say right now, I haven’t really spoken to him and haven’t seen him on the ice.”
Time will tell if Gostisbehere can get up to speed in time for the Flyers' road games next week against the Devils on Tuesday and Thursday, but he is on the mend. A defenseman who won't be walking back through the Flyers' dressing room doors is Matt Niskanen. Looking at the number of shots allowed through the Flyers' 3-1-1 start, one can surmise that the club misses his presence and goal-prevention tactics on the ice.
Entering Friday, the Flyers were surrendering the NHL's second-most shots per game at 37.4, fewer than only the Devils at 37.5. Despite earning at least a point in four of their first five games, the Flyers have been outshot in every contest, with four of them by double-digit margins. They've allowed 40 or more shots in back-to-back games after yielding 40 or more shots only four times in 69 games last regular season.
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The high-volume of shots being peppered at Flyers goalies is an eyebrow-raising trend early in this 2020-21 season because the Flyers gave up the NHL's fewest shots per game at 28.7 in 2019-20.
Niskanen, an all-situation defenseman with a Stanley Cup championship ring, was integral in the team's efforts to keep the puck out of the defensive zone and consistently going north. Niskanen retired after the season and the Flyers' process of moving forward without him has experienced a good number of bumps (and shots).
The Flyers will need Gostisbehere to be much better when he returns. They'll need Travis Sanheim and Philippe Myers (when he's back from injury) to take heftier strides. They'll need a lot more from others — forwards included. Everyone expected that heading into the regular season but it has been clearly evident through five games.
“There’s no doubt that Matt was a big part of our team — on the ice, in the dressing room, his experience and just the way he played the game," Vigneault said Friday. "But we have some good young defensemen that we need to work with them, we need to improve their game. It’s hard to replace a top-four defenseman, that’s what we’re working on doing right now. You see Travis right now taking a step forward, when Phil’s able to come back, he should be able to log more minutes and play better than he has so far, and etc., etc., etc. It is a loss for us but internally we have to find a way to be better and fill that void.”
Because of the adjustments forced by the coronavirus pandemic, the NHL eliminated preseason games and reduced the length of training camps. Before the 2019-20 season, the Flyers played seven exhibition games over the course of camp and the preseason. This year's camp consisted of six on-ice days in total.
Ivan Provorov, the Flyers' 24-year-old leader on the blue line, noted those facts Friday. He trusts the Flyers' defensive process.
“Nisky was a great player overall, great defensively, super steady and he was breaking up a lot of plays on entries and in zone," Provorov said. "But I think overall, since we didn’t really have a preseason, our team is still getting back to the level that we were used to playing at defensively last year. Usually during a normal season you have about six, seven preseason games, now we didn’t have any. So it’s going to take a little bit of time but I think we’ll get better and we’ll get to the level we were at last year, and even better."
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