The Philadelphia Flyers are officially back to work as training camp started this week.

Most of the players had been skating together in an unofficial capacity over the last few weeks in an effort to knock some rust off before the season, and now they’re all back in the same building working toward the same goal.

The Flyers are returning most of the same roster from last year’s playoff team, with a few depth additions made in the offseason. It’s the same solid core, though, and they’re already showing a healthy competitive nature early on in training camp.

Travis Konecny is known as one of the best trash talkers in the league. He’s always yapping after the whistle and sometimes during play, and that doesn’t change when battling against his teammates.

Konecny and Foerster give it to teammates in training camp

In a two-on-two drill during Thursday’s training camp session, Konecny beat Tyson Foerster to the puck and fired a quick turnaround shot to the back of the net. He celebrated a little bit and let Foerster hear about it.

Earlier in that same drill, Foerster got the better of rookie Porter Martone and hit him with the classic “too small” taunt.

The Flyers social media team also caught both interactions on video and shared a different angle of each interaction later that evening.

Say what you will about the Flyers focusing on building a strong culture throughout the organizaion, but stuff like this can only fly within a tight-knit group. Players are only going to take some fun jabs at their teammates if they know they have a good rapport and can laugh about it afterwards.

Konecny and Foerster did just that in a joint press conference on Thursday.

“We were talking about a couple of camps ago when I was a rookie and I blew him up out there, so he said it was going to be a hard camp,” Foerster recalled. “We’re going against each other out there. We’re trying to make each other better. So we always have good competition and it’s a lot of fun.”

Foerster is looking for a strong start to the season after missing most of last year’s campaign with an elbow injury. It was an injury that was supposed to end his season after undergoing surgery, but the winger came back in March to help the Flyers make a run to the playoffs and then beat the Penguins in the first round.

The winger was on a 39-goal pace before the injury last year, scoring 10 goals in his first 21 games. He was especially hot in the middle of November through that injury on December 1, scoring six goals in a seven-game span.

Flyers’ healthy competition fuels forward battles

Foerster is one of a few forwards looking to take a step forward this season, and perhaps become the Flyers’ team leader in points. That honor has belonged to Konecny for a few years running now, with the veteran’s 68 points (27 goals, 41 assists) in 77 games edging out Trevor Zegras’ 67 points (26 goals, 41 assists) in 81 games in his first season in Philadelphia.

Winger depth is obviously one of the Flyers’ biggest strengths. Along with Foerster and Konecny, the Flyers have Porter Martone, Matvei Michkov, Owen Tippett, and even possibly Trevor Zegras as wingers looking to crack the top six. Of course, there are only four spots for those six-plus wingers, so the Flyers will have a pretty decent third line as well.

And it’s not as if the center depth chart is set in stone either. Jett Luchanko is once again pushing for a roster spot, and the Flyers have a handful of forwards who can play in a hybrid role as Zegras did last season.

It all comes back to a healthy competition, though, and the Flyers seem to have plenty of that heading into this season.

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