The Philadelphia Flyers have announced that forward Tyson Foerster underwent successful arm surgery on Monday and will be out for five months.
Foerster was originally slated to miss 2-3 months due to the injury before the team announced that he underwent further medical consultation and diagnostic testing, which led to surgery.
This is a crucial blow for the Flyers, who are now losing one of their top players and their top two-way threat for the rest of the regular season. The Flyers would have to make a deep run into the Stanley Cup Playoffs into May for Foerster to return at all this season.
Foerster suffered the injury in Philadelphia’s 5-1 loss to Pittsburgh on December 1st. He attempted a one-timer and immediately left the ice in obvious pain while holding his arm.
Foerster led the Flyers in goals (10) when his injury occurred. At the time of this writing, he is still second on the team in goals and tied for second in power play goals (3), and he is tied for the team lead in game-winning goals (2) as well.
It has been a tough calendar year for Foerster, who suffered an injury at the IIHF World Championship with Team Canada in the spring that resulted in an elbow infection. He underwent surgery for that and luckily recovered in time for the start of the Flyers’ regular season, and he was chugging along pretty comfortably before this latest setback.
It is worth noting that the right arm in which Foerster was nursing in the Pittsburgh game is the same arm he underwent his offseason elbow surgery on.
Despite losing Foerster, the Flyers have trudged on to a 3-1-3 record since the loss to Pittsburgh when he got hurt. Two of those wins came against current playoff position holders San Jose and Montréal.
Head coach Rick Tocchet has had to shuffle the forward lines around in the aftermath of Foerster’s injury but the team is making the best of an unfortunate situation. Carl Grundström has been perhaps the largest beneficiary, earning a spot in the top-six in Tuesday’s win at Montréal and racking up 3 goals and 1 assist since being recalled from AHL Lehigh Valley. Among others that have stepped up, since Foerster’s injury, Travis Konecny has 4 goals and 5 assists, Trevor Zegras has 5 goals and 3 assists, Christian Dvorak has 1 goal and 6 assists, and Bobby Brink has 3 goals and 2 assists to round out the most outstanding performers.
