The Philadelphia Flyers have been causing problems for better teams lately and they will get the chance to do that again against the Nashville Predators tonight.
Flyers vs. Predators
When: 12:30 p.m. ET
Where: Wells Fargo Center
TV: NBCSP, BSSO
Radio: 97.5 The Fanatic
This team forced the Minnesota Wild to earn their two points in overtime, then somehow shutout the Winnipeg Jets, and just last game earned a 2-1 shootout win over the Edmonton Oilers. These are teams that should technically be handedly beating this roster but they simply are not. The Flyers are just being pesky as hell right now.
Poking playoff teams in an annoying sibling-esque way can only go so far before they eventually regress to losing a whole lot of games in a row. Luckily, the Predators are currently slightly suffering. After winning three consecutive games before the All-Star break, they lost badly to the Vegas Golden Knights by a score of 5-1 and the distance between them and the final Wild Card spot is growing.
Well, let’s hope that the Flyers can at least poke ‘em around.
Projected Flyers lineup
Kevin Hayes — Scott Laughton — Owen Tippett
James van Riemsdyk — Noah Cates — Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee — Morgan Frost — Wade Allison
Nic Deslauriers — Patrick Brown — Kieffer Bellows?
Ivan Provorov — Cam York
Travis Sanheim — Rasmus Ristolainen
Nick Seeler — Tony DeAngelo
Carter Hart is most likely starting, obviously.
Where the Flyers might have the advantage over the Preds is depth — I’m not joking. Even looking at the third line of Farabee, Frost, and Allison, that is some real scoring potential that will see some weak defense players from Nashville’s roster.
Projected Predators lineup
Filip Forsberg — Cody Glass — Matt Duchene
Nino Niederreiter — Ryan Johansen — Mikael Granlund
Cole Smith — Juuse Parssinen — Colton Sissons
Yakov Trenin — Thomas Novak — Tanner Jeannot
Ryan McDonagh — Roman Josi
Mattias Ekholm — Jeremy Lauzon
Kevin Gravel — Dante Fabbro
Juuse Saros is most likely starting for the Preds in Philadelphia.
As we were saying, the Predators are really dressing a face-puncher Cole Smith on the third line with some dude that they probably signed just because he has the same first name as their starting goaltender. Weird!
On the blue line, Nashville has the obvious advantage, so maybe that makes up for the lack of depth. Who knows. Just some big question marks that will possibly get answered in the first 10 minutes of this afternoon delight.
