The Flyers have a lot to be proud of, going 4-0-1 in their last five games and beating a few legit Stanley Cup contending teams in the process. With 48 standings points, they’re in a three-way tie with the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins, and all three teams are four points back of the Ottawa Senators and Boston Bruins for the two Wild Card spots. By points percentage, the Flyers are a tad further back, ahead of only Pittsburgh and the New York Islanders in the Metropolitan Division for the tenth-worst record in the NHL. The ninth-worst team by points percentage? Tonight’s opponent, the Detroit Red Wings.
For the last month, the Red Wings have been one of the hottest teams in the league. Their winning stretch started with the firing of head coach Derek Lalonde a couple days after Christmas; he was replaced with Todd McLellan and, after a loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Wings went on a seven-game winning streak. They’re 7-3-0 in their last 10, and 21-21-4 on the season. What looked like another lost year has turned into a surprise leap into the playoff picture, though the roster still has its flaws that limit Detroit’s ceiling–McLellan, to his credit, is squeezing everything he can out of what he has, though.
Storylines to Watch
New-look fourth line
Scott Laughton is missing tonight’s game to attend to family matters, which is a real shame considering how vocal he is in his support of Pride Night and his work with the Philadelphia LGBTQ+ community (Joel Farabee will take the lead for tonight’s game). Ryan Poehling has officially been placed on IR, so he’ll be out for at least a week, though it could be longer as concussion recovery can be a difficult process. With those two absences, Olle Lycksell draws back into the lineup, and we get the NHL debut of Rodrigo Abols.
Lycksell has been decent enough for the Flyers in his call up, averaging just over 10 minutes of ice time in the five games he’s played this season. Abols is on the older side at 29, but he’s certainly the “next center up” on the organization’s depth chart. We shouldn’t expect too much from Abols, but his usage will be interesting to track, given Laughton and Poehling both played on the PK and the team’s without them tonight; maybe Abols gets some special teams time but, more likely, Sean Couturier, Travis Konecny, Noah Cates and Garnet Hathaway comprise the forward PKers–though hopefully they won’t be necessary, because the Red Wings power play is quite good: second in the league at 28.4% efficiency.
Four point game
The top three spots in both the Atlantic and Metropolitan Divisions are more or less locked up, which leaves approximately one billion teams in the Eastern Conference vying for the two remaining wildcard spots; the only team in the East that truly looks out of it is Buffalo but, given some of the runs other teams have been on this year, anything could happen down the stretch. The Flyers are basically even with the Red Wings, so tonight’s game represents a major swing in the standings and draft odds depending on the results. Look for both teams to come out swinging.
A look at a different rebuild
Reams have been written about the Detroit Red Wings and Steve Yzerman’s infamous “Yzerplan,” but for all the patience he’s preached in the process, this team still lacks a high enough ceiling to be considered a legit playoff contender. Sure, they’ve got a budding star in Lucas Raymond, Moritz Seider faces some of the toughest defensive assignments in the league, and the pipeline has a lot of talent coming, but it’s been years of sputtering around the playoff bubble. Some of that is bad contracts (JT Compher, Andrew Copp, Ben Chiarot, Justin Holl combine for nearly $20-million against the cap and have only 50 points between the four of them), ill-advised trades (Jake Walman has 26 points for San Jose after being dumped alongside a 2nd-round pick), and bad luck (the Wings never won a draft lottery), but it all leads to one person: Yzerman.
There’s no one right way to rebuild in the NHL, despite what some may tell you, but it’s hard to look at what Yzerman’s done in Detroit and call it a rousing success. They’re further along in their rebuild than the Flyers, yet they’re performing at about the same level–that’s not good! It’s too early to tell who’s going to be the better team in a decade, but the Flyers may be positioning themselves better at present for future success.
Projected Lineups
Philadelphia Flyers
Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Owen Tippett – Morgan Frost – Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee – Sean Couturier – Matvei Michkov
Olle Lycksell – Rodrigo Abols – Garnet Hathaway
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Egor Zamula – Rasmus Ristolainen
Nick Seeler – Jamie Drysdale
Sam Ersson
(Ivan Fedotov)
Detroit Red Wings
Marco Kasper – Dylan Larkin – Lucas Raymond
Alex DeBrincat – Andrew Copp – Jonatan Berggren
Michael Rasmussen – JT Compher – Vladimir Tarasenko
Christian Fischer – Joe Veleno – Patrick Kane
Ben Chiarot – Moritz Seider
Simon Edvinsson – Albert Johansson
Erik Gustafsson – Justin Holl
Cam Talbot
(Alex Lyon)
Gameday Tunes
🏳️🌈 Happy Pride Night!! 🏳️🌈
Stats courtesy Hockey Reference