Giroux out for 2 weeks or more with lower body injury

IT TOOK all of 15 minutes for the Flyers and the fans at the Skate Zone to hold their breath.

Flyers training camp opened yesterday and moments after coach Craig Berube blew his whistle to start skating drills, Flyers captain Claude Giroux was heading off the ice.

The team announced later in the afternoon that Giroux would be sidelined for approximately 2 weeks with a lower body injury. The team also said he would not be available for comment.

With that timetable, Giroux could miss the entire preseason, which ends on Oct. 2 with a game in Washington. Though the word "approximately" in Giroux' timetable leaves room to miss more than 2 weeks or even be back for the final preseason game or two. Last year while battling a right finger injury, Giroux played in just one preseason game.

On the heels of losing defenseman Kimmo Timonen for what could be a career-ending blood-clot issue, it isn't a dream start to camp to again be missing the NHL's reigning third-leading scorer.

"You don't want to start camp like that," general manager Ron Hextall said. "But what are you going to do? We're going to battle through, and be the best we can be - that's all you can do. You can't predict what's going to happen, who's going to go down, who's going to get hurt, who's going to get sick. We'll battle through here and other guys will get opportunities."

Berube didn't seem worried about how this setback will affect the lineup heading into Monday's first preseason affair - a pair of split-squad games, one in Philadelphia against Washington and one in London, Ontario, against the Maple Leafs.

"We've got lots of players, lots of good players," Berube said. "You just have to deal with it, that's the best way to look at it. We'll be fine."

Flyers owner Ed Snider called last season's training camp the worst he had ever seen. And three games into the 2013-14 campaign, three losses led to the firing of coach Peter Laviolette.

This season, the first training camp under Berube, fitness and conditioning were stressed in the months leading up to camp. Berube and the training staff periodically called some players to check in on their fitness levels.

It's even led to a little bit of competition among the players.

"I think we have a very tight-knit dressing room here," defenseman Braydon Coburn said. "Guys are always hearing about somebody else and how great of shape they're looking, or somebody giving somebody else a little bit of a ribbing about something that they saw."

Left winger Jakub Voracek said he made changes to his diet and lost "9 or 10 pounds."

"I feel quicker, I feel faster on the ice," Voracek said. Now it's just a question of how I feel in the board battles. We're going to find that out when I play a couple of games. When I go home and my mom is cooking three meals a night, I think it's very hard [to keep a steady diet]."

Voracek said he's staying away from carbs and sticking to more of a protein-based diet.

Now entering his fourth full NHL season, Brayden Schenn said he's had to learn about diet and conditioning as he's progressed in the league. The Flyers expect the 23-year-old to take a big leap this season as he joins the first line.

"I seem to think I try to eat pretty healthy here and there," Schenn said. "That's something I had to learn 3 years ago, my rookie year. I think I put on 12 pounds throughout the year. That's just from living away from not having a billet [family] playing juniors."

Hextall and Berube both expressed happiness with the results thus far and said everyone's fitness level appeared to be where it's supposed to be. The goal is that better conditioning will lead to a better start than last season's 1-7 performance out of the gate.

"I think our start last year was reflective of our level of conditioning," Hextall said. "[In] pro sports now, there's high standards for training camp. It's not 'Come into camp and get in shape' anymore. It's 'Be in great shape when training camp starts because you start playing 4 days later.' It's an expectation and it'll continue to be an expectation."

Before Claude Giroux's injury, the captain was centering a line with Jake Voracek and Brayden Schenn on the wings . . . Flyers prospect Scott Laughton did not skate with the first group in the morning, but rather with most of the rookies in the afternoon . . . With Kimmo Timonen sidelined, Braydon Coburn's new blue-line mate was Andy MacDonald . . . Newly acquired defenseman Michael Del Zotto was paired with Luke Schenn . . . French forward Pierre-Edouard Bellemare centered what appeared to be the fourth line, with Zac Rinaldo and Jason Akeson on his sides, thought that could change when injured center Ryan White returns.