QUICK HITS: APRIL 26, 2018
1) Flyers general manager Ron Hextall and head coach Dave Hakstol will address the media on Thursday at the Skate Zone in Voorhees, starting with Hextall at 11 a.m. EDT. The players spoke yesterday on locker cleanout and exit interview day.
2) Once the campaign is over, players can speak about the injuries they played through during the regular season and/or playoffs. Hextall will be asked on Thursday to give updates on any players who were not interviewed by the media following Game 6 or on cleanout day. The following is the known list of injuries thus far:
* Wayne Simmonds has had a mid-line pelvic tear since the start of training camp in September, which explains why he was taking maintenance days in the preseason. The issue will likely require off-season surgery. Playing through the injury, Simmonds nevertheless managed to score a hat trick on opening night and compile six goals and nine points through the first eight games of the season. However, overcompensating for the pelvic tear left him vulnerable to other injuries, and his play dropped off dramatically as other injuries (some of which were unrelated, some potentially related to overcompensation) piled up.
Early in the season, Simmonds suffered a groin pull on Oct. 17 against the Florida Panthers. This was almost certainly related to overcompensating for the pelvic tear, and the combination injury noticeably compromised his skating speed and power. To make matters even worse, Simmonds sustained an ankle fracture when he took a Shayne Gostisbehere shot off his ankle ("but it wasn't a weight-bearing bone" Simmonds said by way of explanation on Wednesday).
Unrelated to his litany of lower-body issues, Simmonds was sitting on the bench between shifts during the Flyers' Oct. 19 home game against the Nashville Predators when the Preds' Mattias Ekholm accidentally caught him flush in the mouth with an errant high stick. The result was broken teeth that required a four-hour ordeal of dental surgery, including multiple root canals. During the All-Star break, multiple now-dead teeth had to be extracted. If it seemed like Simmonds' speech was affected in interviews in the latter part of the season, it was because he was minus about six teeth in the front of his mouth.
At another juncture of the season, Simmonds took another stick to the mouth that required stitches on and near his bottom lip. For a time, the injury site had a raw, nasty-looking infection before it healed. Nevertheless, Simmonds did interviews when asked.
On Feb. 16, in a game at Madison Square Garden against the New York Rangers, Simmonds dropped the gloves with Rangers defenseman Anthony DeAngelo. Simmonds won a lopsided bout but, as DeAngelo went down to the ice, Simmonds' thumb got caught in his opponent's jersey. The result was torn ligaments. This was the only injury that caused Simmonds to miss time during the season: he was out for seven games. The silver lining was that being forced out for that stretch may have helped Simmonds' groin issues to lessen the rest of the season although the torn pelvis remained, of course.
In explaining why he played through all of these things -- and returned from the thumb issue with a surgical pin -- Simmonds said, ""I don’t know if it’s the right thing, but I can’t not play. It’s just geared in my head. If I’m not dead or I’m not deathly sick, I’m gonna try to get out there and do whatever I can. Whether the coach is gonna play me, whatever minutes he wanted to play me, that was up to him. I’m definitely gonna sacrifice my body for the team, that’s for sure.”
Simmonds said he no regrets over playing through all the injuries, severe as they were. He'd do it again in the future.
* Sean Couturier reconfirmed that he has a torn MCL that will take a month to six weeks to heal. It will not require surgery. Couturier took cortisone injections to return in the playoffs after missing one game. He scored the game-winning goal and logged heavy penalty killing ice time in Game 5 against Pittsburgh and then produced a hat trick and two assists in an 8-5 losing cause in Game 6.
* Brian Elliott admitted that he returned a little early from core muscle surgery to get into the final two regular season games and then start Games 1-4 of the playoff series against Pittsburgh. A month ago, he said, he still could not even pull on his socks or tie his own shoes. Agonizing rehab -- with the requisite tearing of internal scar tissue -- followed. Elliott took extensive treatment after practices and games.
The rehab process is still not finished. At the time of his exit interview, Elliott had not yet met with his doctor to see if an additional minor procedure to clean out scar tissue would be necessary. Elliott said that his usual off-season training regimen would be delayed but not by long enough that he's not confident in being fully ready for day one of training camp in September. Elliott will spend most of the summer in Voorhees.
* Michal Neuvirth needs arthroscopic surgery on both of his hips. He admitted on Wednesday that he was still less than fully healthy when he returned to provide relief goaltending in Game 4 of the Pittsburgh series and then started Games 5 and 6, but added, "it's playoffs, no one is 100 percent. You play through the pain."
Neuvirth, like Elliott, will spend a portion of the offseason in the Philadelphia area to rehab. He has also hired a new trainer (for the third time in his career). After leaving Philly, he will spend the rest of the offseason in Kelowna, British Columbia, training under the auspices of Adam Francilia. Among others, NHL goaltenders Connor Hellebuyck, Devan Dubnyk, Thomas Greiss, James Reimer and Eddie Läck have
trained under Francilia.
* Ivan Provorov has a left shoulder separation (grade 3 ACL injury) that will require six to eight weeks to heal. He said that the painkiller shot he took prior to Game 6 of the Penguins series wore off as the game progressed and he'd lost feeling in his arm. That clearly affected his play in the fateful third period of the deciding game. He will not require surgery and will begin his infamously ultra-rigorous offseason training regimen (of which he refuses to publicly divulge the specifics) in July.
Provorov unsuccessfully tried to fight back tears after Game 6; so bitter was the sting of defeat and feeling like his "mistakes" (actually, physical inability to handle, pass or shoot pucks) had cost the team. Sheepishly, he said on Wednesday, "I hate to lose, what can I say?"
On another front, Provorov said that one of his goals moving forward is to take on a leadership role with the team. Generally the quiet type, the 21-year-old wants to push himself to step out of his comfort zone to be more vocal in the locker room and to mentor some of the team's prospects as they come up to the NHL.
* On a brighter note on the injury front, Claude Giroux, Jakub Voracek and Shayne Gostisbehere were among the players who reported feeling completely healthy all season. All three of the players readily took accountability for subpar playoff performances by their standards, and said that it left a bitter taste to what had otherwise been career years.
3) Petr Mrazek indirectly acknowledged that the Flyers will not bring him back next season. While it is unlikely that he is tradeable at his hefty qualifying offer price tag to remain in restricted free agent status, the Flyers also have the option of not tendering him a qualifying offer and simply letting him go as an unrestricted free agent.
If the writing hadn't already been on the wall when Mrazek played very inconsistently after his acquisition from Detroit, the fact that the Flyers preferred the still-injured Elliott and Neuvirth as their Plan A and Plan B options during the playoffs over the healthy Mrazek (who did see some relief duty for Elliott in the 7-0 blowout loss in Game 1) made it loud and clear that his trial run in Philly was not going to result in a contract extension. Nevertheless, the Flyers needed each and every one of his six regular season victories to qualify for the playoffs.
4) Brandon Manning once again did not sound like a player who expects to be back in Philadelphia next season. Manning said on Wednesday that, while he'd love to stay with the team, "if I've played my last game as a Flyer, that's how it goes." He said the decision would be
up to Ron Hextall and his staff as to whether he's offered a new contract or if the player will test the open market as an unrestricted free agent.
Manning, who had not yet met with Hextall for his exit interview at the time of his press conference, discussed with the media his role in trying to help young players and to be a good teammate in general, as well as showing a bit of his pre-NHL ability to contribute offensively (seven goals) and to take on penalty killing minutes.
Recently, Manning acknowledged that he's "playing for a contract" for next season, which is usually the terminology used by players whose agents have told them that attempted discussions of an extension with the current organization did not get off the ground. Otherwise, it's more along the lines of "we'll see what happens, but I'd love to stay if we can work something out."
It's a difference of nuance between the two but once the "if I've played my last game here" hypothetical gets voiced, it's usually the expected outcome. If so, Manning deserves to be remembered as a hard-working, positive focused player who pulled himself up to the NHL the hard way as an undrafted player and longtime AHL player (four seasons with the Adirondack and Lehigh Valley Phantoms) before finding a niche. He has limitations in some of his abilities but none in his heart and work ethic.
5) Simmonds briefly addressed his contract situation. He made crystal clear that he does not want to be traded and his only desire is to spend the rest of his career as a Flyer. However, he acknowledged that he knows hockey is a business first and foremost, and that the Flyers may not have seen enough during his injury-riddled 2017-18 season to offer him an extension.
My prediction for how this plays out: Unless the Flyers get a trade offer this summer that blows them away, they will opt to go into next season with Simmonds unsigned beyond 2018-19. If he shows that he is healthy and back to playing to his accustomed level, the Flyers and Simmonds' agent, Eustace King, will try to work out an extension.
6) None among Gostisbehere, Voracek or Giroux will play in the IIHF World Championships this year. All three players said they feel they are best served by taking a bit of time off after the marathon-like season and then having three months of prep time for training camp.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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