The Flyers are pressing on with their run of home games this weekend, and after a rough loss to the Jets on Thursday, they’re hoping they can begin to right the ship in tonight’s matchup with another Central division team in the Wild.
Puck drop: 7:00 p.m.
How to watch/listen:
📺: NBCSP
📻: 97.5 The Fanatic
Pregame reading
- Last night was a big one for prospects in action around the world for the Flyers, and we had some pretty notable performances to highlight. First, Alex Bump was really popping off for the Phantoms in Cleveland. [BSH]
- Meanwhile, we had a Prospect Bowl unfolding as Michigan State and Boston University faced off, and MSU took the first win of the weekend. [BSH]
- Also, Egor Zamula is in the lineup tonight for the Flyers, but could his time with the team be winding down? [BSH]
Pregame watching
Projected lineups
Travis Konecny — Sean Couturier — Matvei Michkov
Tyson Foerster — Noah Cates — Bobby Brink
Trevor Zegras — Christian Dvorak — Owen Tippett
Nic Deslauriers — Rodrigo Abols — Garnet Hathaway
Cam York — Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler — Jamie Drysdale
Egor Zamula — Noah Juulsen
Dan Vladar
(Sam Ersson)
Kirill Kaprizov — Marco Rossi — Matt Boldy
Marcus Johansson — Joel Eriksson Ek — Vladimir Tarasenko
Marcus Foligno — Ryan Hartman — Yakov Trenin
Liam Ohgren — Danila Yurov — Vinnie Hinostroza
Jonas Brodin — Brock Faber
Jacob Middleton — Jared Spurgeon
Zeev Buium — David Jiricek
Jesper Wallstedt
(Filip Gustavson)
Storylines to watch
Lineup shuffling
While the changeup wasn’t as severe as the initial looks suggested — a little mixup in one of the morning skate drills had that very successful Cates line broken up and the lines looking like this — the Flyers will still see some changes made to their lineup ahead of tonight’s matchup with the Jets. That is, both Nikita Grebenkin and Jett Luchanko will come out up front as they look to inject a bit more of a veteran presence, and Nic Deslauriers and Rodrigo Abols will come in to replace them, while Egor Zamula will swap in for Adam Ginning on the Flyers’ third pair. And the fact that some shuffling was done ahead of this game doesn’t come as much of a surprise — after a showing as listless as we saw on Thursday against the Jets, something was going to have to give, and it’s easy to see why some fresh legs coming in while some of the youngsters (whose play collectively has dipped a bit of late) would be given the night off. Whether these changes will yield the results they’re hoping for, though, time will tell, but it’s worth trying something new, to be sure.
Michkov watch
While the Flyers didn’t see their offense popping in an overly meaningful way against Winnipeg, they did finally get a bit of offensive contribution from Matvei Michkov, as he scored for them their second goal of the game, and his both first goal and point of the season. It’s been a bit of a slow ramping up for him through this first week and change of the season, as he gets up to speed after an offseason of training that was slightly stilted by an ankle injury, and works to find his legs again and bring his overall level of impact up. That’s still a bit of an ongoing process, but the Flyers are still giving him some runway to figure it out, as he’ll skate again tonight on that top line with Travis Konecny and Sean Couturier, and we’re acknowledging that there are pieces of his game still working nicely together, even if the whole isn’t up to its top level just yet. All the same, there’s a real hope lingering that Thursday’s goal scored will serve as something of a dam breaking, and he’ll begin to take some more marked steps forward now that the frustration of having not scored yet is out of the way.
Keeping it clean
If there was one positive that came out of the loss to the Jets, though, it was some positive ground made up by the Flyers in the discipline department. That is, after somehow managing to take 10 penalty minutes in each of their first three games of the season (and getting their coaching staff worked up about how to set their lineup in a way which maximizes the number of penalty killers available to them on the back end), the Flyers were able to keep things largely quite disciplined against the Jets on Thursday, making it until just about halfway through the third period before taking a penalty, and stopping the bleeding there, keeping that one their only gaffe on the evening. It was good news for them then as they were facing a highly skilled power play from the Jets, and they’ll need to give it their all to keep that rolling tonight, as they’re facing an even more red-hot power play from the Wild — through five games, they’re sitting atop the league standings with a whopping 43.5 PP%. It’s a unit that’s proved very difficult to slow down, and the Flyers’ best hope here is that they can continue to stay out of the box. But we’ll see how that goes.
