The Game: 7:00 p.m. EST streaming on the Flyers’ website (in-market only) and on the radio at 97.5 The Fanatic.
The preseason is coming at us fast folks, as the Flyers, after kicking off their slate of action yesterday with a matinee drumming of the Washington Capitals — who brought a much weaker roster, but we won’t get caught up in the details — are right back at it again tonight. They’ll be taking a somewhat unusual for the preseason trip all the way up to Montreal to face off against the Canadiens. It may be the Habs’ first exhibition game and we might expect a bit of rust, but they’re bringing a good group of NHL regulars in tonight, and that should make for an interesting matchup.
Players to watch
Ronnie Attard
Ahead of yesterday’s game, we spoke a lot about players who are more or less on the bubble of making the NHL roster to start the season, and the focus is largely the same in this second game. Attard is facing down something of a make or break camp — he’s gotten his AHL seasoning and gotten some looks with the NHL team, but he’s still yet to really make it stick. Now, the logjam of defensemen in the system at the moment haven’t made that any easier, but the door to make the team, at the very least, as an eighth defenseman is pretty well open. Attard has some ground to make up, and it’s not going to be easy to make a strong impression with the limited minutes he’s penciled in to get, but you have to start somewhere.
Massimo Rizzo
On the forward side of that roster bubble sits Rizzo. Given his newness to the organization and his status as a relative unknown, he’s one of the longer shots to make the final roster, but he’s still in play to make things interesting, and the team does seem to still want to get a good look at him. They’re giving him options to show himself as well possible — after he played center in the rookie games and looked a bit lost at times, they’re moving him over to the wing and sticking him alongside the established and dependable Scott Laughton to hopefully insulate him a bit, and free him up to be a bit more creative offensively. We’re still in something of the first impressions stage with Rizzo (given the injury situation he was nursing at the time his was signed and the little ice time he’s gotten up to this point as a result) so we’ll see how he’s able to adjust and just what he’s able to do.
Tyson Foerster
What a year it’s been for Tyson Foerster. We remember back to this time last season, when he was pretty firmly on the outside looking in on a roster spot coming into camp, and he turned around and earned on by outworking and outperforming some of the older players ahead of him on the depth chart. And while Foerster’s spot is a little more settled this year, it’s not a lock, and the writing on the wall is that he’ll still have to make sure not to have done to him this year what he did to Tanner Laczynski and Wade Allison last year. Foerster’s coming in with some momentum though, and his fate is pretty comfortably in his own hands. He’s going to be getting big minutes in this first game, playing alongside Sean Couturier, and that’s a big opportunity in front of him to make a big impression right out the gate.
Bobby Brink and Olle Lycksell
It’s a two-for-one special here, because while the Flyers are bringing a group almost exclusively made up of players who will be making their preseason debuts this evening, the two exceptions are pretty notable. Brink and Lycksell both played in yesterday’s preseason opener, and while they had somewhat different levels of impact — Brink looked like he gained an extra gear and put up a huge scoring effort, picking up two goals in regulation and one in the shootout, while Lycksell at once showed some nice offensive pop and picked up a goal of his own, also had a few ugly mistakes with the puck — the look this move gives us into the braintrust’s thought process is pretty illuminating. These are two players who certainly will have to work to solidify their spots with the NHL squad, and so far they’re the two who the management and coaching staffs seem to want to see the most, and give the best chance to really make a run at that. It’s yet to be seen what they do with that opportunity as we go on here, but it’s a situation worth monitoring closely.
