‘The story of our season,’ Rasmus Ristolainen latest Flyer to suffer an injury

Mike Yeo worked his players hard in practice after they opened the second half of the season with a 6-3 loss to the Red Wings, but he was missing his top two scorers and a second-pair defenseman.

Out of the three missing players, Yeo expects two to return by Saturday’s game. He gave Claude Giroux the day off because he thought he deserved some rest after his All-Star Game commitments.

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Cam Atkinson already didn’t feel well when he played in Wednesday night’s game. He had a “rough night” after the game, so he was out for practice, too. Yeo said he’s hoping it’s something that passes quickly and that Atkinson will return by Saturday.

Rasmus Ristolainen is the only one Yeo said is “in question” for the upcoming game. Yeo described Ristolainen as “a little banged up” and “day-to-day.” The team hasn’t decided what it will do yet if Ristolainen is sidelined.

“I would say this all kind of happened pretty quickly there this morning,” Yeo said. “So you know, I think obviously we have confidence in Nauts [Kevin Connauton] and we have confidence in Yorkie [Cam York], so we’ll see how that plays out.”

If he can’t return, it would be Ristolainen’s second time out injured after he missed the first two games of the season. Including Ristolainen, nine players have missed games because of injury. He’s the sixth player who’s suffered multiple injuries this season.

“It’s been kind of the story of our season, to be honest,” James van Riemsdyk said. “Obviously it’s opportunities for other guys to step in and play and stuff like that. Most teams deal with those sorts of things, but yeah it definitely feels that way, for sure, where we’ve had definitely our fair share of man games lost to injury from some key guys.”

While three important faces were missing at practice, there was one face that was notably present.

On his third attempt to return from injury, Derick Brassard successfully played a full game and was able to participate in practice the next day.

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The first time Brassard returned from the hip injury he suffered on Nov. 23, he played a game against the New Jersey Devils on Dec. 8 and then went back into rehab the next day. Brassard missed a month before returning on Jan. 7. He played the entire game again and then immediately went back to the training table.

Following Wednesday’s game, Brassard said he was feeling sore but expected to be taking “baby steps.” He took the next baby step by showing up to practice the next day. . The practice was intense, with the forwards and defense going up against each other in physical one-on-one rush drills as well as battle drills in the corners.

“For a guy like that, that’s a lot of stuff that he needs,” Yeo said. “We’ll circle back to him, but obviously he got through practice fine.”

The Flyers practice in Voorhees on Friday before heading to Detroit to play the Red Wings for the second time in four days. ... The Flyers coaches were more involved with practice than usual, jumping into some of the drills. ... New assistant coach John Torchetti had long conversations with players during and after practice. One of the main reasons Yeo said they wanted to hire an assistant coach was to give everyone more time to provide more individual instruction. Yeo said players have started gravitating toward him. ... The Flyers also announced two hires for their analytics department in Kathryn Yates and Cole Anderson. Yates, who is working with UMass Amherst’s men’s hockey team, is the first female to be hired to that department by the Flyers.