Tyson Foerster and Sean Couturier were named game-time decisions for Monday's game against Colorado, leaving the Flyers to wait until the last possible moment before setting their lineup. Rick Tocchet said both forwards were banged up, and Foerster's issue was the more obvious one: he blocked a shot off his shooting hand in the first period of Saturday's game and stayed in.
The reason the question is landing now is simple. The Flyers already were missing Rasmus Ristolainen, Cam York and Travis Konecny, and Owen Tippett had sat out Saturday's win over Ottawa with an upper-body injury. York was placed on injured reserve Sunday, backdated to his last game against Ottawa on Oct. 8, while Ristolainen was considered day-to-day after skating before practice but not joining the main group.
Neither Foerster nor Couturier practiced Sunday, which turned Monday into a late call rather than a routine lineup decision. Tocchet did not offer certainty, saying he did not know if they would play and that the club would have to see how they were on game day. He also said the team is in a stretch where injuries are piling up, a blunt reading of a roster that keeps losing pieces without much time to replace them.
That is where the friction sits for Monday. Colorado is one of the league's fastest teams, and the Flyers may have to face that pace while sorting out two more forwards who were not on the ice with the group the day before. If Foerster cannot go, the hand injury that he played through on Saturday becomes the deciding factor; if Couturier cannot go, the club's center depth gets tested even further. The next answer, then, is not abstract. It is whether one or both can dress, and if not, how much more thin the Flyers can afford to be against a fast opponent.
