A key player for the Flyers retired due to a leg injury.

A key player for the Flyers retired due to a leg injury.

Every Flyers fan has a mental inventory of injuries that ended everything right when we were getting excited. Foot of Forsberg. The brains of Primeau and Lindros. These wounds aren’t the only things on our minds; we recall them, too.

The eye of Pronger. The whole fuckin’ face of Ian Laperrière. If Tim Kerr had been fit for the 1985 and 1987 Cup runs, what would have happened? Or, in 2010, Jeff Carter and any goalie? Don’t even discuss Ryan Ellis with us. It’s too soon. We are angry because God is unaware of Philadelphia. [Reference required]

Nolan Patrick, whose retirement at the young age of 25 has been the subject of stories, is somewhere near the top of the coulda-shoulda list.

He was selected by the Flyers with the second overall choice in the 2017 draft (it’s extremely uncommon for a team to win this much to be selected so highly), and all of our hopes and dreams seemed to depend on his developing into the outstanding scorer that everyone had anticipated he would be.

Rather, due to circumstances beyond his control, the youthful athlete sustained numerous chronic ailments, including concussions, hernias, incapacitating headaches, and further “upper body injuries.”

After trading him to Vegas in 2021, the Flyers moved on, but his bad luck remained. The final blow was this heartless headshot from Nate McKinnon. Patrick had seven more games left to play. (Yesterday, his retirement essentially became official.) He participated in 222 games overall, which is more than most hockey players but less than he ought to have.

We’ll never know what may have been, I was going to say, but we do. We know deep inside. In addition to helping G, Coots, Voracek, Ghost, and other players lead the Flyers to Cup victories in 2021 and 2024, Nolan Patrick would have finished in the top 20 scorers six times. Idealized schemes, etc.