Carter Hart injured is not the Christmas present we wanted

Watch this video. It tells you all you need to know: Carter Hart had Friday night off as he had just starred in net against the Toronto Maple Leafs the night before. The Flyers are on a five-game road trip but will be taking a five-day holiday break, along with the rest of the NHL.  To give him a well-deserved rest, the Flyers had called up Samuel Ersson from Lehigh Valley.

Ersson was having a fairly good year for the Phantoms. He was 9-8 with a 2.72 GAA with a .910 save percentage. He had impressed in training camp but had lost out the backup job to Felix Sandstrom. And Sandstrom has played well enough for a rookie backup on a seventh-place team. But Sandstrom is dealing with an illness and Ersson was called up The decision was made to start Ersson in net and give Harr a night off.

That didn’t happen. Ersson was chased from the net pretty quickly as the Metropolitan Division-leading Carolina Hurricanes pretty much ambushed him. In 28 minutes in the net, he was hit with 22 shots and let in five goals. Coach John Tortorella kept him in as long as possible but took him out.

The Flyers are hoping Carter Hart’s injury is not that serious

Hart would be out there for about 10 minutes. In that time, he was pounced on with seven shots. But it was that last shot that needs examining.  As you can well see in the above video, Rasmus Ristolainen shoved Seth Jarvis into Hart. It appears that he hit Hart in the head. At the same time, Jesperi Kotkaniemi had wound up and fired off a shot on the power play. With Hart sprawling on the ice, the puck had no problem finding the back of the net.

And then Hart couldn’t get up. And then Hart needed to be checked out by head athletic trainer Tommy Alva. And then Alva had to help Hart off the ice. All they are saying right now is that it is an “upper-body injury”. Is it a concussion? It is a back or shoulder injury? Was he just really knocked around hard and needs a few days, such as the Christmas break, off? Is this something really serious?

If the Flyers have to rely on the goaltending tandem of rookies Sandstrom and Ersson, we are in BIG trouble. This is not to say that they are good goalies. Sandstrom has won only one of the eight games he’s started this year. Ersson rebounded nicely after being chased from the game against the Canes by not allowing any more goals. But they are young and relatively inexperienced at the NHL level. The NHL can be an unforgiving league and there are teams that will feast on young goalies such as these.

More importantly, Hart has been absolutely phenomenal this year. He has carried this team through thick and thin. There are several games that the Flyers have rallied (mostly to fall short) because he has kept them in it. There are many other games that they won solely because of his efforts; such as a 48-save performance against the New Jersey Devils last week.

Likewise, I know that Coach Tortorella has expressed his desire that his players to play smarter and he has a system going here. He benched Tony DeAngelo because he wanted him to play better. Recently, Kevin Hayes was benched in an effort to get him to play to his full potential.

Earlier this year, Tortorella called out Risotlainen. He was the first player that Torts benched for a game in an effort to get him to play better. In the coach’s words, he wanted  Risto to “play better…., I think he needs to be better.”

Risto has a reputation for playing reckless hockey. He’ll go for a hit-and-miss play. He’ll put the team down a guy when the team really, really doesn’t need to be on a power play. And now his reckless play has gotten the best player on the team injured.

Yes, you defend the net during a power play. Yes, you try to clear traffic in front of the goalie. What you don’t do is clear the traffic into the goalie. To be honest, he is also lucky he didn’t get called for cross-checking on top of it.  But slamming Jarvis into Hart is a disaster. If Hart is out for a long time, it will be solely because of Ristolainen. But with the rising play of Cam York and the improved play of others like Nick Seeler, I will again ask a question I asked earlier this season: do we really need Ramsus Ristolainen?

I asked Santa to help keep the players healthy. Maybe because this happened on Christmas Eve-Eve, he didn’t deliver it yet. I’m sure Hart will be evaluated soon. Hopefully, it is nothing serious.