We’re right back at it, folks! After an undoubtedly disappointing showing out in Hershey on Thursday night, the Flyers are back in town for their home preseason debut, and looking to right the ship in a big way. This is also the first game of a home-and-home series with the Bruins, which always has the potential to get a little chippy, so it will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Puck drop: 5:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: Flyers website, ESPN (out of market)
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- Training camp is generally pretty serious business, but Trevor Zegras seems to be having fun with it.
- Speaking of Zegras, there’s a budding connection between he and Matvei Michkov, but who could fill in that third spot on the line?
- And finally, could this be a historically big season for Porter Martone?
Pregame watching
Projected lineups
Philadelphia Flyers
Alex Bump – Sean Couturier – Travis Konecny
Christian Dvorak – Trevor Zegras – Matvei Michkov
Owen Tippett – Jett Luchanko – Nikita Grebenkin
Jacob Gaucher – Rodrigo Abols – Garnet Hathaway
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Adam Ginning – Jamie Drysdale
Nick Seeler – Helge Grans
Sam Ersson
(Carson Bjarnason)
Boston Bruins
No lines for the Bruins just yet, but here’s the lineup in the meantime:
Danton Bancroft
Johnny Beecher
Riley Duran
Michael Eyssimont
Brett Harrison
Mark Kastelic
Marat Khusnutdinov
Sean Kuraly
Georgii Merkulov
Riley Tufte
Jeffrey Viel
Pavel Zacha
Jonathan Aspirot
Frederic Brunet
Michael Callaghan
Jordan Harris
Henri Jokiharju
Hampus Lindholm
Mason Lohrei
Luke Cavallin
Michael DiPietro
Simon Zajicek
Storyline
Energy check
As we alluded to, Thursday’s showing was rough. The Flyers came out a little flat and never really seemed to find their footing, struggling to keep their urgency up and connect on even routine strings of passes, keeping their offensive game pretty well grounded. Rick Tocchet attributed this to fatigue from a busy schedule with a lot of day of game travel, and deemed it serious enough to keep the team off the ice entirely yesterday. The hope, now, is that this reset and bit of rest will be enough for the Flyers to come out looking like a much sharper team this time around. This lineup isn’t quite as loaded with bubble players as Thursday’s was, but there are still things that they need to accomplish here — a handful of prospects still looking to make an impression, as well as some NHL players needing reps to build up some chemistry with potential in-season linemates — and they can’t afford another game that ends up being a wash.
Roster imbalance
While the Flyers aren’t icing the full strength of their NHL roster this evening, they are bringing a group a little bit more loaded with NHL talent than what the Bruins have brought along with them. The Flyers were on the other side of this kind of situation last week up in Montreal, and it didn’t go great for them, but now they have the chance to take advantage of now having that advantage in roster strength. If there was ever a perfect chance to get things moving in the right direction again, and for some individual players who might need to boost their stock still to take a step forward. The door is open, but we’ll see how well they can tackle the opportunity.
Someone needs to pop
Speaking of players in need of a boost, Thursday’s game was an especially underwhelming one for a number of the Flyers’ bubble players. We won’t spend too much time piling on them, or harping on the direness of their situation, but we’ll just leave it here: each of Bump, Luchanko, Grebenkin, Ginning, and Grans had somewhat middling games last time out and haven’t made much in the way of positive progress towards grabbing an NHL job, but they’re all being given a chance tonight to right the ship and make the most of their, effectively, do over.
