Flyers Training/Medical Staff Summer Overhaul Failing Miserably

In the middle of last season it came to light that two of the Flyers(now former) lead Athletic trainers, Jim McCrossin and Sal Raffa, were suing the team over allegations the team put them in an unsafe working environment. It is alleged in the (still pending) lawsuit that the Flyers ownership group exposed the athletic trainers to carcinogen emitting equipment/machinery for long periods of time which lead to the trainers developing blood disorders and terminal cancers.

In the midst of the lawsuit, and with the fact the Flyers have battled a ton of injuries over the last several seasons, the front office opted to overhaul the training staff. Jim McCrossin was out as the teams head athletic trainer, and replacing him was Tommy Alva. Flyers also brought on Ian McKeown as the teams Athletic Performance and Wellness Trainer. Jim McCrossin remains with the team as an "advisor", while Raffa still remains on the training staff working under Alva.

Before the lawsuit was filed, and while McCrossin was still at the helm last year, Ryan Ellis was injured in training camp. He played a total of 4 games in a Flyers uniform before being shut down for the remainder of the 2021/22 campaign; he is now out for the entirety of the 2022/23 campaign with the exact same injury he suffered in training camp last season because his condition is not improving. The Flyers dealt with a long list of other injuries throughout last season, but none were as severe or occurred to a major player like Ellis.

In the off-season, the team brought in Alva as their new head athletic trainer. Since he took over at the helm at the start of training camp it has seemingly done no good as the teams injury concerns just continue to pile up. After the Ellis injury debacle of last season and the training staff being overhauled fans all thought they would not see the confusion and murky info surrounding the injury issues this season.


Unfortunately, they were wrong.

In the off-season Joel Farabee suffered a neck injury the required the same disk replacement surgery that Jack Eichle had in the middle of last season. Luckily for the Flyers, but only because they didn't sit on their hands for once, he recovered enough by the start of training camp to partake in camp practice sessions, and he was fully recovered by the start of the season and eligible to be in the opening night lineup for the first game of the season.

Despite being pretty upfront about Farabee's injury, the Flyers have continued to keep very mum on other certain players and certain injuries and this years "Ryan Ellis" just happened to be the other be acquired player of the 2021/22 off-season in Cam Atkinson. In training camp, Atkinson suffered an injury and was listed by the team as "day-to-day" with an "upper-body injury". He started attempting a comeback two separate times, very similarly to the way Ellis did last season before they shut him down; except Ellis played in a few games and Atkinson did not. On Saturday December 17, 2022 the Flyers announced Atkinson was on IR, but they did not retroact the move, indicating it was a "fresh" move, which didn't bode well for the players staff. As of December 19, 2022 it was announced he'd be out for the remainder of the 2022/23 season. It was finally revealed that the "upper-body injury" is actually a neck/arm injury that will require surgery which is scheduled for December 21, 2022.

Given the overhaul of the training staff in the off-season, it's hard to say what exactly the issue is here. You'd think with a new training staff these things would have stopped happening, and yet they have not. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the incessant issues. There's a good chance the answer lies within the fact the ownership group just needs to open their eyes and take responsibility for the short comings of the franchise and start overhauling the entire front office.