Flyers Daily with Jason Myrtetus 12-3-2025 Flyers vs Sabres preview and the Latest on Tyson Foerster

Flyers Daily with Jason Myrtetus 12-3-2025 Flyers vs Sabres preview and the Latest on Tyson Foerster

Alrighty, it’s a brand new Flyers Daily for the 3rd of December, 2025. Flyers Daily presented as always by Ticket Master, Make Memories Live. Well, we got an update on the Tyson Forester injury. And to say it’s not good news is an understatement. Not lost for the season, but he will be out two to three months uh according to general manager Daniel Brier. And that probably takes us up to the Olympic break. come back maybe after the Olympic break. I mean, you look in two months, all of December, all of January and midFebruary, you’re at that Olympic break. So, uh, tough tough news for the Flyers. Um, to lose Tyson Forester, uh, for that extended period of time. He was obviously off to a great start leading the team in goals with 10. He’s been a guy that’s never really started off the season hot from a goal scoring perspective. Uh, but this year leading the team with 10 goals. had a goal in the game that he ended up going out of just a couple minutes later. And in 21 games this year, of course, he missed a few with uh taking the puck off the foot or the ankle and played 21 10 goals, three assists, 13 points. Was certainly on track to break a careerhigh which was last year where he had 43 points and 25 goals in 81 games. Year prior to that, in 77 games, he had 20 goals. So, this is a guy that is ready to go beyond that plateau of 30. Um, I mean, he was trending for about 35 36 goals this year. Um, and as maybe even more, but now he’s going to be gone for two to three months. What’s the process like when he returns uh with uh the upper body injury? I I don’t know the details of it now. uh the exact injury and what the you know rehabilitation process is like. Is there a surgery? It’s just unfortunate that they’re going to be without Tyson Forester who not only obviously puts the puck in the net for them. Leads the team with 10 goals is a big part of the power play as a trigger man and takes up a a lot of bandwidth of the opponent. Uh but he’s also a guy that kills penalties. Um it seems like whatever line he’s on is a a productive line. Um not only offensively but in all zones because he’s such a good 200 foot player, which you know shocks me. From when he was drafted, I didn’t know that he would become such a good 200 foot player. So this is a big loss. Let’s let’s not sugarcoat this. This sucks. It it stinks that he’s going to be out two to three months, but these things happen in sports and in pro sports. And the Flyers aren’t the only team dealing with a key injury. We’ve seen other teams deal with it, and it’s part of the deal. Um, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck, cuz it does, but it’s unfortunate. Is it enough to derail the Flyers? No one knows the answer to that. Some people are making that assumption. This is the one guy they couldn’t afford to lose. Well, no matter who you lose, there’s a trickle down effect to that, too. If you lose a topline winger or you lose uh a a defenseman off your second pair, then you’re asking a third pairing guy to take over that role. Or if you lose a top pairing defenseman, then you’re asking everyone to move up. And that’s the trickle down effect of when you lose a guy. And I always say it, next man up is is a great phrase. and next man up can get you through a game or two, but that next man up isn’t the man that you just lost. Otherwise, he’d be on the team already and in that role. Flyers did call up Carl Grundstrom and from the Lehigh Valley Finals. We saw him earlier this season. They recalled him yesterday. Uh the Flyers host the Sabres coming up tonight and we’ll have the game for you on the Flyers broadcast network as they take on the Sabres. Uh, but this is a huge blow and some will say, “Well, why not just call up Alex Bump?” Now, Bump’s off to a good start. It wasn’t a great start to his season. In 20 games, he’s got four goals, 12 assists, 16 points. Um, I I don’t know this. I haven’t talked to anybody. I think the thinking right now is see if you can solve this with a guy who’s played a bunch of NHL games in Grundstrom. I think he played 67 last year in the NHL for San Jose. um use Gbankin and let bump continue to develop down there and get a ton of minutes and if it doesn’t work with Grundstrom and Gbankin and this combination they have here now then you got to go to bump and you got to accelerate that out of necessity and hope that works or does Danny Brier dip into the trade market and find a solution to his problem sooner or later or that can help you now and down the but also even add more stock to the cupboard of of wingers that he has already called in snow the goalie on Monday night overstocked knowing he’ll make a deal later down on the season to maybe unstock that cupboard a little bit. So there’s a lot of variables to this but when the rubber meets the road Tyson Forcher is going to be out two to three months and it’s a big blow. It’s a big blow. Now, the Flyers take on the Islanders tonight. It’s the Flyer or not the Islanders, excuse me, I’m losing my marbles. They take on the Sabres tonight who sit in the sixth spot of the Atlantic Division with a record of 11-11 and four. Uh they’re 6 and4 in their last 10. They won their last two. They are minus 6 in goal differential. Flyers come in in the fifth spot of the Metro. Tied for the fourth spot. Uh a record of 148 and three, 31 points, 63-1 in their last 10, plus two in gold differential. Obviously lost their last one 5 to1 to Pittsburgh. So, what has the Buffalo Sabres done recently? They beat Minnesota. That’s a good win. They beat Minnesota on the road in the shootout three-2. And then they beat Winnipeg at home. That’s a good win, too. The prior two games, they lost 4-2 to the Penguins and they lost on the road. And they lost 5-0 to the New Jersey Devils. So, uh, they’re a little bit of a mixed bag of late. They do have wins recently over Detroit in overtime. They beat Edmonton at home, lost to Calgary. That’s a bad loss. Uh they beat Chicago 9-3 and they beat Carolina at home 4 to1. They got some quality wins on their schedule. There’s no doubt about that. They beat Washington earlier this season. Uh they’ve beaten Toronto, Detroit another time. They beat Florida 3 to nothing. They beat Ottawa 8 to four. So they’ve scored eight. They have an eight spot that they’ve scored in a game. They did that against Ottawa back on October 15th and a nine spot. That’s pretty remarkable. 9-3 over Chicago. So, it’s the Flyers and the Sabres coming up tonight at Exfinity Mobile Arena. Stans Tyson Forcer. So, how does this play out? We’ll see. And again, every team’s got to deal with injuries. Um, sometimes they’re little consequence. This is one that’s got big consequence because of the trickle down effect and what Tyson Forester brought to the team each and every night. He’s one of those guys that even if he wasn’t scoring, uh, he would be a net positive player because of the way he defends, the way he plays in all zones and his team play. And when those guys go out, it’s difficult. That’s really difficult. And a lot of times, you know, good shooter, great shooters and and scorers, that might not be the case, you know, at this point in their career. So, we hope to see Tyson get back as quickly as possible at 24 years of age, just starting to hit that prime of his career and off to a great start and he has uh this unfortunate injury happened. It was such a bizarre play as he loaded up for the one-time as he came through with the stick just flew out of his hands and he grabbed the shoulder and moved right to the tunnel walking down the tunnel. So, um, best all our best, uh, to Tyson Forester, uh, to recover, rehab, heal up, and get back out there on the ice cuz they’re going to miss him. It It’s a big, big loss. There’s no question about that. Um, we’ll find out about, we’ve talked about resiliency with this Flyers team all season and how resilient they’ve been. Um there’s going to need some resiliency here as well uh as they deal with a couple of months minimum without Tyson Forester, but we’ll see. Um we’re going to get to some YouTube comments and some emails in this episode. Um had some interesting conversations of late as per usual and the ones I want to get to. Uh we’ll start with the YouTube comments. Uh John said, “Hey Jason, do you know if Jack Nesbbit is injured? He was not in the lineup last week for Windsor?” find out about that. I don’t know off the top of my head. Uh David uh messaged in on the YouTube feed said, “Jason, I agree about the penalties. I’m in a rare I’m a rare person that likes both Coots and Mishkov and my current as my current players jerseys show I have both. I appreciate good hockey players.” Coots is our best center, like it or not. D’vorak has been good as has Kates. So, we do have three competent centers. I also appreciate your comment with Bill about Coot’s bite recently. You’ve been playing a little bit more bite. did in that Penguin game, too. Uh they need more of that. I totally agree. Sometimes a leader will do that um to kind of pull other people into the fight as well. Um uh old Mikey Jay said, “This is the same old news. The organization fails to realize Crosby requires special attention. They continue to watch him kill them.” Well, old Mikey Jay, great players. You can watch them all you want. You can be marking him as close as and defending him as close as you want. Great players find a way. And he is of this generation and maybe many generations the best player to play this game. He’s in year 21. He hasn’t slowed down a tick. He’s still unbelievable. He puts himself in the right spots. that rebound goal. He gets that because he went to the right spot and it was the wrong time to not not have a rebound that you control. That’s just long and short of it. Um, oh no, it’s Sean said, uh, the boys had a rough night. The PK didn’t shine and the Penn’s power play showed up. Pens power play number one in the league. It’s showed up all year. Take that out and it’s much closer game. But you can’t take that out. They said an off night is expected. I’d rather have it with multiple guys having bad games at the same time than one guy having a bad game every night. Um, he said the toxic fans that want to beat on the boys and not even get the stats right. GT FOH. I think we all know what that means. Your energy isn’t necessary. Uh, another guy said, uh, uh, let’s be accurate. And this is old Mikey Jay again. He said, let’s be accurate. Coots is god awful and should have been traded years ago. Okay, so I want to focus on that a second because I’ve defended Sean Couturier on this podcast of late and I know there’s a group of haters out there and Mishkov fanboys that aren’t Flyer fans as far as I’m concerned. They’re Mishkov fan and I’m a Mishka fan, but I’m a Flyer fan. I’m a team guy. I’m about the logo on the front, not just, you know, focusing on the one guy all the time to an obsessively compulsive disorder. And I’m OCD, but Couturier, if you want to be accurate about Couturier, oh Mikey Jay, let’s go to the facts. Okay, he signed his contract extension on April 26th of 2021. It was an 8-year deal, 62 million, and he actually took less than he would have gotten on the open market at $7.75 million. Now, what did he do in the seasons leading up to that? Cuz that’s relevant. You know, why would you sign Sean Couturier to an 8-year deal? Well, at the time that he signed the deal, going into the 21-22 season, he was 28 years of age, entering like maybe like two years into his prime, right? In those four seasons leading into him signing that contract, he played 82 games, 80 games, 69 games, which was every game in the shortened season due to CO. So, he missed two games in those three years. And then the next year they played 48 games I think it was and he missed three. But in those collective four seasons it was 276 games played. He had 104 goals, 148 assists, 252 points. He was a plus 53 and he played 21 minutes of ice time a game. 20 minutes 20 minutes and 56 seconds to be exact. He had a 56.6 faceoff winning percentage. And not only that, but in year one of those four years, he was a Selki runnerup. In year two, he came in sixth in the Selki voting. By by the way, those two years, he had 76 points in each of them, 31 goals and 33 goals, respectively. The next year, the shortened season, he won the Selki. And then the year after that um he had the 41 points in 45 games and was as considered in the Selki but not a top runner. So you’re suggesting that he should have been traded years ago. Okay. After that he got hurt. He had the multiple back surgeries and he’s he’s not the same player. But how do you trade a player that missed 19 and a half months of hockey on a new contract in a flat cap world where the economics were impossible because of COVID until literally this season when it’s going up? And how do you how do you trade them? I I’d like an answer to the question, your honor. How do you make that trade? How are you going to make that trade? Oh, Mikey Jay, it’s easy to sit here and just say, “Let’s be accurate. He’s awful and he should have been traded years ago. How are you doing it? What are you doing to do it?” Again, teams aren’t in the practice of having a homegrown drafted player who was close to a point per game player for the previous four seasons missed a total of five games in those four seasons. Won a Selki, was a runner up for they’re not in the habit of not they’re not in the habit of trading those guys. Those are the guys you extend. Now, is it unfortunate that he had the back issue and multiple back surgeries? Of course. But you didn’t know that on August 21st of 2021, that that was going to happen. And there’s no way you could have known that. And he wasn’t a fleet of foot fast skater then, but he was a dominant player. So again, let’s be accurate. Mikey Jay, how are you trading him years ago in that flat cap world? Just explain that to me. I’d love an answer. I I I see the same lament all the time. You’re not the only one, Mikey Jay. Oh, they should have traded him. Okay, how are you doing it in a flat cap world? You don’t trades go two ways. The other GM is not an idiot. He’s not going to go, “I’ll take your problem off your hands.” That’s not the way it works. You don’t put out your trash and have them drop off gold. Not that couturier is trash. I people just focus in on the wrong thing and they want to have the narrative. D should have traded him. He’s still Come on. Let’s live in the real world. All right, let’s get to a couple of emails. Uh this first one comes from Tristan. He’s talking about Dan Vadar. Clearly Vidar has been a better goalender between the two. Although I don’t think uh Eri has been a pushover in net either. I think Eri’s played pretty well of late. Um not as good as Lar though, that’s for sure. You see, from what I watch this season, I feel like for the most part and are only playing in goals with no real way they can make the save aside from the awful rebound last night against the Pens on the first goal which was scored by Crosby. He said, “My question is though, is there any fear about potentially working Vadar too much?” He said he played 30ish games last season. Granted, it was usually the harder games, but he has not had that much volume. We saw a few years ago Ersen was lights out until he got heavier workload with the loss of Hart. Do you fear that there will be a drop off from BAR toward the end of the season with him getting two of every three games essentially? I agree. This is something you’ve got to manage and managing goalenders is a big part of it. These long gone are the days of Marty Baddor and goalies prior to him playing 75 to 78 games, even 60 games. It’s rare. Connor Hellbuck did it last year. He looked like he was totally out of gas in the playoffs, but I you I don’t think you play two out of every three. I think the when it’s all said and done this season, Dan Vladar plays about 45 to 40 games and Eri, if he’s healthy, plays the rest. We’ve obviously seen Kasoff already, but that’s how you allocate it. He has not played more than 30 games in a season. That was the most last year. and he’s played in 16 already this year. Not suggesting he’s tired or should be tired at this point. He’s not. You can’t look at lower shot volume for a goalie and say, “Well, he’s seeing less shots. He should be able to play more games.” It’s again, the workload for a goalie is not based on shot volume. It’s based on zone time and based on the other team possessing the puck in your zone. When you are totally locked in and reading plays, that’s whenever the puck’s in the zone, you are physically engaged. Yeah. Making a lot of saves and diving and and flying around. Yeah, that too. But that’s not workload is more about how many power plays they have. Those are harder minutes on a goalie that there’s a lot of behind the net play, cross ice play, reflipping the zone, those kind of things. So I I it’s something that Rocket along with Kim Dibal uh will manage all throughout the year is those workloads for the goalenders to keep them as fresh as possible. Uh Joshua tweets or emails in and says uh dear Jason Flyer Stan writing from London, Ontario, Canada. Hello London. He said I want to say big thank you to for calling out all the negleians on the show. We did it again today with Mikey Jay just saying oh you should have traded them years ago again. How you going to do it? He said, ‘I listened to a different Flyers pod uh last season. I won’t say which one. Well, you can tell me which one. It’s okay. He said, ‘ But I decided to change it up this season because one of the voices on the other pod was a negadel fan. I absolutely love your way of dissecting the difficult times for the Flyers and your nononsense approach towards these folks goes a long way, especially as someone who is actively trying to be more positive in life. I applaud that. I’m trying to do the same thing, Josh. Just be more positive in life. Think positive things. positive things will come. It’s not always true. Tyson Forester got hurt. I wasn’t thinking about that. He said, “I listen to every show on my uh morning walk to work. Uh so, thanks for being a great start to my day. Keep up the excellent work.” He said, “I’m not sure if you’re aware, as you haven’t mentioned it on the pod, but Jet Lenko got traded from the Gtorm to the Brford Bulldogs. I I am very aware. It’s fantastic.” He said, “As an avid o fan, let me tell you that Brford is currently the team to beat in the OHL. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this trade. We’re gonna talk about this next Monday with Bill. Um, but I will touch on it. It’s fantastic to get him out of there. And as soon as G was granted the Memorial Cup next year, you knew they were going to trade him because they could get a hall for him to load up for next year to to host the Memorial Cup. So, I think it’s fantastic. It’s great for his development. Jay McKe’s there, who Danny Brriier knows very well. Uh, it’s a really good situation. I’m sure the Flyers are more than thrilled uh that that deal has taken place. One more. This one comes from Bill. Hey Jason, I think it was you who recently mentioned your disdain for regrouping in overtime uh that it happens way too often. He said, “I love the threeon-ree in OT personally, but I hate when they get in the ozone and circle back out again. I hate it as well. I don’t love the threeonree in overtime.” We do disagree on that, Bill. I don’t think it resembles hockey enough. Um, but I understand the NHL’s what they’re trying to do is get games to a final score before a skills competition like the shootout. Um, well, I don’t like it. I understand it. Um, he said, “I wish the NHL will put on in a rule that when the offensive team voluntarily goes out of the zone and over the red line, it’s a penalty.” I had first thought about just leaving the zone, but figured being a bit more fair, putting it at the red line. Thoughts? It’s not a bad idea. So, what do you do? play, you blow the play dead. You know, the team gets a four on three man advantage. Um it would leave a little bit of gray area up for interpretation. Um did they do that on purpose because it is the long change in overtime. So the red line’s an area and we’ll pull it back beyond their blue line and do that slingshot thinging again. And so maybe the red line is something that would be considered if you do it on purpose. If it happens because the other team and there’s a board battle goes beyond the red line, ref’s going to have to make that decision on the fly. I don’t hate it, Bill. I think you might be on to something because I don’t love the overtime the way it currently is. This going in, pulling out, going in. It just to me leaves something to be desired. That’s just me, though. All right, everybody. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. Flyers Sabres tonight. Got to extend the tide tonight. Tough loss to open up the six-game home stand tonight uh on Monday night against the Pens. Don’t let one turn into two. Flyers Sabres night. We’ll break it down tomorrow. Join us then on a brand new Flyers Daily.

Flyers Daily with Jason Myrtetus: preview of Flyers vs Sabres tonight for game two of this six game home stand. Also discussion on the injury loss of Tyson Foerster, and what it will mean for the Flyers short and long-term. Plus, we talk about options to enter the lineup in his absence. We also respond to the YouTube comments and a few Flyers fan emails.