Preview: Flyers face a hot Coyotes team in the desert

The Game: 9:00 p.m. EST on NBCSports Philadelphia, ESPN+/Hulu, and 93.3 WMMR

The Flyers, coming off a very satisfying home-and-home sweep of their intrastate rivals, are in Arizona tonight where they will take on the Arizona Coyotes for the first time this season.

The Flyers are playing well—and doing so deeper into the season than many would have expected. They’re sitting at 13-10-2 and have received good play from players up and down the lineup. Their opponents are similarly playing above their expectations so far this season at 13-9-2. Arizona has won their last 5 games, including a recent 6-0 rout of the Washington Capitals.

This is the first game of a mini-road trip for the Flyers, as they’ll swing through Denver and Nashville in the coming week for some late start times.

Players to watch

Sean Couturier We (us and Sean) can’t believe you forgot about him! You know how he’s barely played any hockey over the last two seasons and is now on the other side of 30 and you completely forgot about him and how good he is at hockey and wondered whether he’d still be good at hockey? Well, I am delighted to report that he is still good at hockey. Centering a top line this season, Couturier has 17 points in 23 games this season, including the overtime winner in the Flyers’ most recent win over the Penguins .

Rasmus Ristolainen Ristolainen missed much of the early parts of the season with injury and has now clocked 5 games in the 2023-24 season. That’s enough time to settle in and get back up to game speed, so we’ll be watching out how Risto plays moving forward, especially after Eliotte Friedman gave him a shoutout as a potential trade target of the Toronto Maple Leafs in his most recent “32 Thoughts” column .

Michael Carcone I’ve never heard of this guy before today, but he’s a 27-year-old who only had 30 NHL games played before this year and has already scored 12 goals this year. He is leading the league in shooting percentage with a whopping 35.4 percent. At the very least, I’m going to be watching to learn how to pronounce his last name.

Projected lineups

Philadelphia Flyers

Cam Atkinson – Sean Couturier – Tyson Foerster Travis Konecny – Morgan Frost – Owen Tippett Joel Farabee – Ryan Poehling – Bobby Brink Nic Deslauriers – Scott Laughton – Garnet Hathaway

Cam York – Travis Sanheim Nick Seeler – Sean Walker Egor Zamula – Rasmus Ristolainen

Carter Hart Sam Ersson

Arizona Coyotes

Clayton Keller—Logan Cooley—Nick Schmaltz Matias Maccelli—Nick Bjugstad—Lawson Crouse Michael Carcone—Alexander Kerfoot—Jason Zucker Milos Kelemen—Liam O\'Brien—Juuso Valimaki

J.J. Moser—Sean Durzi* Josh Brown—Mathew Dumba Troy Stecher—Michael Kesselring

Connor Ingram Karel Vejmelka

* It looks like Durzi is listed as day-to-day as of this afternoon, but unknown yet who the Coyotes will slot in if he does in fact not play

Gameday tunes

Did you guys know that Michelle Branch is from Arizona? Do you guys even remember Michelle Branch?

https://open.spotify.com/track/1u0l8zWpQeMYStFkc2mLD7?si=9d2fd0e1d8c2409d

Talking Points