Well friends, here we are. The first preseason game of the 2025-26 season. It’s a big season for your Philadelphia Flyers and tonight’s game up in Long Island present a great opportunity to kick things off on the right foot. Even if the games aren’t real and the points don’t matter.
Puck drop: 7:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: Flyers website
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- Previewing the Flyers’ young defense heading into the start of the season.
- Speaking of young players, the BSH Prospect Report is back!
Pregame watching
Preseason Game 1 Rosters
Philadelphia Flyers
FORWARDS
12 – Devin Kaplan(LW)
18 – Rodrigo Abols (C)
19 – Garnet Hathaway (RW)
25 – Lane Pederson (C)
27 – Noah Cates (C)
29 – Nikita Grebenkin (LW)
39 – Matvei Michkov(RW)
46 – Trevor Zegras (C)
52 – Denver Barkey (C)
56 – Samu Tuomaala(RW)
68 – Sawyer Bolton (RW)
73 – Jack Nesbitt (C)
92 – Alexis Gendron (RW)
DEFENSEMEN
5 – Egor Zamula
9 – Jamie Drysdale
13 – Adam Ginning
36 – Emil Andrae
42 – Spencer Gill
47 – Noah Juulsen
GOALTENDERS
35 – Aleksei Kolosov
64 – Carson Bjarnason
New York Islanders
FORWARDS
13 – Mat Barzal
14 – Bo Horvat
20 – Matthew Highmore
21 – Kyle Palmieri
27 – Anders Lee
29 – Jonathan Drouin
45 – Alex Jeffries
49 – Max Shabanov
67 – Gleb Veremyev
78 – Tomas Poletin
81 – Hunter Drew
82 – Luca Romano
DEFENSEMEN
4 – Cole McWard
24 – Scott Mayfield
37 – Kashawn Aitcheson
41 – Marshall Warren
48 – Matthew Schaefer
77 – Tony DeAngelo
GOALTENDERS
33 – David Rittich
75 – Parker Gahagen
Storylines to watch
Big night of firsts
While it is just a preseason game, this will be our first look at Trevor Zegras officially on the ice as a Philadelphia Flyer. He’s not the only one, though. We’ll also see this year’s 12th overall pick, Jack Nesbitt. Nesbitt is generally seen as a bit of a long-term project, so getting a look at him against some (almost) real NHL competition will be interesting. Zegras is the big draw, though, as tonight kicks off what we all hope will be the beginning of a big-time resurgence — both for the player and for the team as a whole.
Koly redemption tour?
We don’t know about you but around here, Aleksei Kolosov became a living, breathing embodiment of the “I’ve had enough of this guy” meme; to say his play didn’t live up to his ego would be the understatement of the century. But, if we’re being professional and ignoring our biases, we’ll note that Kolosov is still very young, especially for a goaltender, and the physical tools do exist within him. Will he find a way to turn things around this year? Who can say, but tonight would be a good night to set the tone for the season by not being the literal worst goaltender in the league.
Battles on defense begin
While the early play of guys like Jamie Drysdale and Cam York will be important to pay attention to in these preseason games, it’s the battle for the open spots on the Flyers’ defense that we’ll be watching. Tonight we’ve got three guys likely fighting for one of those spots in Egor Zamula, Emil Andrae, and Noah Juulsen. It would be easy to assume that Zamula is a lock for one of the six slots, but we’re not too sure. If Emil Andrae can find the game we saw from him during his first stint with the Flyers, he might make things tough for Rick Tocchet. And then you’ve got Juulsen, the kind of guy you’d expect to be the 7th man on depth chart, or even an AHL call-up option, but he’s a vet with a lot of games under his belt and we all know NHL head coaches love nothing more than a reliably mediocre defenseman who will do what he’s told and never take any risky chances. If Juulsen looks good in these preseason games, maybe we see a little more of him than we expected. It’ll take a few of these preseason games before we have any idea how this will shake out, but it’s definitely one of the more interesting storylines to pay attention to.
