As Flyers get Claude Giroux back, Rasmus Ristolainen hits COVID protocol

After the NHL made the decision to postpone the Flyers game against the Hurricanes, the team was still able to take to the ice for practice on Tuesday morning. They were joined by Claude Giroux as he has missed the last three games while in protocol. Travis Sanheim, who came back yesterday, was out for the full practice as well.

But the good news stopped there as Rasmus Ristolainen became the latest member of the team’s defense to hit protocol. He joins Justin Braun and Ivan Provorov as the blue liners currently sidelined. Travis Konecny remains out as well.

While Mike Yeo didn’t seek out an explanation on why the game was postponed, he spoke on how the team wasn’t sure they would actually get Giroux back today. And the fact that they’ve lost Braun and now Ristolainen to protocol while Patrick Brown is now sidelined for at least four weeks with an MCL sprain.

It does add some confusion with the inconsistency in which the league handles these postponements. The Flyers had a similar numbers of players in COVID protocol last week, yet they played games with a depleted lineup. And that isn’t lost on the players. There is some frustration among the players, but it’s something they can’t focus on.

"“I think the San Jose one, they were missing quite a few players as well so maybe not so much that one. But I think the Pittsburgh one, there was definitely some frustration, missing some key players and quite a few guys. But it is what it is. It was obviously the league’s decision and we gotta keep moving forward.” Sanheim said after practice.“That’s not really our decision, that’s kind of the league to decide if we’re gonna play or not. So for us, sometimes you have a game that you’re not sure you’re gonna play. You just gotta pretend you know you’re gonna play. And you gotta prepare yourself for the game.” Giroux said."

So with that, the Flyers won’t play again until Thursday, assuming they don’t run into anymore COVID issues before then. Konecny and Provorov could test out any day now and there’s some hope they could rejoin the team. But it’s just been how things have gone for this team recently.

However, they wanted to get on the ice today, not only to get players like Giroux and Sanheim more practice time, but to work on other things as well. They haven’t been able to get as much practice time as they’d like. In fact, this was the first in awhile where they had a few days in between games. So a lot of focus was spent on their checking and defending.

"“You look at our game right now and I think that we’re defending well in certain situations. But we defend way too much and so today was a little bit of a focus on how we can get the puck back, how we can check as a five-man unit.” Yeo said after Tuesday’s practice.”We’re continuing to try and grow better every day and there’s a lot of areas we want to get better at.”"

There continues to be a feeling among the players that they are close to playing the way they want to. And in a way that will make them successful. Having this extra practice time will certainly help as they hopefully trend towards the direction of getting back to a fully healthy lineup.

They’ll have another practice on Wednesday to nail some more things down before they head to Boston to take on the Bruins on Thursday.