Shortened season kicking off with quick camp
It seems hard to believe, but when Sean Couturier takes the ice for the first official day of what they’re calling “training camp” Monday, he’ll be starting his 10th season with the Flyers.
And for what seems like at least the ninth straight time, he’ll start it with a familiar directive.
“I think, first of all, we need to get off to a good start, especially with a shortened season,” said Couturier, echoing what he and a couple of other surviving Flyers veterans have said in so many Septembers past.
Just because this is a New Year, it doesn’t mean anything has to change. Especially since the Flyers so often don’t get off to a good start.
“I had gone through it the lockout year; we had a good team, we just got off to a poor start and just couldn’t make up ground in time
to make the playoffs,” Couturier added about his second-season with the club, which amid a labor war delay played a 48-game season starting in January of 2013.
“I think it’s important to get off to a good start, get a good camp in and be ready for Game 1, then go from there,” Couturier added. “Once you’re in the playoffs, anything can happen. That’s another part of our game where we’ll have to just take another step as the year goes on.”
The Flyers will start this modified camp amid a bevy of COVID-19 precautions. There will be full practices and scrimmages over five out of six days beginning Monday at the Skate Zone in Voorhees, N.J., with Thursday being their lone day of rest. Next Sunday, Jan. 10, to celebrate the Eagles’ season being over early, the Flyers will be at Wells Fargo Center for a prime-time intra-squad scrimmage that starts at 7.
Don’t worry about the time ... no fans are allowed to watch any hockey up close and personal yet, anyway. In fact, it’s speculated that this 56-game irregular, intra-divisional only season, which begins Jan. 13 with a 5:30 game against the Pittsburgh Penguins, could run through to its April 6 completion without the bother of inviting fans.
Hey, maybe by the playoffs?
“I think a good start to the season will be good for every club in a shortened season. You don’t want to fall behind,” Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher noted last week. “The conditioning level of the guys looks very good. I think the way last season ended, there’s a lot of disappointment that we weren’t able to beat the Islanders (in the Eastern Conference semifinals) and move on.
“T he g uy s , from what I can see, at least, worked extremely hard in the offseason. I think they’re excited to come back and take another step this year.”
At 28, Couturier is one of the old guys now. Compared to him, Claude Giroux, turning 33 in another eight days, seems eternal. Maybe that’s why he seemed to be in such a bad mood the other day.
Ac t ua l ly Gi r ou x pinned his pre-camp attitude on what the Flyers did and didn’t accomplish last summer in the 2020 playoffs following a pandemic layoff. He said being ousted by the Isles, “left a bad taste in my mouth.
“A lot of players on the team feel like we could have went a little further last year,” added Giroux, one of only three current Flyers with Couturier and Jake Voracek to have gone through the last scheduled short season in 2013 together. “It’s a learning experience for us, what we did in the playoffs, knowing what we did that worked and what we did that didn’t work. I think it’s important that we talk about those things as a team and just learn from it.”
The learning curve starts Monday. Where it ends, nobody knows.