Flyers’ Sean Couturier out four weeks after another knee injury

Dave Isaac | The Courier-Post

Sean Couturier’s return to South Jersey wasn’t just to amp things up for training camp, which begins September 14.

In fact, he won’t be able to amp things up for a while.

The Flyers’ No. 1 center got hurt in an exhibition tournament in Quebec City on Aug. 10. He will miss roughly four weeks and start training camp as a partial participant and is expected to be available for the last couple preseason games.

A report from the Journal de Montreal said it was a re-injury to the medial collateral ligament in his right knee that was injured back in April when the Flyers were in the playoffs. Flyers general manager Ron Hextall didn’t exactly confirm that.

“It’s not a re-injury. He was 100 percent at the time,” Hextall said on a conference call with reporters. “He had more than enough time to heal after the season. I don’t like to get into what type of injury…but it’s not the exact same spot in terms of the injury.

“It was just kind of a play in front of the net. There was a rebound and his leg just went the wrong way. That’s pretty much how it happened. It was more of a freak (accident) than anything.”

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Couturier, who turns 26 in December, is coming off by far his best NHL season since breaking into the league in 2011. He had a career-high 31 goals and 45 assists and finished runner-up to Los Angeles' Anze Kopitar for the Frank J. Selke Trophy, awarded to the league's best defensive forward.

No surgery was required the first time Couturier hurt his knee and the same is true of his most-recent ailment. The team does not believe that the multiple injuries this close together makes him any more susceptible.

“This type of injury heals fairly quickly and fairly well,” Hextall said. “Obviously he’ll be in a knee brace and what not. I don’t anticipate this being an issue.”

Clearly Hextall wasn’t thrilled that one of his top players is going to miss time thanks to something that didn’t directly involve the team.

In an interview with the Journal de Quebec, Couturier said he looks forward to the Boot Camp tournament every summer and makes sure he’s available to play. There’s nothing to stop players from playing in summer exhibitions like the Checking for Charity tournament held in South Jersey every August in which several Flyers and Lehigh Valley Phantoms have participated.

It also makes general managers nervous.

“You gotta be really careful with how strict you are,” Hextall said when asked if letting the players participate in these events is a grey area contractually. “Obviously we want our guys to train hard and train the proper way but you see guys on other teams get hurt literally training (off-ice). They do train hard and there is risk every day. There is, when something like this happens, you pause to think about it, but we’ve never held a guy out of a charity game and I guess at this point I certainly don’t anticipate it.”

That’s two freak accidents to Couturier in five months. The first one was more ill-timed and came when the Flyers were in a playoff run. He collided with defenseman Radko Gudas in practice. Ironically, according to the website for the Boot Camp tournament, Gudas was playing in the exhibition also, but not for the same team as Couturier.

While it’s inconvenient for the Flyers, Couturier’s injury could have been much worse. The timeline of four weeks means the Flyers won’t have to alter their plans much. Hextall said they had considered inviting a couple players to training camp on tryouts, but opted not to.

“We anticipate, right now, (Couturier) doing certain drills in training camp,” Hextall said. “No contact. So, does he participate in the first 15, 20 minutes or does he participate on his own? Right now we anticipate him participating in some drills in training camp but not all.”

Dave Isaac; @davegisaac; 856-486-2479; disaac@gannett.com

UPCOMING DATES

Rookie camp: Sept. 9

Training camp: Sept. 14

Preseason opener: Sept. 16, 1 p.m., at New York Islanders

Regular-season opener: Oct. 4, 10 p.m., at Vegas Golden Knights