Well, the win streak had a good run–there’s no shame losing to the reigning Stanley Cup Champions in a rollicking, high-scoring game. There were more positives (Owen Tippett scoring twice, Tyson Foerster with a goal) than negatives (boneheaded penalties galore!), but a loss is a loss. Tonight, the Flyers head to Boston to play the first half of back-to-back, and the Bruins are…in a weird place, to say the least.
The last time the Flyers faced the Bruins, they got shut out at home. A few days before that, the Flyers shut out the Bruins at home. In the month since, the Bruins fired Jim Montgomery (who was immediately hired by the St. Louis Blues) and promoted Joe Sacco to the head coaching position. Boston’s also back to using Jeremy Swayman as their starter, with mixed results–he did miss the entirety of camp and preseason due to contract disputes, after all, and is only now getting his mojo back. Going into today’s match, the Bruins sit at third in the Atlantic Division and are riding a three-game win streak; the caveat is that they’ve played a couple more games than the teams behind them: two more than the Buffalo Sabres and four more than the Tampa Bay Lightning. By points percentage, the Bruins are clinging to a wildcard spot.
Meanwhile, the Flyers are tied with the New York Rangers in points and, by points percentage, just outside the playoff bubble. The playoffs aren’t the goal this year, of course, but the Flyers of the past month have looked more like the team that just missed last season: young players stepping up, like in the Panthers game from Thursday. There’s good news on the injury front, too: Sam Ersson and Jamie Drysdale are officially day-to-day, and Nic Deslauriers’s been placed on Injured Reserve backdated to November 9. Deslauriers moving to IR is important, because it means the Flyers can activate both Ersson and Drysdale without needing to clear a roster spot. So long as players keep getting injured, the Flyers can keep kicking major roster decisions down the road.
Storylines to Watch
Sam Ersson’s back??
After the goaltending debacle in the Panthers game (neither Aleksei Kolosov nor Ivan Fedotov came out of that one looking competent), it’s clear the Flyers need their No. 1 goalie back in the crease. He’s missed almost a full month now (his last game was November 11 over the San Jose Sharks), so there’s a chance his first start will be rusty. Either way, the Flyers will need to insulate their goaltender as he gets back to NHL action.
The Youths
A lot of the Flyers’ good work this season has been on the backs of veterans Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim–both are having outstanding seasons but, if this rebuild’s going to work, the younger players need to step up when it counts. We saw that from three forwards against Florida: Owen Tippett with two goals, Tyson Foerster with a greasy tap in tally, and Matvei Michkov with a ho-hum three-assist night. It’s been a sloppy start for TyFo and Tippett, but Foerster’s riding a three-game point streak and Tippett has points in back-to-back games; they need to keep this momentum going.
Joel Farabee, meanwhile, is snakebitten as all get out but, aside from a dumb retaliatory penalty on Thursday, has been playing well–he just needs to score. Bobby Brink, too, needs to get it together; he got an earful from Torts on the bench in the loss to the Panthers (probably for that interference penalty) and, given his already tenuous grip on a roster spot, needs to stay disciplined.
Do the Bruins still have “it?”
This has been the million dollar question dogging Boston all season. They bungled their goalie situation and went into the season with bad vibes as a result, the Elias Lindholm and Nikita Zadorov contracts were awful the moment they were signed, Brad Marchand looks a step behind (he’s even cropped up in trade rumors), Charlie McAvoy is not playing to his standards, and David Pastrnak hasn’t looked like Pasta for parts of the season. The Bruins are an aging, overpaid roster with a center problem nearly as dire as the Flyers’, and Montgomery’s firing came as a result of management trying to cover their own asses for fumbling free agency and jerking around their star goalie who needed a contract. Without the Swayman-Ullmark tandem in net, a lot of this roster’s problems have become too glaring to ignore; the playoffs are the expectation for Boston, but it’s up in the air if they have what it takes to even get there, let alone do anything in round one.
Projected Lineups
Philadelphia Flyers
Joel Farabee – Sean Couturier – Travis Konecny
Owen Tippett – Morgan Frost – Matvei Michkov
Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Scott Laughton – Ryan Poehling – Garnet Hathaway
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Emil Andrae – Rasmus Ristolainen
Egor Zamula – Nick Seeler
Sam Ersson
(Ivan Fedotov)
Boston Bruins
Brad Marchand – Elias Lindholm – David Pastrnak
Morgan Geekie – Pavel Zacha – Justin Brazeau
Trent Frederic – Charlie Coyle – Mark Kastelic
Cole Koepke – John Beecher – Marc McLaughlin
Jordan Oesterle – Charlie McAvoy
Nikita Zadorov – Brandon Carlo
Mason Lohrei – Andrew Peeke
Jeremy Swayman
(Joonas Korpisalo)
Gameday Tunes
We’re a week into December, but an 18-minute rock odyssey classic from The Decemberists seems appropriate. This still rips 20 years on.
Stats courtesy Hockey Reference
