The Flyers are back from their brief road trip and despite things not going as well for them as they might have hoped, they’re hoping their luck shifts for them in their home opener, and their second matchup against the Panthers in a week.
Puck drop: 7:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: NBCSP
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- The Flyers closed out their road trip down in Raleigh, and despite working with limited minutes in a tough loss, Nikita Grebenkin managed to stand out in his Flyers regular season debut. [BSH]
- Elsewhere in the pipeline, Devin Kaplan was a major standout for the Phantoms in his regular season debut with them. [BSH]
- Also, some news! Cam York isn’t ready to get back in for tonight’s game, but he has resumed skating, so that feels like good news. [BSH]
Pregame watching
Projected lineups
Konecny – Couturier – Michkov
Foerster – Cates – Brink
Dvorak – Zegras – Tippett
Grebenkin – Luchanko – Hathaway
Seeler – Sanheim
Ginning – Drysdale
Andrae – Juulsen
Vladar
(Ersson)
Verhaeghe – Bennett – Marchand
Luostarinen – Lundell – Reinhart
Samoskevich – Rodrigues – Boqvist
Greer – Kunin – Gadjovich
Forsling – Ekblad
Mikkola – Jones
Balinskis – Petry
Tarasov
(Bobrovsky)
Storylines to watch
Going better in the rematch?
Just four days ago, the Flyers kicked off their season on the road, and did it with a well enough fought but ultimately pretty gutting loss to the Panthers — and then, as we recall, followed that up with an even more devastating loss to the Hurricanes on Saturday — but they’ll be looking to right the ship and get a bit of revenge in tonight’s rematch. Your stomach for moral victories may vary at this point, but perhaps there is some encouragement to be found in the fact that the Flyers have been able to keep these first two games against very good teams close, and it seems only a matter of time before their luck shifts. And with a bit more skill in their lineup this time around, and hopefully a bit more stability brought in on the back end, perhaps tonight is the night that happens.
Emil Andrae’s back in the mix
We mentioned off the top that York seems at least relatively close to returning, having been well enough to take today’s morning skate, but he’s still not quite ready to ramp all the way back up to game speed. And with some of their depth defensemen looking a bit unsteady over these first two games — to say the least — the Flyers have decided to give Andrae a look back up with the big club to see if he can help improve things for them. He’s in a bit of a strange spot here — given the Flyers’ size preoccupations emerging through the preseason, one wonders if this stint is bound to remain a short one as he acts as a stopgap until York returns, or if he’ll be able to make a strong enough impression to stick a while longer. If nothing else, he’s coming in with some real momentum after a stellar showing in Saturday’s game with the Phantoms, and he’ll be looking to keep that going and make as good of an impression as he can, penciled in on that third pair, and we’ll see where it goes from there.
Can Nikita Grebenkin keep the ball rolling?
On a similar note, after quite a positive start in relatively limited usage in his Flyers debut on Saturday in Raleigh, Grebenkin bought himself another game to show that he deserves to be more of a regular in this lineup. He’s back in the lineup tonight and back on that third pair where he seemed to be building some nice chemistry with Luchanko and Hathaway. Now, with Deslauriers and Abols waiting in the wings, one imagines that the leash he has to work with here might not be the longest, but all the same, the ball is in his court, and if he continues to deliver in the same way he did in his debut, he can certainly stretch this run out.
