After a run of a few games at home, the Flyers are breaking up their stretch of home games with a quick trip up north to face off with the Senators, and a few familiar faces in the process. They’ve picked up a nice bit of steam over these last couple of games, but the next challenge is ahead of them, as they look to keep that rolling on another team’s turf.
Puck drop: 7:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: NBCSP
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- Even with a bit of time lost to injury, Cam York is off to a pretty stellar start to the season. [BSH]
- Speaking of defensemen, we got some — reportedly — bad news on a couple of the Flyers’ injured blueliners this afternoon. [BSH]
Pregame watching
Projected lineups
Travis Konecny — Sean Couturier — Owen Tippett
Tyson Foerster — Noah Cates — Bobby Brink
Trevor Zegras — Christian Dvorak — Matvei Michkov
Nikita Grebenkin — Rodrigo Abols — Garnet Hathaway
Cam York — Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler — Jamie Drysdale
Egor Zamula — Noah Juulsen
Dan Vladar
(Sam Ersson)
Tim Stützle — Dylan Cozens — Drake Batherson
Michael Amadio — Shane Pinto — Claude Giroux
Nick Cousins — Ridly Greig — David Perron
Olle Lycksell — Lars Eller — Fabian Zetterlund
Jake Sanderson — Artem Zub
Thomas Chabot — Nick Jensen
Tyler Kleven — Nikolas Matinpalo
Linus Ulmark
(Leevi Merilainen)
Storylines to watch
Heat check
The Flyers’ last game against the Kraken on Monday sure was an exciting one, and it saw some meaningful scoring punches put together up and down their lineup. Travis Konecny picked up his first goal of the season, and a few others extended some nice runs — Tyson Foerster put up his second in four games, Noah Cates got his second in as many games, and Owen Tippett’s two goals brought him up to five in his last five. It was an impressive effort for all parties, and that more or less puts all of us around here on streak watch. Will any of these players be able to keep their hot streak rolling? Time will tell.
Momentum building
Monday saw a productive evening for a few players on an individual level, but it also saw the Flyers’ offense breaking open in the most meaningful way as it has all season. With five goals (none empty netters), the Flyers hit their highest offensive output of the season, and saw their offense looking as dynamic as we’ve seen all season. It was nice, after a bit of a slow start, to see things finally break open for them, but now that the dam has burst, as it were, the next challenge is going to be keeping that momentum going in the right direction. Maybe we don’t need to see five goals from them every single night, but it will still be important for them to come out for this one and show a bit of jump, and to maintain their scoring game to at least a moderate level.
The goaltending battle gets interesting
Speaking of bits of continuity, the Flyers will be continuing to ride the hot hand as far as their goaltending is concerned, going with Dan Vladar for the third game in a row. And it’s a choice that does make some sense — Vladar has been little short of excellent over his last two starts, looking very solid in his form, bailing out his skaters when he’s had to, and playing a major part in guiding the team to these two wins in a row. But this is a new challenge ahead here, as the Flyers will get a chance to see what Vladar can do when he’s being leaned on for the lion’s share of work. The hope is that he can maintain his form, but if he begins to slip a bit under the weight of the workload, they will have learned something, which is equally valuable in this early part of the season.
Lineup tweaks
On the whole, the Flyers haven’t really made any major changes to their lineup, as they’re beginning to find the right mix at the top of their forward group, and the defense group seems to be what it is at this point (with Adam Ginning seemingly out of the rotation), so the regular group is more or less set, with one notable exception. After a quite solid showing on Monday — indeed, one of his better games so far this season — Jett Luchanko has come out of the lineup, and Rodrigo Abols coming in in his stead. And, in some ways, this isn’t a huge surprise, as one imagines that they were going to want to get Abols back in for a game to keep him fresh eventually, but it’s hard not to wonder if it also signals Luchanko’s time with the Flyers, for the time being, coming to an end. With no signs that his usage is going to increase in the near future, that might just be where we’re headed, but if Abols has a strong showing tonight, it could well punch Luchanko’s ticket back to Guelph for him.
