VOORHEES — Part of James van Riemsdyk’s daily routine includes a nightly steam in the sauna he has in his Philadelphia condo.

“I’ve found it’s been a good recipe to keep the body limber and good,” he said, “but I’ve got a whole room full of bells and whistles and things like that, that I’ve found help.”

Professional hockey is no 9-5 job and finding tools to help with recovery is part of the gig. It’s one area where van Riemsdyk, 29, feels he’s improved a lot since his first tour of duty with the Flyers that ended in 2012. That last season in Philadelphia he played in only 43 of 82 games.

He missed 21 with a broken foot and 15 with a concussion. Those are hard to prevent. The other three games he missed were ones in which proper recovery might’ve helped him stay in the lineup.

“Soft-tissue injury wise I’ve been pretty good (since),” van Riemsdyk said. “I’ve found a good recipe for that. Now in a new city I’ve got to figure it all out, the routine and all.

“The organization has a commitment to that stuff with the facilities and the different people they have in place to help us optimize that. That’s all you can ask for as a player.”

That staff — in addition to doctors, the Flyers have two massage therapists, a strength and conditioning coach and a director of sports science that travel with the team — has been busy so far in training camp. Goalies Michal Neuvirth and Alex Lyon are both injured (speculation is that both are suffering from pulled groin muscles). So are defenseman Travis Sanheim, who suffered a shoulder injury in the first preseason game, and Andrew MacDonald, who suffered a “lower-body injury” training off the ice.

The initial timetable for MacDonald was six weeks, including two in the regular season. He’s well ahead of schedule now and may not miss any regular season games at all. He’s been cleared for contact and his biggest hurdle is getting practice reps and building strength.

“I’m doing contact out there, little battle drills, just trying to get back into those types of things,” MacDonald said. “The start of camp is usually the toughest since you’re so competitive and you start to get into battle drills and just trying to work through them now.”

Then there’s Sean Couturier, who is working his way back from a knee injury that didn’t require surgery and Wayne Simmonds, whose recovery is a bit different because he went under the knife multiple times in the offseason.

Some injuries, like broken bones and concussions, are pretty difficult to defend against. Some others, players spend a lot of time trying to defend against.

“Next to hockey, that’s my biggest interest in life,” said winger Taylor Leier. “Sometimes I get chirped about it a little bit, but I love the health side of things. I love the workout side of things and actually thinking about what works in your body and what doesn’t, what will help it and what won’t. Just little things like that. I really love the training side of it.”

In a total 180 from van Riemsdyk’s routine, Leier routinely goes to a cryotherapy center to get cold instead of hot. The way it works is standing in a chamber that exposes subzero liquid nitrogen vapor to the body for three minutes. It is considered to be a help in anti-inflammatory matters and the cold constricts blood vessels, so the blood goes back to the core of the body where it’s more oxygenated.

The science behind it has fascinated Leier. Back in his hometown of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Leier always goes out for coffee with his trainer for the last nine years, Blaine Whyte, and his two assistants who have backgrounds in running track and Crossfit.

“I like listening to all of their perspectives and talk about little things like macronutrients and anything under the sun that I could learn,” Leier said. “Every year I’ve picked a little more from guys like AMac, who’s really health conscious, or guys like that. I like learning about that stuff.”

After the 2012 lockout, many players in the NHL struggled through groin pulls early because they had to snap back into the pro game after summer workouts and teams didn’t have their hands on the players to ease them back in during a makeshift camp.

That’s not to say that a steam or a freeze would have prevented Lyon, Neuvirth or MacDonald from being injured in training camp. The Flyers, as many NHL teams do, haven’t released the exact injury information so it’s tough to know how preventable those injuries are, but there are tools available to the Flyers to help many of the soft-tissue injuries that turn up this time of year.

“The level of technology and the advancements on that side every year — if you add it up over the next four years, that’s a leap — I think it’s really using the tools that are at hand intelligently,” coach Dave Hakstol said. “There are so many things out there. What I’ve seen, I believe our organization has done a very good job of vetting through what’s really valuable and what’s a great benefit to the players and then providing it for the players to have.”

Last season the Flyers completed renovations at the Skate Zone which included a new gym, an area to practice the skill facets of the game and a large area for nutritional education and supplements.

In a salary-cap world, it’s a new arms race to give teams an advantage. The Flyers hired Dr. Ben Peterson a couple years ago to head their sports science department, nabbing him from Catapult, the company that the Flyers use to monitor players’ activities in practice through tracking devices.

“I think that’s why you see all the money that teams are investing in sports science,” van Riemsdyk said, “and it’s up to them to come up with a good cocktail for how much stress they want us to be put through our bodies. I’m sure there’s an optimal way to not ease into it, but put yourself in a position where you’re not hurt and obviously you want to take care of yourself too with things like warming up and stretching and some cool down stuff after.

“You see the teams that win every year, it’s the healthiest teams, usually, at the end of the year. If you’re not managing that, you’re behind the 8-ball to start. It’s good to see the resources they put into that here.”

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

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