Flyers Training Camp Notebook: A Weekend of Scrimmages

Now that the grueling skating test from the first day of training camp has been completed for all attendees, the next several days leading into the exhibition opener against the New Jersey Devils are largely geared toward multiple daily scrimmages. There are also practice sessions and off-ice workout blocks buit into the schedule.

The first set of scrimmages -- one  group per day scrimmages twice -- took place on Friday.  More notable than results or stats from the simulated games are the first set of line combinations being tried out before further experimentation over the course of training camp.

On Friday, the most notable forward combinations in the scrimmages included:

Travis Konecny - Sean Couturier - Owen Tippett
Joel Farabee - Morgan Frost - Cam Atkinson
Scott Laughton - Noah Cates - Tyson Foerster
Nic Deslauriers - Ryan Poehling - Garnet Hathaway
Olle Lycksell - Elliot Desnoyers - Bobby Brink
Jonathan Fauchon - Tanner Laczynski - Wade Allison
Alexis Gendron - Brendon Furry - Zayde Wisdom

Tippett and Konecny switched sides several times during the scrimmages. Flyers head coach John Tortorella indicated afterwards that the plan for now is for Tippett to primarily play his off wing (left wing) in camp and potentially at the start of the regular season.

Additionally, Travis Sanheim -- who is comfortable on either side of a defense pairing but who has mostly played his natural (left) side thus far in his career -- will see time on the right side in camp. This would open the option of pairing Sanheim with Cam York while allowing York to play left defense. Thus far in his young NHL career, York has often played on the right.

After the scrimmages, Tortorella was asked about his early observations on rookie defenseman Emil Andrae. Tortorella struck a positive tone.

Wisdom scored a nice goal set up by Andrae in Friday's first scrimmage. Sanheim had a slam-dunk goal. Later in the day, rugged fourth-line forward Deslauriers had a two-goal scrimmage (the latter an empty-net goal) in a 3-0 win for Team 3 (white jerseys).

There was a scary moment in Friday's second scrimmage when highly regarded right wing prospect Foerster crashed heavily into the boards. He got up slowly, favoring a shoulder. However, he remained in the scrimmage and finished the simulated game. During post-scrimmage media availability, Konecny talked about how seeing Foerster play during his eight-game recall to the NHL late last season (three goals, four assists) was an eye-opener from a player-to-player standpoint.

Meanwhile, York admitted that Thursday's skating test was tougher than he thought it would be. He joked about confiscating the end-to-end divider rope that Tortorella has used for his first-day skating test with every NHL team that he has coached (Tampa Bay, New York Rangers, Vancouver, Columbus and Philadelphia).