Couturier out at least 2 weeks

The Flyers not only got back young forwards Nolan Patrick and Oskar Lindblom after they respectively missed all and most of last season, both looked healthy during a week-plus training camp, and have had good starts to the new, 56-game season.

What’s more, the Flyers boldly went into this season essentially healthy everywhere. Then came Game 2 Friday night.

What initially was thought to be a shoulder injury turned out to be what has to be a painful rib injury for Sean Couturier, the Flyers’ secondline center and busiest and most versatile forward.

It was announced Saturday that Couturier had suffered a costochondral separation, which is every bit as painful as it sounds, during the Flyers’ 5-2 win Friday night over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Couturier had been injured on a hit by Jared McCann just more than a minute and a half into the game. The injury involves the rib cage tearing from cartilage connected to the breast bone. The Flyers say Couturier will miss a minimum of two weeks, but his return likely is dependent on how quickly he can play with a tolerable measure of pain.

With the compacted schedule, even the minimum recovery time will have Couturier miss several games. He’ll likely be replaced in the middle by either Patrick, who has been centering a third line with Jake Voracek and

James van Riemsdyk, or by rookie center Morgan Frost, who made the team out of camp as an extra forward.

Couturier had been centering a line with Lindblom and Travis Konecny, who put his goal-less playoff last summer behind him with a hat trick in the second of two games with the Penguins to open the season.

McCann, coming off a career season in which he contributed 35 points in 66 games, not only was involved in the play in which Couturier was hurt, but later flattened Flyers defender Travis Sanheim with an elbow. He was penalized for two minutes for elbowing, but Saturday the NHL tacked on a $10,000 fine in deeming the elbow infraction dangerous.