The Flyers’ goalie tandem next season will look awfully familiar.

Carter Hart will be leaned upon heavily in his sophomore season and he’ll be joined by Brian Elliott, who will return for a third season with the Flyers. He signed a one-year, $2 million contract with the Flyers Wednesday.

After what general manager Chuck Fletcher said was an exhaustive search of medical histories and statistics for potential free-agent goalies, Elliott made the most sense for what the Flyers wanted.

Elliott, 34, played only 26 games this season and missed 40 due to a “lower-body injury” that may or may not have been related to the torn abdominal muscle he had surgically repaired in February of 2018 and then re-operated on after the season. At the end of the season, when asked if it was a torn muscle that caused him to miss so much time, Elliott said, “It was a mixture of everything down there.”

Between the last two seasons and his age, there’s reason to have injury concern for Elliott’s future. The Flyers don’t seem to share that concern.

“Everything’s kind of tied together (the 40 games missed this season and the surgery in February and April 2018), but all I can tell you is coming out of it he feels much better,” Fletcher said. “He had indicated to me that there’s about a year, year and a half there where he didn’t feel great and he pushed through and he played hard and helped our club get into the playoffs a couple seasons ago before I was here. Now I think he feels very good and he takes care of himself and he’s a high-end competitor and he’s a good teammate. I think for us, it made a lot of sense.”

Signing Elliott takes them out of the market for Cam Talbot, for whom Fletcher traded in February but never got settled in with the team. Visa issues kept him from joining the team immediately. Once he did, Elliott was on a roll and Scott Gordon, then the interim coach, found a hot hand he liked, and Talbot played only four games for the Flyers.

As recently as this week, the Flyers and Talbot’s camp were still in communication about him staying in Philly for next season. Other teams had also called the pending unrestricted free agent about a contract for next season and it’s believed one of them may be a situation where he could become a No. 1 goalie again. There was also the factor with Talbot that he has been Hart’s mentor for the last couple summers, but the Flyers downplayed that as a potential reason to keep him on board. Elliott was asked about that in his exit meeting with Fletcher.

“The mentor thing gets kind of caught up. It’s a tough word choice,” Elliott said back in April. “I think he needs someone that is going to help him along the way and push him to be better. Hartsy is a great young goalie and is going to be good in this league for a long time. The Philly fans have a lot to look forward to. He was really good, especially as a young guy coming in.”

After signing Elliott, the Flyers have $16.2 million in cap space according to CapFriendly.com, assuming David Schlemko gets sent down to the minors and Phil Myers makes the team as expected. They still have to sign restricted free agents Scott Laughton, Travis Konecny and Ivan Provorov. Justin Bailey was not given a qualifying offer Tuesday, so he’ll become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

Nick Schultz returns as development coach

Ex-Flyers defenseman Nick Schultz never really left. He liked Haddonfield so much that he kept his family in South Jersey after he retired in 2017. Now he’s officially back in orange and black as a development coach. Tuesday he was on the ice with prospects in development camp but the Flyers didn’t announce his new title until Wednesday.

“It's exciting,” Schultz said in a press release. “I'm looking forward to working with the guys, helping Kjell Samuelsson with the defensemen, and getting to know the kids and their game a little bit. I'm looking forward to working with them throughout the year, watching them play and helping them make it to the next step, and ultimately one day become a Flyer.”

As much as it looks like the old Flyers connection, it goes back to Minnesota. Fletcher was GM of the Wild for the final two years of Schultz’s tenure in Minnesota and traded Schultz to Edmonton.

“We're happy to have Nick come aboard and help develop the prospects in our system,” Fletcher said. “Having enjoyed a lengthy career in which he played over 1,000 games as a defenseman in the NHL, Nick brings a wealth of experience and knowledge on what it takes to be a pro.”

Loose pucks

Tanner Laczynski is not in development camp. Fletcher said that he had a school obligation at Ohio State University and couldn’t attend. Defense prospects Linus Högberg and David Bernhardt are also not at camp. Both play for the Växjö Lakers in Sweden and that team did not release them to join the camp.

Dave Isaac joined the Courier-Post in April 2012 after covering the Flyers for three seasons elsewhere. Contact him on Twitter @davegisaac or by email at disaac@gannett.com.

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