After a tough end to the Flyers’ run of home games over the last week with two pretty brutal losses to the Lightning, the Flyers will be looking for something of a reset as they head out on the road for a quick back-to-back before heading back home on Saturday. Of course, it’s not going to be an easy task for them, as they’re set to face off against a red-hot Sabres team this evening, but here’s hoping that with a few more pieces looking like they could be back in the lineup for them tonight, that they can get things moving in the right direction again.
Puck drop: 7:30 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: TNT
📻: 93.3 WMMR
Pregame reading
- Things have not been going great for the Flyers lately, and they’re looking around for answers, so you know what that means: lines in a blender, baby! [BSH]
- Especially notable in all of that is Denver Barkey set to be a healthy scratch tonight. It feels like a bit of a surprise, in some ways, but maybe a bit of a reset can do him some good. [BSH]
Pregame watching
By the numbers
Philadelphia Flyers – 22-14-8 (4th in Metro)
Goals: Trevor Zegras (17)
Assists: Trevor Zegras/Travis Konecny (24)
Points: Trevor Zegras (41)
Buffalo Sabres – 27-13-3 (6th in Atlantic)
Goals: Tage Thompson (22)
Assists: Rasmus Dahlin (26)
Points: Tage Thompson (42)
Projected lineups
Trevor Zegras — Christian Dvorak — Travis Konecny
Matvei Michkov — Sean Couturier — Carl Grundstrom
Nikita Grebenkin — Noah Cates — Owen Tippett
Nic Deslauriers — Rodrigo Abols — Garnet Hathaway
Travis Sanheim — Rasmus Ristolainen
Cam York — Jamie Drysdale
Nick Seeler — Emil Andrae
Dan Vladar
(Sam Ersson)
Zach Benson — Tage Thompson — Alex Tuch
Jason Zucker — Ryan McLeod — Jack Quinn
Noah Ostlund — Josh Norris — Josh Doan
Jordan Greenway — Peyton Krebs — Beck Malenstyn
Mattias Samuelsson — Rasmus Dahlin
Bowen Byram — Owen Power
Jacob Bryson — Zach Metsa
Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen
(Colten Ellis)
Storylines to watch
Reinforcements on the way?
While the Flyers having been rolling with a bit of a depleted roster over the last week, they’re slowly working themselves back towards full health again. They got Travis Konecny back already on Monday, and while it looks like Bobby Brink’s absence will be stretching on a little longer, they’re getting Jamie Drysdale back tonight, as he was activated from IR this afternoon. And while the Flyers will also be trying out some new looks in their defensive pairs this evening to see if that will move the needle for them, getting Drysdale back in the mix will be a huge boost for a defense group which has really been looking somewhat fragilely balanced without him.
Stopping the bleeding
With the heartbreaker of an overtime loss to the Leafs last Thursday spilling into two blowout losses to the Lightning to close out the homestand, this has been a pretty rough week for the Flyers. It’s been a pretty complete systems failure for them, with no position or special teams unit really living up to their full potential at the moment, and while we’re not asking for or expecting that they can snap their fingers and everything can be fixed at once, something has to give if they want to find a way to get themselves in the win column. It’s a bit of a cliche at this point, but it remains a valid point, that if the team can’t be delivering their A-game at the moment, they should at least be working towards their B-game.
All of this is just to say that, with how sideways things have gone, incremental improvements will be the name of the game towards getting things back on track, and we’ll see if they can make any progress in that regard tonight.
Back to Vladar
There’s little surprise here, but the Flyers will be going back to Dan Vladar for the start tonight. His showing against the Lightning in his last start on Monday wasn’t his best, but he’s shown himself to be the more dependable option for the Flyers up to this point in the season, and the team is both giving him an immediate opportunity to bounce back and right the ship quickly and equally needing him as their best option to help, on a more collective level, dig themselves out of this hole that they’ve slipped into. Now, the good news is that Vladar has done very well so far this season to rebound from any less than optimal showings and get back on track quickly, and it’s going to be critical to any success that they hope to find tonight that he can make this yet another example of that.
Standings watch
Before we close this thing out, it’s worth noting that, while they were making some really positive upward progress for a bit, with the losing streak that they’ve found themselves on, the Flyers have slipped out of a playoff spot entirely. As it stands, they’re right on the outside looking in on the final wildcard spot, tied with the Sabres and Penguins (who they play tomorrow night) with 52 points. This, then, marks a critical stretch for them. The door is certainly still wide open for them to gain back the ground that they’ve lost — there are only three points between them and second place in the Metro — but ground can continue to be lost just as quickly, and this is something that the Flyers will all but surely be attended to as they head into this back-to-back.
