Philadelphia Flyers winger Tyson Foerster suffered an awkward-looking injury during Monday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Penguins and his injury timeline has been revealed. And, well, it’s not so good.
Announced by the team, after some minor reports started to leak about the length of Foerster’s potential absence just to make it official, the 23-year-old winger will be out for two to three months. It’s a rough timeline of between eight and 12 weeks, but that’s the information that we’re given.
Injury update: Flyers forward Tyson Foerster will be out 2-3 months with an upper-body injury. https://t.co/l3FPNFUGC2
— Philadelphia Flyers (@NHLFlyers) December 2, 2025
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This rough timeline makes it certain that Foerster will not be returning to full health until after the Olympic break next year. The Gold Medal Game for the 2026 Winter Olympics (where we hope one specific team is involved in) is scheduled to take place on February 22. The Flyers do play their final game before the break on Feb. 5 and it is technically over two months from now, but just barely. Unless Foerster speeds through the recovery of his undisclosed injury in record time, his return is almost certainly going to be after the Olympics.
The injury happened in heartbreaking fashion. Just seconds after Foerster was able to equalize Monday’s game against their archrivals, the winger wound up for a heavy one-timer to try and put his team in the lead, but then suffered his devastating injury on the shot. Foerster crumpled down to the ice in severe pain and clutching his right shoulder — it was not a pretty sight at all.
The Alliston, Ont. native left the game and did not return and now we know it was for good reason. There was some whisperings (inspired by hope, most certainly) that it could be something that Foerster bounces back from quickly but now we have the official word from the team and it puts the Flyers at a severe disadvantage moving forward.
Foerster’s absence from Flyers could be devastating
Tyson Foerster has simply been one of the best players on the Flyers this season. He leads the entire team in goals with 10 and was previously stapled to the line with Noah Cates and Bobby Brink to take on the opposing team’s best players. His ability to shutdown the other forwards and truly take on the heavy defensive assignments has been tested and he’s passed almost every single trial with flying colors.
The young winger has established himself once more — truly embedded himself in the Flyers core and been a truly irreplaceable player with his two-way effort and a heck of a release that has made him pot double-digit goals not even two full months into the season.
The Flyers will now have to look elsewhere for a winger to hand his minutes to, and it seems like a mixed bag of forwards already on the NHL roster or bringing up one of the talented wingers currently on the AHL’s Lehigh Valley Phantoms. Regardless how the lineup shakes out, the Flyers will need to make some sort of recall.
While it might just be a very minor oversight or truly because no decision has been made yet, the Flyers didn’t include their decision about placing Foerster on the injured reserve list in their press release about the injury timeline. Philadelphia do host the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday night, and technically with still 12 healthy forwards on the roster, they don’t need to recall anyone from the Phantoms.
If they don’t make any corresponding move and make a recall, we could see a fourth line that features Nic Deslauriers, Rodrigo Abols, and Garnet Hathaway, and then it would be young Nikita Grebenkin seizing the opportunity to go and take Foerster’s existing spot on the line with Cates and Travis Konecny.
No one really knows how head coach Rick Tocchet or the front office is going to handle the absence of a player that has been so depended on throughout the start of this season, but we’re going to have to find out soon.