It’s really time, folks! It’s the very last home game of the season for the Flyers and the penultimate game of their 2024-25 season. We can’t believe we’ve already made it here, and equally thought it was never going to end. Such always seems to be the way.
Storylines to Watch
A meaningful game (for someone)
The Flyers may be well and truly out of the playoff picture and just sort of cruising to the end of the season here, but this is a meaningful game for the Blue Jackets still. With the Blackhawks beating the Canadiens last night, the Blue Jackets’ playoff hopes — though still slim — remain alive, and they’ll badly need a win to keep those hopes alive. We’re approaching desperation time for the Blue Jackets, and we can expect to see them throwing everything at the Flyers in this one (the Flyers who, if we’re being honest, are really better off from a standings perspective losing these last two games anyway). It’s certainly going to make for an interesting matchup.
Back to Ersson
After a strong showing on Saturday against the Islanders and then an afternoon off on Sunday, the Flyers are going right back to Sam Ersson for this game. And this tells us some things — it’s a continued offer to Ersson to finish the season strong after a bit of an up and down stretch for a while there, and that’s certainly meaningful, but it also signals where the team’s priorities are at. That is, they’ve long viewed Ersson as their best bet to help them secure a win, and they’re leaning on that here, rather than just handing the last pair of starts to Ivan Fedotov and Aleksei Kolosov in an attempt to continue to figure out what exactly they are and what they can offer. Whether it’s good for them in the big picture or not, we can debate that, but there’s no doubt that the Flyers aren’t just throwing in the towel here.
A new face in the mix?
Even though we’re coming to the very end of the season, there’s been no shortage of happenings coming up around here. Most recently, it’s been reported that the Flyers will be signing both Alex Bump and Devin Kaplan to their entry level deals shortly, and while Bump’s won’t kick in until next season (allowing him to join the Phantoms on an ATO for their playoffs), they’ll burn a year on Kaplan’s to get him in for his NHL debut this season. Now, it’s still not clear if that debut will be tonight or on Thursday in Buffalo (for what it’s worth, he didn’t skate with the team this morning), but that will be an interesting wrinkle to keep an eye out for, as we go.
Just make it good
Now, with all of this said, we can debate about how meaningful this game is for the Flyers, and whether it’s better for them to string together some wins for morale or lose out to improve their draft position, but the big picture sentiment is likely the same for everyone — we just want these games to be good. This has been a long, long season, and there’s been more than a little bit of truly unwatchable hockey interspersed within it, and really all we’re hoping for at this point is that the Flyers are able to keep this game competitive, and give the home crowd a good and proper send off.
The Lineups
Philadelphia Flyers
Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Travis Konecny – Sean Couturier – Matvei Michkov
Jakob Pelletier – Ryan Poehling – Owen Tippett
Nic Deslauriers – Karsen Dorwart – Garnet Hathaway
Nick Seeler – Travis Sanheim
Cam York – Jamie Drysdale
Emil Andrae – Egor Zamula
Sam Ersson
(Ivan Fedotov)
Columbus Blue Jackets
Boone Jenner – Sean Monahan – Kirill Marchenko
James van Riemsdyk – Adam Fantilli – Kent Johnson
Dmitri Voronkov – Cole Sillinger – Mathieu Olivier
Zach Aston-Reece – Sean Kuraly – Justin Danforth
Zach Werenski – Dante Fabbro
Denton Mateychuk – Ivan Provorov
Jordan Harris – Erik Gudbranson
Jett Greaves
(Daniil Tarasov)
