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Hextall: Stolarz having hip surgery isn’t a ‘red flag’

2014 Memorial Cup - London Knights v Guelph Storm - Game Six

Anthony Stolarz

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Goaltender Anthony Stolarz is one of the Flyers’ top prospects and is set to start his pro career next season with the AHL Lehigh Valley Phantoms. For now though, he is recovering from a surgery he had last month to clean out his left hip, per CSN Philly.

That will keep the 20-year-old from practicing during Philadelphia’s development camp, but he should be okay for training camp. More importantly, Flyers GM Ron Hextall doesn’t think this procedure is a sign of things to come.

“It happened over time -- typical goalie and he had a clean-up,” Hextall said. “To my knowledge that is pretty much it. There is no red flag.

“If you look at every goalie’s hips, you could probably do them all. The kid in the draft this year and last year had it at 17-18. …

“This is long-term and no issues, no recurrence. He’s no worse off than … there’s no red flag that goes up because a goaltender has surgery when he is a young guy. I wish I had it done at [age] 24 and I had it a few years ago. I had these issues when I was young.”

Hextall added that Stolarz might have run into problems later if he had attempted to avoid surgery. Stolarz was selected with the 42nd overall pick in the 2012 NHL Entry Draft. He had a 2.52 GAA and .926 save percentage in 35 OHL games.

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