The Flyers are pressing on with their run of home games, and after picking up a massive and thrilling win over the Penguins on Tuesday, they’ll be hoping to keep that momentum rolling right into tonight’s matchup with the visiting Predators.
Puck drop: 7:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: NBCSP
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- It’s been a busy day around here, and the game hasn’t even kicked off yet. As we know, Jett Luchanko was sent back to Guelph earlier this week, and he’s primed to get rolling for what should be a big final year of junior hockey. We’re digging into just what he needs to do in the rest of the season here, to put an exclamation point on his successful junior career. [BSH]
- Also, we have some news! On top of Emil Andrae being recalled from the Phantoms — he’ll be back in the lineup tonight, by the way — Aleksei Kolosov is joining him as a new addition, with Sam Ersson going on IR, set to miss around a week after tweaking something in practice. [BSH]
- And would you look at that, even more news! The Flyers made, effectively an AHL trade, sending Samu Tuomaala (who’s seemed to fall out of the mix for even a regular lineup spot with the Phantoms) to the Stars in exchange for defenseman Christian Kyrou. [BSH]
Pregame watching
Projected lineups
Owen Tippett – Sean Couturier – Travis Konecny
Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Christian Dvorak – Trevor Zegras – Matvei Michkov
Nic Deslauriers – Rodrigo Abols – Garnet Hathaway
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler – Jamie Drysdale
Emil Andrae – Noah Juulsen
Dan Vladar
(Aleksei Kolosov)
Filip Forsberg — Ryan O’Reilly — Matthew Wood
Steven Stamkos — Fedor Svechkov — Jonathan Marchessault
Michael Bunting — Erik Haula — Luke Evangelista
Cole Smith — Michael McCarron — Ozzy Weisblatt
Brady Skjei — Nick Perbix
Nicolas Hague — Nick Blackenburg
Spencer Stastny — Justin Barron
Juuse Saros
(Justus Annunen)
Storylines to watch
Avoiding a hangover game
Tuesday’s matchup with the Penguins was… a lot. The regulation portion was already tightly played, but when you add onto the fact the excitement of two overtime goals scored and subsequently disallowed, then the tempers well and truly boiling over at the end of that period to the point of fights and ejections, before the Flyers ultimately pulled off the win in the shootout. It certainly made for an exciting watch, but it does make us wonder if the Flyers might be staring down something of a hangover from expending all of that energy in that single game. The Predators aren’t coming into this one with the same momentum that the Penguins had, but it’s going to be important for the Flyers to avoid looking past them to this weekend’s back-to-back, and come into this one with a high enough level of focus. They don’t need to go crazy in this one too, but they have to make sure they at least show up.
Vladar time again
With a busy week on deck here for the Flyers, it’s not a huge surprise that they would go back to Dan Vladar for this next start tonight, keeping the rotation more or less rolling. He’s been playing very well through the beginning of the season here, so we can come into this with a reasonably high level of faith that he’ll again be able to deliver a big performances when he’s called upon. The more surprising wrinkle in all of this, like we mentioned off the top, he isn’t going to have Ersson backing him up in this one, but rather Kolosov while Ersson’s out. So this, if nothing else, raises the stakes a bit — while he was off to a good start to the season with the Phantoms, Kolosov’s play has slipped a little bit over the last couple of games, and he’s coming off a start last night in Laval, so the big hope here is that Vladar can keep things together well enough that he can avoid shifting the spotlight to Kolosov in this one, so to speak.
Defense depth shuffle
Elsewhere in the lineup, there’s been a little bit more shuffling, as Andrae comes in on the third pair, while Zamula gets shuffled up to the press box. Andrae’s coming into this one with a good bit of momentum behind him, playing some really good hockey in heavy usage down with the Phantoms, and while it was a bit of an uphill battle for him to get games with the Flyers in the preseason, after one good showing for them in a quick recall stint earlier in the month, the Flyers are leaving the door well open for him to earn himself some more games if he’s able to put together a strong showing tonight. It’s been a rough going for the third pair recently, so it’s not exactly a high bar to clear to really impress, but all the same, he remains the master of his own fate here, to a certain degree. We’ll see what he’s able to do with this opportunity.
