What the Flyers can learn from their regular season series vs. Hurricanes

The Flyers closed out their opening round series against the Penguins on Wednesday night, and after a couple of days to rest and regroup, they\'re right back at it again in short order, set to kick off their next series against the Hurricanes in Raleigh on Saturday night.

The Flyers are ready to turn the page and move on to this next big challenge, but in the past of their regular season series, there are some lessons that the Flyers can take with them, some pieces that could illuminate how this series might play out for them.

The Basics

Game Goals For Goals Against Shots For Shots Against Result 10/11 @ CAR 3 4 23 39 OT Loss 12/13 vs. CAR 3 4 18 21 SO Loss 12/14 @ CAR 2 3 26 32 SO Loss 4/13 vs. CAR 3 2 23 26 SO Win

Looking back at the regular season series, we might recall, it was a wild one. These two teams met in just the second game of the season for the Flyers, in the first of what would be four tightly played games (at least on the scoresheet), and that one was a real heartbreaker -- the Flyers thought they had scored the game winner in overtime, but the goal was called back due to a bit of contact being made with Frederik Andersen on the play, and then the Hurricanes were able to turn it around and score on their next shift to win it.

It was a brutal way to begin the series for the Flyers, but the closeness of that game from start to finish did set the tone for their next three meetings in a big way. Though these games were at times lopsided in terms of chances created, the Flyers\' goaltenders did well to keep these games as close as could be, helping them to salvage at least a point in each of those matchups.

More to those goaltenders, on the Flyers\' side, the season series saw an even split in usage between their starters, as Sam Ersson got starts in those first two games, and Dan Vladar in the second pair, so he\'ll have a bit more fresh of experience with those Hurricanes shooters (even if some of their top players were being rested last time around). But as far as the goaltending is concerned, the more interesting wrinkle comes in the fact that Andersen only played in one of the four games in the regular season series against the Flyers, and the last time he saw them, more than six months ago, their skaters were lining up like this:

Travis Konecny -- Sean Couturier -- Matvei Michkov Christian Dvorak -- Trevor Zegras -- Owen Tippett Tyson Foerster -- Noah Cates -- Bobby Brink Nikita Grebenkin -- Jett Luchanko -- Garnet Hathaway

Nick Seeler -- Travis Sanheim Adam Ginning -- Jamie Drysdale Egor Zamula -- Noah Juulsen

Now, with the Hurricanes having clinched their spot in the second round all the way back last Saturday, they\'ve had plenty of time to go through the tape, and Andersen will have gotten plenty of things to look at in these skaters\' tendencies, but watching the film and facing these shooters in game settings are very different, and that could well be an under the radar element working in their favor.

By The Numbers

Team GF% GF%Rel SF% SF%Rel CF% CF%Rel xGF% xGF%Rel PHI 42.86 -9.08 42.86 -7.12 34.71 -13.02 44.46 -6.25 CAR 57.14 +3.65 57.14 -0.52 65.29 +5.51 55.54 -0.35

To have said earlier that these games were a bit lopsided in the way of offense generated may have been a bit of an understatement. The Hurricanes\' game plan is well documented by now -- they\'re a volume offense team, and their aggressive, uptempo approach makes them difficult to slow down. The Flyers were reasonably well able to keep their scoring game from completely exploding through those four meetings, but it certainly wasn\'t for lack of trying on the Hurricanes\' part.

At 5-on-5, the Hurricanes dominated the matchups in each of the major on-ice metrics. Not only did they get the better of the scoring, but they got the better of those underlying chances as well -- taking a reasonably comfortable edge in both shots on goal and dangerous chances, and absolutely running away with the share of overall chances generated. Notably, the Flyers did limit the Hurricanes to a bit less in the way of shots and Expected Goals in their matchups than they averaged on the season, but it\'s a small victory, all things considered.

On the flip side, the Flyers really struggled in this matchup to generate much in the way of offense for themselves. We\'ve spent a lot of time around here grousing about their abundance of low-shot games, but the Hurricanes held them to even staggeringly less of the offensive share than they were able to create on average over the course of the season as a whole. In significant portions of those previous matchups, the Hurricanes just managed the puck better, and used that control to spend more time possessing, and more dangerously, cycling, and the Flyers were forced to spend more of their own time defending.

The Big Picture

So, is there any hope for the Flyers?

Well, maybe!

There\'s no doubt that this series is going to be a much bigger challenge for them. The Hurricanes are clearly a team with a strength for generating a lot of offense, and they feasted throughout the regular season series against a Flyers team that struggled to slow them down completely. That said, the Flyers\' consistent ability to keep those games close opens up a lot of possibilities for them -- finding that next gear to actually pull away with a win is no easy task, but their ability to always at least hang around in these games has left them in just about as good of a position as possible to do that.

What\'s more, for as solid as he was in their series against the Senators, Andersen remains something of a vulnerable goaltender -- his regular season performance was more modest, with a career-low .874 save percentage, and a 3.05 goals against average. So long as they\'re able to settle their game down a bit, to bear down and reimplement their commitment to creating dangerous chances, Andersen\'s history suggests that the door will be open for them to get shots past him.

Their game plan will need to be different this time around -- it\'s hard to imagine the crashing and banging getting under the skin of the Hurricanes as much as it did the Penguins, and Rick Tocchet was acknowledging as soon as Game 6 wrapped that the Flyers were going to need to take a big step forward towards playing more of a possession game against the Hurricanes. The blueprint is there for them, and we\'ve seen them execute on this style in flashes down the stretch and into the postseason, but the biggest test of their resolve undoubtedly lies ahead.

All stats via Natural Stat Trick.

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