Flyers recall Cam York from Phantoms

Dec 8, 2022 - 7:21 PM

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The Philadelphia Flyers are switching out some young blueliners on their roster before they head out on a four-game road trip starting on Friday against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Announced by the team on Thursday afternoon, the Flyers have recalled defenseman Cam York and in exchange, have re-assigned defenseman Egor Zamula back to Lehigh Valley.

On its face, this move is just swapping a couple young defensemen that have been either not playing hockey at all, or trying to prove themselves in the minors. For the 21-year-old York, it was the latter.

Coming into training camp this season, most had York penciled in on the final Flyers blue line that would hit the ice for the season opener. So, when the young defenseman was eventually sent down to the AHL, it came as a moderate surprise to most — especially since he just finished his last season in Philadelphia, playing 30 games and not looking out of place one bit.

Around the time he was sent down, head coach John Tortorella said that he wanted to see more out of him, in the early stages of the preseason. The writing was on the wall that York would not continue seeing his trajectory go forward, and he would take a small step back to hopefully take a massive one forward. Well, York has played 20 games for Lehigh Valley and has scored three goals and 13 points on a pretty bad team where goals don’t come very often (only three teams in the entire AHL have scored fewer goals than the Phantoms have scored) so it is a fairly significant accomplishment.

With all those minutes logged, we can only assume that this promotion up to the Flyers is more permanent. Because, why not just keep Zamula around for the road trip if all you need is an extra body?

Our assumption is that he will be taking over from Nick Seeler on the bottom pairing, but will most likely get some significant power play time, as he hopefully blossoms into that agile NHL defender that can be a contributor from the back.

We will find out more when Tortorella feels like telling us what’s happening with this young guy and where he fits into the lineup. Maybe he is just up for a road trip — a little bonding time with the NHL fellas — or maybe he’s here for good. Hopefully it’s the latter because we don’t know how much longer we can watch the six defensemen the Flyers are using right now.