Phantoms' Roster Feeling Effects of Flyers' COVID Troubles; Friday's Game Moved

The Lehigh Valley Phantoms announced Tuesday evening that their scheduled road contest against the Binghamton Devils (in Newark, NJ) on Friday, February 19 at 7:00 p.m. ET has been moved to Wednesday, February 24 at 6:00 p.m. ET.

The reason why?

A total of nine players from the Phantoms' opening night roster are either injured or currently in the NHL with the Philadelphia Flyers (the Flyers still have seven players on the NHL's COVID Protocol list). Lehigh Valley is running out of players after opening their training camp at the end of January

Even if they got out of Sunday's physical affair in Hershey against their rival unscathed on the injury front, their current active roster has only 11 forwards, six defensemen and two goaltenders.

The Phantoms, in conjunction with the American Hockey League (AHL) and Binghamton Devils, made the schedule change due to "Lehigh Valley’s roster constraints from recent recalls to the Philadelphia Flyers roster and taxi squad," according to the team's release on the schedule change.

The Phantoms' press release also stated that their home opener against those same Devils on Saturday, February 20 - the night after the Friday game they just moved back to next week - is "still on as scheduled.

With the Flyers' list of players on the NHL's COVID Protocol List growing to seven, and the Phantoms' already down four players due to their own injuries - defenseman Chris Bigras and forwards Tyson Foerster, Tanner Laczynski and Linus Sandin - the NHL affiliate's latest additions of forwards David Kase and Maksim Sushko have left the AHL club without a full compliment of active players able to field a lineup.

Based off everything we had heard Tuesday, the Phantoms are planning to play short of a full game night roster in their home opener on Saturday, and the decision to move Friday's game to Wednesday was to prevent Lehigh Valley from having to play with a shorter bench on back-to-back nights.

Still, certainly less than ideal.

As it stands, the Phantoms are one forward short of a full lineup. Seventeen active skaters and two goalies.

The Flyers might be hopeful they'll get some player(s) back before their games Thursday at home against the New York Rangers and Sunday's outdoor game at Lake Tahoe against the Boston Bruins, but it seems almost inevitable that the Phantoms will stand to lose even more players to the Flyers' taxi squad before the Flyers depart for the outdoor game. They aren't heading out there without a full roster and a full compliment of taxi squad players in case of any last minute COVID-related problems.

The Flyers ruled out the seven players on the COVID list for Thursday, meaning the Flyers will be without five forwards and a defenseman (Morgan Frost is on IR) for at least one game.

Bottom line: The Phantoms' home opener Saturday is still on as scheduled, and the home team is planning on playing with a less than full compliment of players in the lineup.

Can you imagine them taking to the ice at PPL Center Saturday with something like nine or 10 forwards and five/six defensemen? It's a very real possibility at this hour.

Time will tell on that front, and we should all know by now how quickly things can change. But it doesn't look good for Lehigh Valley right now in terms of having a full compliment of players available to them for Saturday's game.