The Flyers didn’t fare so well over their weekend back-to-back against the Leafs and the Flames, picking up a pair of pretty uninspiring losses (and looking, truly, perhaps the worst they have all season on Sunday). They’re in a bit of a spiral here, looking for answers as their process has broken down a bit, and they’re looking to stop the bleeding and get things back on track in short order, taking advantage of the opportunity for a reset that a trip up to Montreal can offer them.
Puck drop: 7:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: NBCSP
📻: 93.3 WMMR
Pregame reading
- The Flyers are going to be without Tyson Foerster for a little while here, but they’re certainly not short on candidates able to step up in his absence. [BSH]
- A little bit of news heading into this one: the Flyers’ lines have kind of gone back into the blender. [BSH]
- And finally, the Flyers are still looking for answers to shore up the weak spot that is their third defense pair, so could we see them dipping into the trade market to try to address it? [BSH]
Pregame watching
Projected lineups
Owen Tippett — Christian Dvorak — Trevor Zegras
Matvei Michkov — Sean Couturier — Bobby Brink
Nikita Grebenkin — Noah Cates — Travis Konecny
Rodrigo Abols — Jacob Gaucher — Garnet Hathaway
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler – Jamie Drysdale
Emil Andrae – Noah Juulsen
Dan Vladar
(Aleksei Kolosov)
Cole Caufield — Nick Suzuki — Juraj Slafkovsky
Zack Bolduc — Kirby Dach — Brendan Gallagher
Alex Newhook — Oliver Kapanen — Ivan Demidov
Josh Anderson — Jake Evans — Joe Veleno
Mike Matheson — Noah Dobson
Jayden Strubel — Lane Hutson
Arber Xhekaj — Alexandre Carrier
Sam Montembeault
(Jakub Dobes)
Storylines to watch
Back to Vladar
Vladar was last given the nod for the start on Saturday against the Leafs, and despite some quite impressive starts strung together through the start of the season, Saturday saw Vladar run into something which was bound to happen eventually: his first poor start of the season. It was, all in all, Vladar looking just a bit off — not quite as sharp in his positioning and a little less precise in his reads of shots — and a showing which ended in him being pulled in the third period. After a night off on Sunday and a bit of time to regroup, he’ll be looking to bounce back tonight in Montreal and get his momentum back, avoiding any further slide in form. We’ll see how he fares.
Lineup shakeup
With the Flyers struggling as much as they did in much of their last two games, there was a real feeling that something had to give for them. Some of that will come with how they’re approaching their process (more on that later), but some of that will also come, they hope, with how they’re lining up for this game. While the Flyers’ lines looked like this when they began Sunday’s game against the Flames, they were scrambled mid-game in hopes of getting things going again. The jolt was delivered, to a degree, and the Flyers will be carrying those same lines into tonight’s matchup, hoping to keep the ball rolling. Most notably, this will include Zegras and Dvorak reuniting, Abols bumped up to the second line, and Konecny dropped down to the third. There’s some potential bits of chemistry tapped into here, and the Flyers will be hoping that this can be tapped into right from the jump tonight.
Getting to the hard areas
It’s becoming something of a similar refrain from both Flyers players and coach alike that one of their biggest issues at the moment is that they’re simply not being able to get to the interior for a high volume of more dangerous chances. It’s not a mystery to them what they need to be doing to find more success, but it’s a matter of executing on that plan to a greater degree than they have of late. It’s all a bit easier said than done, but this is going to be something the Flyers are going to need to figure out sooner or later — they’re not going to find a lot of success this season if they’re just firing low percentage shots at the net from the points, and now is as good of a time as any to start making strides towards creating more and better offense.
