After a serious neck injury to Joel Farabee suddenly cropped up last month, general manager Chuck Fletcher was hoping for the negative surprises to stop there this summer.
They did not.
The Flyers were dealt another injury this month. The club announced Tuesday that prospect Bobby Brink recently underwent surgery to repair a torn labrum in his left hip. The right winger suffered the injury in training and his recovery will take approximately five months.
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Brink, who turned 21 years old earlier this month, had the procedure done in Minneapolis by Dr. Christopher Larson of Twin Cities Orthopedics. He missed all of development camp earlier this month because of the injury.
The Flyers start training camp in September before opening the regular season Oct. 13. Brink will miss valuable time on the ice as players get acclimated to new bench boss John Tortorella. The head coach runs an intense camp and will also be getting his first in-person read on many of the players, particularly the younger ones.
"I am going to coach that team hard right away," Tortorella said last month. "It’s going to be a very difficult camp, a high volume of skating. They will be told about this during the summer here as far as how we're going to approach this. We’re attacking it, we’re attacking it."
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The 5-foot-9, 166-pound Brink is one of the club's top prospects. He made his NHL debut in April last season and finished with four assists over 10 games. Prior to signing his entry-level deal and joining the Flyers, the 2019 second-round pick had a banner college season. He led the NCAA in points (57) and assists (43), was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award (top college player) and won the national championship with Denver.
"He's just a smart player," Cam York said in April. "You see him off the ice and you don't think he's super powerful or anything like that, and then he gets on the ice, he's just a really smooth skater, silky with the puck and makes good plays all over the ice."
In training camp, Brink was expected to compete for a spot on the Flyers' roster but was likely to open the season with AHL affiliate Lehigh Valley. The hip injury could keep him out of game action until close to January.
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