Dave Isaac | NHL Writer

VOORHEES — For 14 straight days, Samuel Morin took to the ice. It was the defenseman’s biggest test since he had surgery to repair a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee on May 31.

On Thursday the streak ended. Friday, he was back at it.

“I was thinking that was a good test and the day off (Thursday) really helped me,” Morin said after the Flyers practiced Friday. “Today I felt great.”

A return to playing isn’t imminent. He’s still a couple weeks away. In fact, for that reason this may be the hardest part of the journey back to hockey for him.

Last season was disastrous because he played only two NHL games and 18 in the AHL due to injuries. Multiple times he tore the psoas muscle, one of the main ones in what makes up the hip flexors. He actually had made the Flyers’ roster out of camp but got sent down when Travis Sanheim stuck in October. He was playing well for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms and when the Flyers tried to call him up, he didn’t report an injury and they had him rehabilitate it instead of play in the NHL. Then in the Phantoms’ five-overtime playoff game he hit a rut in the ice and tore his ACL.

“I don’t want to push it, that’s for sure,” Morin said. “There’s a lot of horror stories with the ACL and coming back too quick and then you’re out another year. That’s not what I want. I’m so close and with Jimmy (McCrossin, the team’s director of medical services) and Dr. (Peter) Deluca, we talk a lot. Every day I give them my feedback and I think we’re doing a good job right now.”

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“One thing about Sam, he’s always got a smile on his face,” interim coach Scott Gordon said this week. “He’s not a guy you have to worry about in that regard. The fact that he got a contract while he was hurt I think put a lot of ease in his mind to not have to worry about that part of it. Just, ‘Do your therapy and everything will take care of itself.’ Hopefully it works out so that he can get a third of the season, quarter of the season here.”

The 6-foot-7, 203-pound defenseman the Flyers took 11th overall in 2013 comes with big expectations because he is a high first-round pick and he has played only three games with the team that drafted him. Add in that he’s been compared to Hall of Fame defenseman Chris Pronger and it’s clear that Morin would have a tough time pleasing the masses.

He doesn’t care much about that. He just wants to play, and as soon as possible. He’s put his time in with the Phantoms. He’s NHL ready when healthy and he’s no longer waiver exempt, anyway.

It’s probably safe to assume that he’ll get a rehab stint with the Phantoms before he starts playing for the Flyers, but it’s unclear exactly what’s next or how close he is to formally being able to take contact in practice.

“It’s a good question. Right now I’m gonna try to get back into it,” Morin said. “Like, I pushed Oskar (Lindblom) a couple times, gave him a little cross-check. I think he felt it. I don’t know. I think I’m pretty close to being hit. I mean, being hit won’t bother me. It’s my knee. It’s not like a shoulder or something so that doesn’t worry me. The most hard stuff is the quick feet and the stop and start and all that stuff.”

The only reason there would perhaps be a rush for Morin to get to the NHL this season and play some minutes is that aside from the 23-year-old getting valuable experience, no one knows what his limit is in the league yet. With Gordon behind the bench likely for the rest of this season, there’s certainly a comfort level because he coached Morin so much with the Phantoms.

“He definitely should be a top penalty killer, so he’s gonna get his minutes through that,” Gordon said. “I think that at the very least you’d want him to be on your second pairing because he’s playing against the other team’s top lines and if he shows that he can manage the puck and make the appropriate plays and get reads and handle pressure, that will probably dictate whether he’s playing against another team’s top line.”

No pressure, Samuel, but there could be a big role waiting for you with the Flyers.

“When it’s a lower-body (injury), it’s the worst thing because obviously for my size and how the game is right now it’s so fast,” Morin said. “You need your ACL, right? You need your legs. For sure it’s a process. It’s a process. It’s really hard to get back from it but I’m in a good way.”

Loose Pucks

• The Flyers traded forward Jordan Weal to the injury-riddled Arizona Coyotes Friday for defenseman Jacob Graves and a 2019 sixth-round pick. Graves, 23, has spent all season in the ECHL but the Coyotes were at the 50-contract limit so they had to trade a player to take a new one on.

• Wayne Simmonds has been the subject of a lot of trade rumors in his career and that talk is heating up again since he doesn’t have a contract extension and the trade deadline is about six weeks away. “That’s something that I don’t pay attention to,” he said. “People around me probably pay attention to it and say stuff to me but I’m not out there looking for things.”

Does he ask friends and family not to tell him what they see or hear reported?

“No, I don’t care,” Simmonds said. “People are free to voice their opinion or say whatever they want. I’m just going to go about my business like it’s any other day.”

• Sean Couturier and Claude Giroux weren’t on lines in Friday’s practice. They did a little less than everyone else on the ice. It was the closest Gordon could get to having either one accept a “maintenance day” and not go on the ice at all.

“That was the best I could get was to put them on one line and tell them they couldn’t do line rushes,” Gordon said. “Thankfully they agreed to it but they’re proud guys. They want to set a strong example to the rest of the team. You have to give credit where credit’s due.”