The Flyers are back in action tonight, looking to close out the back-to-back well and head into the final game of the roadtrip on Saturday on a high note. They’re riding high after a huge win over that budding rival Ducks team, but the next challenge will be to avoid any hangover from that win, as they head to Los Angeles to face off against the Kings.
Puck drop: 10:30 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: NBCSP
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- Owen Tippett’s been on a tear recently, and he’s making a strong case to stick around longer term with the Flyers, as they look to clear out some winger space in relatively near future. [BSH]
- David Jiricek’s gotten a handful of games in with the Phantoms now, and he’s been looking really good. [BSH]
- Another rumor mill rumbling: the Flyers may have come close to ending up with Patrik Laine at the trade deadline? [BSH]
Pregame watching
By the numbers
Philadelphia Flyers – 32-23-12 (5th in Metro)
Goals: Travis Konecny (24)
Assists: Travis Konecny (34)
Points: Travis Konecny (58)
Anaheim Ducks – 28-24-15 (5th in Pacific)
Goals: Adrian Kempe (26)
Assists: Andrian Kempe (32)
Points: Adrian Kempe (58)
Projected lineups
Nikita Grebenkin — Trevor Zegras — Owen Tippett
Alex Bump — Christian Dvorak — Travis Konecny
Denver Barkey — Noah Cates — Matvei Michkov
Carl Grundstrom — Sean Couturier — Luke Glendening
Travis Sanheim — Rasmus Ristolainen
Cam York — Jamie Drysdale
Emil Andrae — Nick Seeler
Sam Ersson
(Dan Vladar)
Artemi Panarin — Anze Kopitar — Mathieu Joseph
Trevor Moore — Quinton Byfield — Alex Laferriere
Alex Turcotte — Scott Laughton — Jared Wright
Jeff Malott — Samuel Helenius — Taylor Ward
Mikey Anderson — Drew Doughty
Joel Edmundson — Brandt Clarke
Brian Dumoulin — Cody Ceci
Darcy Kuemper
(Anton Forsberg)
Storylines to watch
Can Owen Tippett stay hot?
Last night saw Tippett getting on the board with one of the Flyers’ three goals scored on the night, bringing himself up to quite an impressive five points over his last six games. It’s been nice to see the production coming along for him, particularly as it’s seemed a good reward for the work he’s been putting in with his game across the board. He’s playing with a lot of pace and confidence right now, and he’s been getting a good volume of dangerous chances as a result, and that’s been a real boost to the whole of the team’s offense around him. Things are clicking well for him right now, and hopefully he can keep that going into another big game tonight.
A rest imbalance
Back-to-backs are a challenge, no matter how you slice it, but this matchup is going to be a particularly challenging one. The Flyers are coming off of a hard-fought overtime win just last night, which they surely expended quite a bit of energy securing, and on the other side in this one, they’ll be facing off against a Kings team that hasn’t played since Monday night. So they’re definitely finding themselves at a disadvantage as far as rest is concerned, but this is something they can overcome, so long as they’re committed to playing a focused game and limiting the number of mistakes made, that the Kings could take advantage of.
Keeping it rolling
We know that we’ve talked a lot around here about keeping positive momentum going once they have it, and maybe that’s been a little ad nauseam, but last night’s win is a particularly important one for the team to build on. After all, we might recall that the team’s big emotional win over the Ducks back in January was the high point of the month before they went on that terrible slide through the next few weeks heading into the Olympic break. It goes without saying that the Flyers need to work hard here to not let that happen again, and their first opportunity to show that they learned something from that whole experience is presenting itself tonight.
