The Philadelphia Flyers were close to really being bit hard by the injury bug but have escaped potential torment.
Defenseman Cam York left Wednesday night’s game against the Buffalo Sabres early with an upper-body injury and the worst-case scenarios flooded the mind of just about every single Flyers fan. Just a day after it was announced that winger Tyson Foerster is out for at least two months and could possibly not even return until March next year, another key young player to this team went down with an injury.
If York was going to be out for even a month or two, it would severely disrupt a whole lot of the team’s ability to compete and get some points in this continued battle for a playoff spot with just about every team in the Eastern Conference. Thankfully, that is not happening.
Announced officially by the Flyers on Thursday morning, York will be out just day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
Injury update: Flyers defenseman Cam York is day-to-day with an upper-body injury.
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) December 4, 2025
The weirdest thing about this injury is that there was no distinct moment it happened during Wednesday night’s 5-2 win over Buffalo. It is at least notable that York’s last shift before exiting the game featured a very heated scrum after the whistle and something could have happened during then as gloves of both colors flew around, trying to grab or punch anything. York could have been hit, or dragged around to give some discomfort to a shoulder or an elbow; or maybe he just punched a guy so hard he hurt his hand. That would be fun.
There was also a moment later in the second period that York was hit pretty high and behind the play, which could have caused something minor — which potentially only got worse in that aforementioned scrum. Basically, the Flyers played a rough enough game on Wednesday that there are multiple possibilities. Thankfully, it is just something minor enough that York could miss just a few days.
Flyers avoid potential disaster with York’s injury being minor
If there was any point in the schedule where a team had to choose when a key defenseman would be out day-to-day, it could be this week. Maybe just before Olympic break, but that’s also not the point of this paragraph.
The Flyers don’t play again until Sunday afternoon against the NHL’s best team, the Colorado Avalanche. Three full days with no game to play for the Orange and Black and the last time we checked, day-to-day could mean three days.
There is a world where York is healthy enough to not even miss a game and is back at morning skate ahead of Sunday’s game against Colorado — but there is also a world where head coach Rick Tocchet doesn’t want him to be 80% healthy while trying to defend Nathan MacKinnon and something even worse happens to him.
We’ll have to see what the lineup looks like in future practices and see if there is any sign of York skating in the next few days, but hopefully this doesn’t turn into a “day-to-day turns into week-to-week” situation we’re just a little familiar with.