The Game: 7:00 PM, NBCSP, ESPN+, 97.5 The Fanatic
That’s almost a wrap, folks! It’s been a long and arduous month, but March is finally coming to a close, with the Flyers playing their last of 16 games on the month tonight at home against the Predators. And what a weird month it’s been, and it might well be capped off by getting even weirder — the Flyers, who looked dead in the water for a while there, have had new life breathed into them after John Tortorella’s firing, and are rolling on a two game winning streak and scoring in droves suddenly (but more on that later).
This is good news for people who like the watch good hockey, but bad news for anyone on Team Tank, because the bit of winning means that the Flyers have put themselves back up into that sixth place from the bottom, and likely out of contention to catch the Predators for that third worst in the league position (unless something absolutely catastrophic happens for them). The Predators are seven points back on them and not making the same kind of late-season surge, as they’re on a two-game losing streak, and have lost seven of their last 10. So a loss for the Flyers tonight would draw them closer together again, but this one doesn’t have the same massive tank race implications that we might have otherwise expected even just a week ago.
Storylines to Watch
Fedotov time
After Sam Ersson was given the last two starts for the Flyers — and played a big part in getting them back on track over that span — he’s earned a night off, and they’ll go back to Ivan Fedotov for tonight’s start. And this start will be a big one for Fedotov — we haven’t seen him since those two truly brutal showings in Dallas and Chicago two weekends ago, and with just seven games remaining in the season, he’s running out of runway to improve his form and get himself back in good standing with the organization. Tonight will be as good a chance as any to get this started, to get things moving in the right direction again, as he’s up against the lowest scoring team in the league, but we’ll see how he fares.
Hathaway’s return
Further in the way of changes to the lineup for tonight, Garnet Hathaway will return to action tonight for the first time since taking an upper-body injury after a brutal hit in Pittsburgh a month ago. He’ll replace Nic Deslauriers — who comes out of the lineup — on the fourth line, and will have the benefit of more or less easing back into things with some more limited minutes on that line. All the same, the expectation is that, while he may have to shake off a bit of rust after the long layoff and work towards getting his game timing all the way back, he’ll be able to offer them some good energy, as well as a bit more speed on that fourth line with Abols and Lycksell.
When will the adrenaline wear off?
There’s a bigger question looming over the heads of the Flyers at the moment, of just how much longer they can keep this level of strong play rolling. We’ve seen it time and again all across the league, where teams seem to get an immediate boost right after a coaching change, but eventually, they come back down to earth again. The Flyers are rolling well at the moment, there’s no doubt about it, but we also can’t shake the feeling that sometime, eventually, the other shoe is going to drop. It might not be tonight, but there’s a sense that we can’t begin to really evaluate what this team is in the post-Tortorella era until the adrenaline wears off and they begin to equalize a bit more. We’ll certainly take the highs while we can get them, but we aren’t losing sight of the drop-off that’s sure to come at some point.
The Lineups
Philadelphia Flyers
Travis Konecny – Sean Couturier – Matvei Michkov
Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Owen Tippett – Ryan Poehling – Jakob Pelletier
Garnet Hathaway – Rodrigo Abols – Olle Lycksell
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler – Jamie Drysdale
Emil Andrae – Egor Zamula
Ivan Fedotov
(Sam Ersson)
Nashville Predators
Filip Forsberg – Ryan O’Reilly – Luke Evangelista
Michael Bunting – Steven Stamkos – Jonathan Marchessault
Zachary L’Hereaux – Fedor Svechkov – Colton Sissons
Cole Smith – Michael McCarron – Kieffer Bellows
Brady Skjei – Nick Blankenburg
Marc del Gaizo – Justin Barron
Spencer Stastney – Andreas Englund
Juuse Saros
(Justus Annunen)
