Philadelphia Flyers: Roster decisions once play returns

The Flyers will have a few lineup decisions to consider once hockey resumes.

This time off has allowed teams to regain form and has given players time to heal. The Flyers are in that same boat. Before the season paused, they were dealing with injuries to a few players in the lineup.

James van Riemsdyk was dealing with a broken finger. Philippe Myers has a fractured knee. Nate Thompson had his own knee injury as well.

All three players have since healed and will be available for the Flyers when the season is to resume. That will start with the playoffs. The league announced recently that the regular season is officially over.

With that, the Flyers will have a few decisions to make when it comes to re-inserting players into the lineup. Each of the three injured players above will almost certainly jump back into the lineup.

The questions will be about who comes out for them. Starting with Myers, he will be expected to jump back on to the second pair with Travis Sanheim. The two have formed a solid duo. That leaves the Flyers with a decision between Shayne Gostisbehere and Robert Hagg.

Both have played in a similar amount of games. Hagg has skated in 49 while Gostisbehere has seen 42 games. Gostisbehere skated in the team’s final game before the break as he was expected to take over for Myers while he was out. Before that, he hadn’t played since early February.

Hagg had been getting consistent playing time the last few weeks before the pause. It was partially due to Gostisbehere returning from injury. Based on that, it would likely be Hagg remaining in the lineup.

It is possible that both could see time during the round-robin games. It would give the Flyers a chance to evaluate which they want to go into the first official round of the playoffs with.

Van Riemsdyk will be easily inserted back into the lineup. Joel Farabee was recalled at the time of the injury and had played in three games before the break. He did have one goal during that time. But a numbers game could have him out of the lineup just as easy.

There is a small chance the team could decide not to re-insert Thompson into the lineup. But that would potentially have Farabee lower in the lineup than he is used to. They also acquired Thompson for his playoff experience.

There is a slight chance the Flyers could take someone else out of the lineup for Farabee. But the choices are slim on who it could possibly be. It’s more likely that he won’t be included to start the playoffs. He could see some time in round-robin though.

Another small question following the Flyers is if Carter Hart would play every round-robin game before the playoffs. He is the team’s starting goaltender and will be throughout the playoffs.

Barring injury, he would play every single game. But would they want Brian Elliott fresh just in case? One could argue that training camp and practices will keep him ready. However, you can’t truly replicate a game situation during that time.

It could depend on how the Flyers fare in round-robin play. They are guaranteed to be at least a fourth seed in the first round. With this lengthy time off, they may want Elliott to have at least one game under his belt.

Under normal circumstances, he normally would have gotten that towards the end of the regular season. These aren’t normal circumstances, though.

So the Flyers will have some easy and some tough decision to make. They have the time to do so and training camp could help make those decisions easier for them.