The Game: 7:00 p.m. EST on NBCSports Philadelphia, ESPN+, and 93.3 WMMR
You might not have heard since the main takeaway from Tuesday night’s game seemed to be the Sean Couturier healthy scratch and any resulting fallout, but the Flyers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs this week. Every game matters at this point and the Flyers travel to Raleigh to face the Hurricanes in the middle of a very tough stretch of games—Toronto, Boston, Toronto, Carolina, Boston, Florida, New York Rangers.
The Hurricanes have been one of the very best teams in the league this year and have only gotten better with the addition of Jake Guentzel at the trade deadline. They’ve won four in a row and seven of their last eight. They’re sitting pretty at second in the Metro with eyes on first, just two points behind the Rangers. They are fifth in the NHL in goals scored and just second in goals allowed.
For the Flyers, this is an important one, as they all are with just 13 left. Torts and the boys are in a playoff position but are far from safe, with their 78 points just a handful in front of the Capitals and the Islanders, plus the Lightning and Red Wings to deal with if they fall out of position and into the Wild Card race. There’s a decent gap between them and most of the teams ahead of them in many playoff prediction models, including MoneyPuck (87% as of this writing) and Dom Luszczyszyn at The Athletic (70%). We’re at the point of the season where the only thing that matters is the remaining 13 games; a playoff team gets to play in the playoffs.
These two teams have faced off three times so far this year, with two wins by Carolina and one for Philly, though they have not met since November. They Flyers are 24-16-7 since that 4-1 loss on November 28, while the Hurricanes have gone 30-12-6.
Players to Watch
Travis Sanheim, Cam York, and the rest of the Philly PK
While the Flyers penalty kill has been one of their surprise strengths this season, they’ve struggled somewhat in the last five games (Tyson Foerster’s shorthanded goal against the Leafs notwithstanding). In almost 29 minutes of shorthanded ice time over these games, the Flyers have been scored on 7 times. Sanheim is the ice-time leader and the anchor for this unit and if the Flyers are going to hold on to one of their biggest advantages, it’s going to be on his shoulders to do it.
Andrei Svechnikov
One of the big knocks on the Hurricanes, especially after their offense went cold in the conference finals against Florida last year, was a lack of goal-scorers. It’s part of the reason that they went and got Jake Guentzel. That combined with the fact that he’s only played around half of this season can make it easy to forget about Andrei Svechnikov, one of the more talented offensive players in the league who has scored at around a 30-goal pace every year of his career. The 23-year-old Russian winger has 15 points in his last 16 games and is closing in on another near-point-per-game season.
Bobby Brink
Young Robert has gone pointless in his last five games since re-arriving in the NHL with a bang (aka goals in back-to-back contests). If the Flyers are going to succeed down the stretch, they’re going to need to be getting some offense from places that they weren’t before, with Brink being in prime position to fill that role.
Projected Lineups
Tyson Foerster – Ryan Poehling — Garnet Hathaway
Owen Tippett – Morgan Frost – Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee – Scott Laughton – Bobby Brink
Nic Deslauriers – Noah Cates – Olle Lycksell
Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Adam Ginning – Ronnie Attard
Egor Zamula – Erik Johnson
Sam Ersson
(Felix Sandström)
Carolina Hurricanes
Jake Guentzel — Sebastian Aho — Seth Jarvis
Andrei Svechnikov — Evgeny Kuznetsov — Martin Necas
Jordan Martinook — Jordan Staal — Jesper Fast
Brendan Lemieux — Jesperi Kotkaniemi — Stefan Noesen
Jaccob Slavin — Brent Burns
Brady Skjei — Brett Pesce
Dmitry Orlov — Jalen Chatfield
Frederik Andersen
(Pyotr Kochetkov)
Game Day Tunes
In anticipation for precipitation:
