The Flyers kicked off their slate of games in this new calendar year yesterday afternoon in Edmonton, and after a pretty abysmal showing in their final game of 2025, they were looking to rebound in a big way. It wasn’t going to be easy, facing off against the top team in the Pacific division and the best player in the game, but the Flyers were able to deliver quite a balanced effort and a largely responsible way, on the way to a commanding 5-2 win over the Oilers.
It was a game in which, from top to bottom, there was a lot to like — the Flyers got another stellar effort from goaltender Dan Vladar, their defense largely held sound across all three pairs, Denver Barkey finally got his first NHL goal, and most critically, they found scoring from all over their lineup, which made for an offensive push which was difficult to contain, particularly for a less deep Oilers squad.
Balanced scoring wins out
While the Flyers’ actual execution of scoring has been at times up and down so far this season, there’s never been any doubt that they have enough pieces aligned up and down their lineup to at least in theory offer them a scoring punch from a variety of places. Sometimes it’s come together for them, sometimes it hasn’t, but yesterday in Edmonton was an excellent illustration of how dangerous this team can look when they have effectively all four lines rolling.
The Flyers got their first two goals from their second line — the first on a rush play which began off a puck battle won in the defensive zone and turned around to a quick breakout, and the second off a cycle, a pouring on of chances when set up in the offensive zone — and then the third line got involved later in the third period, stretching the Flyers’ lead to three goals on an opportunistic play, jumping on a breakout attempt and forcing a turnover in the neutral zone and creating a deflection goal off of the ensuing rush back into the zone. Working down the lineup, the fourth line set up their fourth goal of the night in the third period, before the second line brought it full circle and closed out the game setting up Owen Tippett with the play out of their own end for the chance on the empty net.
The only line without a goal for the Flyers was the trio of Christian Dvorak, Trevor Zegras, and Travis Konecny — a line which has been piling up the scoring and quality chances of late, and which the Oilers all but certainly game-planned ways to shut down. They were successful in that aim, but the Flyers’ other three lines did well to ensure that this didn’t matter, to rise to the occasion and step up into the scoring mix themselves.
The Oilers, on the other hand
On the flip side, the Flyers made this game quite the struggle for the Oilers, as they worked to create their own chances. The Flyers really didn’t give them much to work with, and the chances they did get — one for Connor McDavid on a breakaway, another on their power play which is close to automatic at this point — were ones that the Flyers did well to keep from snowballing into more.
It’s notable, too, that both of those goals came from the top of the Oilers’ lineup, and the Flyers were able to dominate the rest of their matchups. At 5-on-5, the Oilers were able to comfortably hold the edge in possession when McDavid was on the ice, but when he wasn’t, the drop-off in effectiveness was precipitous: their other three lines each failed to earn more than 42 percent of the share of shot attempts created, and two of those three lines failed to even reach the 30 percent mark. It was some good work done on the Flyers’ part to limit the chances against, to be sure, but the disparity in depth between the two sides also certainly made their jobs easier.
The fourth line of it all
Though their lineup was shuffled a bit, the Flyers did get another much-needed goal from their fourth line yesterday, more or less — Seeler’s goal was created off a set faceoff play which hinged on Rodrigo Abols winning the faceoff and getting the puck up to him quickly. It was a nice play, meaningful in that it made for his first goal of the season, and extended the nice run of production that the Flyers have been getting from that line.
What this still did not amount to, of course, is a first point of the season for Garnet Hathaway, who was back in the lineup after a handful of games spent watching from the press box as a healthy scratch. And this gestures towards what will be the larger question coming out of this — just how the Flyers approach their fourth line construction over these next few games? Hathaway is a popular player in the organization, but if the fourth line had lost all steam entirely with him back in the lineup, the decision to immediately swap him back out for Nikita Grebenkin would be made easy. Instead, the line still worked, and Hathaway certainly brought them an extra level of physicality, even if his level of effectiveness with the puck isn’t the same as what they would get from Grebenkin. So will that extra bit of offense left on the table worth continuing to roll with the trio that’s hot? We’ll see come practice this week, and another layer of the coaching staff’s values will be revealed.
All stats via Natural Stat Trick.
