PHILADELPHIA — While the Flyers have spent the past few games finally getting their collective game straightened out, their injury luck has taken a turn in the wrong direction.
Foremost among the casualties is goalie Sam Ersson, who Monday was placed on injured reserve with a lower-body injury. Thought to be a groin woe, Ersson originally was hurt on Nov. 2 during the first period of a game against Boston, leaving early. He missed two games, returned to play two, then left early again from a practice last week.
He’s expected to miss perhaps another week or so. Flyers 6-foot-7 backup Ivan Fedotov has played well in Ersson’s absence, and was riding a three-game win streak entering Monday night’s game against the Colorado Avalanche. But coach John Tortorella opted to give recent Phantoms grad Alexei Kolosov a start. He was winless in three Flyers games earlier in the season with only 3.92 goals-against and .862 saves percentage.
It would be more of the same for Kolosov and the Flyers, dropping a 3-2 decision to the Avalanche. To add a little insult to the loss, Colorado defenseman Cale Makar, who was bypassed in the 2017 NHL Draft when the Flyers went for No. 2 overall pick Nolan Patrick – Makar went No. 4 overall to the Avs – scored the first two goals of the game. He almost scored a third goal, but it was disallowed due to a close goalie interference call on Colorado’s Jonathan Drouin.
While the game was relatively even for long stretches, the Flyers couldn’t do much offensively for the first 2½ periods. They were down three goals when Tyson Foerster scored a pair of goals 1:49 apart. But the Avs held on from there.
Defensively, the Flyers didn’t do badly considering their shorthanded status. Already missing Cam York on the blue line, defender Emil Andrae was hurt during Saturday’s home win over the Buffalo Sabres. His former fellow Lehigh Valley defenseman Helge Grans, a 22-year-old, righthanded two-way defenseman who was part of the three-team deal that sent Ivan Provorov packing in June 2023, was brought up Monday to make his NHL debut against the high-powered Avs.
Flyers coach John Tortorella was hoping he could at least help make up for the loss of Andrae.
“He’s played very well, he’s helped our transition game, I think he’s defended better than we thought he would,” Tortorella said of Andrae. “He’s had a good run here since he’s been called up so we’ll miss him.”
Grans can be somewhat imposing at 6-foot-4 and 205 but also isn’t shy to jump in offensively when necessary.
“(We’ll) let him play, just touch upon things (with him),” Tortorella said. “In this type of situation he’s not hearing anything, so … we’ve done a couple of things this morning (at practice), but not a whole bunch of information.”
There is another reason Tortorella was intrigued by seeing what Grans can do.
“This gives us a chance to get a look at a big, righthanded defenseman here against one of the top teams in the league, with some pretty good speed,” Tortorella said. “He’s going to see some stuff pretty quickly.”
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NOTES >> The Flyers’ Eric Johnson was honored before the game for playing in his 1,000th NHL game Saturday against Buffalo. Just a coincidence on the timing, as Johnson played 717 of those games with Colorado. One of his old teammates shaking his hand Monday night was Flyers GM Danny Briere, who played his last NHL season with the Avs in 2014-15. … Tortorella was saying Monday that he was anticipating giving some more playing time to Joel Farabee, specifically playing him on the top power play unit. “He hasn’t scored (much) but he’s done some good things offensively,” Tortorella said of Farabee. “He could get some time with the first power play, our power play is up and down right now. For most of this year he’s been around the offense. He shows up in the sheets all over the place as far as developing chances.” Farabee, who had three goals and eight points entering the game, indeed went out on the first Flyers power play.
