It honestly feels like it’s been about 100+ days since we’ve last watched Flyers hockey. The last game came against the Ottawa Senators on the 18th, where we barely escaped with a win.

Facilities started opening on Sunday for players to start coming in and get tested ahead of the NHL’s reopening. Mike Yeo spoke with the media yesterday, and added that some players decided to stay back with their families before returning to the team.

Sean Couturier was added to the COVID protocol list on December 21st, followed by Ryan Ellis and two staff members on Sunday. Couturier’s status is still unknown for Wednesday’s game against Seattle.

Derrick Brassard, who seems to be day-to-day for the last couple weeks, is still a little bit away from returning. Yeo did say he skated Sunday, but is still dealing with that hip injury. Despite not playing since December 8th, Brassard is still tied for 5th on the team in points with eleven (4G-7A).

Don’t know whether to be mad that no other player has more than eleven points in 18 games, or happy that Brassard has been pretty solid since putting on a Flyers sweater.

Scott Laughton, Carter Hart and Derick Brassard have all been added to the protocol list. Max Willman is the only one out of him, Morgan Frost and Kevin Hayes to be cleared for practice.

Jackson Cates, Gerry Mayhew and Felix Sandstrom have all been called up.

WORLD JUNIOR

Elliot Desnoyers

In his first game for Team Canada, the 135th pick in the 2020 draft didn’t have any points, but he played solid for the amount of time he was deployed. You have names like Mason McTavish, Connor Bedard, Shane Wright, and Kent Johnson on the forward group, so Desnoyers isn’t going to be getting a ton of minutes in this tournament.

But like I said earlier, in the minutes that Desnoyers has received, he’s looked solid. I’m sure you’ve heard the “swiss army knife” reference when talking about Desnoyers, so I’m interested to see how Canada uses Elliot as this tournament continues.

Emil Andrae

The whole situation with Andrae and Team Sweden this year, reminds me sooooooo much of Cam York’s situation with Team USA.

In Cam York’s first year in WJC, he played smaller minutes behind older talent on a loaded blue line. York came back the next year and was named captain of the team by his teammates, and given more responsibility as a whole. Lead his team to a gold medal.

In Andrae’s first year in WJC, he played smaller minutes behind older talent on a loaded blue line for Team Sweden. He came back this year, was handed more responsibility from the coaches, and named captain of his team.

I’m not saying Andrae is about to lead Sweden to a gold medal, but seeing two defensive prospects develop into captaincy roles, and succeed, is nice.

Andrae finished Game 1 of the tournament, with 1G-1A. His power play goal reminded me a lot of Ivan Provorov’s OT goal against the Islanders in the bubble.

Brian Zanetti

Brian Zanetti plays for team Switzerland today at 4:30. Zanetti is a 6’2 defenseman that the Flyers drafted in 2021 (110th overall). He actually really impressed me in rookie + training camp with his skating and physicality, despite being a 18 year old in an NHL training camp.

Mandatory Credit: (BYRON HACKETT/Advocate Staff)