July 01, 2025
Eric Hartline/Imagn Images
The Flyers are waiting to find out the extent of Tyson Foerster's injury.
Tyson Foerster suffered an injury playing for Team Canada at the IIHF World Championship in May.
It wasn't supposed to be anything serious, Flyers general manager Danny Brière explained Tuesday in Voorhees, but then an infection set in the 23-year-old winger's elbow.
"Then it just got worse," Brière continued. "So he came and saw us, saw our doctors, and decided they had to go in and remove the infection.
"What I'm finding out is it takes a long time for all the samples to come back negative, and that's what we're still waiting on. We don't know, and at that point, we'll re-evaluate and see if more needs to be done or, if we're lucky enough, that's the end of it, that he can move on and be ready for the start of the season. But there's no guarantee of that. So we're sitting and waiting right now to see how serious it is or not."
Which will leave the team and fans uneasy until then.
Word of Foerster's injury broke during free agency's opening earlier Tuesday, through reports from OnPattison's Anthony SanFilippo and The Brotherly Bullies' Brandon Sommermann that stated he was at risk of missing significant time to begin the upcoming 2025-26 season.
Having Foerster sidelined at the starting line would present a major blow to a Flyers team that will be looking to take a step forward in on-ice results this year after prioritizing youth and player development through a rebuild for the past several seasons – and definitively, the previous two since Brière took over as the full-time general manager.
Foerster became a focal point of those rebuilding efforts, having broken out into consecutive 20-plus goal seasons and grown into a key two-way winger on what became the Flyers' most consistently effective line between himself, center Noah Cates, and fellow winger Bobby Brink.
Foerster was signed to a two-year, $7.5 million contract extension at the end of May, after he got back from Worlds, to ensure he would stay in the fold as a core piece, and to, presumably, bridge him to a greater deal later on.
But now the Flyers are in a waiting game to see if Foerster's next step will instead be starting behind the eight ball.
That concern, however, never led the Flyers to consider any outside options to fill Foerster's spot in the lineup, Brière said – again, only on the condition that he does end up missing time.
"Because even in that case, he's not gonna miss the whole year," Brière said. "Or I hope he's not gonna miss the whole year. So you're gonna need that money at some point."
Brière added, too, that any potential Foerster absence could be a chance for a top prospect to get an early-season look, naming Alex Bump, Devin Kaplan, and sixth-overall pick Porter Martone specifically.
"There's other guys that [if they] perform, maybe they get a look early in the season if they have a good camp," Brière said. "We just didn't feel that we could spend his money not knowing if he's going to be out, or how long he's going to be out at this point."
It'll be an uneasy wait until then to find out.
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