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UPDATE 6:00 PM EDT
On a weekly basis, I plan to host Flyers Buzz Podcasts here on HockeyBuzz. In this week's debut episode, I take a look at the first week of the Craig Berube era, preview tonight's game against Detroit and update you on three top Flyers prospects.
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UPDATE 12:15 PM EDT
The Flyers have recalled Michael Raffl and Tye McGinn from the Phantoms.
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GAME PREVIEW: FLYERS @ RED WINGS(12:45 AM, EDT)
Playing the back end of games on consecutive nights, the Philadelphia Flyers (1-4-0) head to the Motor City to take on the Detroit Red Wings (2-2-0). Game time is 7 p.m. eastern. The game will be televised locally on CSN Philly.
With Detroit moving from the Western to Eastern Conference this season, Saturday's game marks the first of three meetings between the teams this season. The next will take place in Detroit on Dec. 4. The lone meeting of the season in Philly will take place on Jan. 28.
Joe Louis Arena has been a very inhospitable place for the Flyers in the last few decades. Excluding the two games in Detroit during the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals, the Flyers are 1-15-2-0 in their last 18 road games against the Wings (1-17-2-0 if you count the 1997 Stanley Cup Finals). Back on January 2, 2011, the Flyers took a 3-2 decision in Detroit, snapping a losing streak that dated back to Nov. 4, 1988.
Flyers Outlook
The Flyers did not play badly overall against the Phoenix Coyotes in a 2-1 loss on Friday night but their inability to put the puck in the net continued. The six goals the Flyers have scored thus far is the fewest in franchise history through the first five games of a season.
Philadelphia lost forwards Scott Hartnell (upper-body injury) and Vincent Lecavalier (lower-body injury) in the game against the Coyotes. Per Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren, both players are expected to miss at least a week of action.
On Friday, Steve Mason had another strong outing in net for the Flyers. With games on back-to-back nights, Ray Emery is likely to get his second start of the season in Saturday's game.
Emery played better than the stat line from his first start of the season (four goals allowed on 30 shots in a 4-1 loss to Montreal) would indicate. The Flyers were thoroughly outplayed in that game, and Emery kept the team close for two periods before the Habs broke through to turn a 1-0 lead into a three-goal cushion. He had little to no chance on three of the four goals he allowed in that game.
As of this writing, no call-ups from Adirondack have officially been announced but the Flyers are certain to call up at least one and possibly two players from the Phantoms. It is a solid bet that Michael Raffl (who had a goal and assist on Friday and has three points in his first two AHL games) will be a callup.
If there is a second callup along with Raffl, the possibilities include Tye McGinn, Jason Akeson or Ben Holmstrom. The Flyers could also simply dress Kris Newbury and Raffl, carrying the minimum 12 forwards for Saturday's game.
Philadelphia is 0 for its last 11 on the power play over the last three games. They went 0-for-2 against Carolina, 0-for-5 against Florida including a failed five-minute 5-on-4 manpower advantage, and 0-for-4 against Phoenix. Overall, Philly has slipped to 2-for-23 (8.7 percent, 28th in the NHL) through the first five matches.
Flyers captain Claude Giroux is still looking for his first point of the 2013-14 season, and has been forcing the play. Jakub Voracek has just one point -- an assist -- through the first five matches. The team's scoring malaise has been a club-wide problem thus far, but these two players in particular are the ones the team relies upon to backbone the offense.
The Flyers penalty kill has generally been a strength this season and went 5-for-6 against Phoenix, bringing the season total to date to 22-for-26 (84.6 percent, tied for 10th in the NHL). However, what's hidden within those totals is the fact that the Flyers enter Saturday's game as the most penalized team in the NHL. The late second-period Oliver Ekman-Larsson goal that proved to be the game-winner for the Coyotes was a power play goal scored 13 seconds after Zac Rinaldo took a terrible high-sticking penalty.
Red Wings Outlook
After opening the regular season with back-to-back wins, the Red Wings have lost two in a row in rather ugly fashion. Last Saturday, the Red Wings got clipped, 4-1, in Boston. On Thursday, Detroit sustained a 4-2 home loss to Phoenix.
Red Wings coach Mike Babcock was not a happy man with his team's performance in Thursday's game. He chastised his club for getting outworked by Dave Tippett's Coyotes. The line of Stephen Weiss, Daniel Alfredsson and Johan Franzén had an especially brutal night against the Coyotes.
Joakim Andersson and Jonathan Ericsson tallied for the Wings in Thursday's loss. Jimmy Howard stopped 34 of 37 shots -- the final Phoenix goal was an empty netter -- in a losing cause.
The Red Wings' 0-for-2 on the power play against the Coyotes reflected dual problems for the team to date -- they are not drawing enough penalties on the opposition (just 10 to date; among the bottom five in the NHL) and they are the only team in the NHL that has yet to score a power play goal thus far in the season. On the PK, the Red Wings are 8-for-10 thus far, including 2-for-2 last game.
Henrik Zetterberg leads the Red Wings in scoring to date with three points (two goals, one assist) but was held off the scoreboard by the Coyotes. The ever-dangerous Pavel Datsyuk (one goal, one assist) was also kept scoreless on Thursday.
Babcock sent a bit of a message to veteran forward Mikael Samuelsson by making the former 30-goal scorer a healthy scratch in last Saturday's game against Boston. The 36-year-old Swede returned to the lineup on Thursday but skated just 10 shifts over 7:03 of ice time. He's been used sparingly all season, actually, but did score a goal in the regular season opener against Buffalo.
Daniel Cleary, who spurned the Flyers in the preseason to return to Detroit, is pointless through the first four games of the season. He's averaging 14:24 of ice time per game.
One Wings player who is off to a strong start is hard-hitting defenseman Niklas Kronwall. The 32-year-old continues to log heavy duty ice time for his team, and the Flyers had better skate with their heads up around him. He also has a pair of assists and a plus-four rating to show for his four games to date.
PROJECTED STARTING LINEUPS(Subject to change)
FLYERS
10 Brayden Schenn - 28 Claude Giroux - 93 Jakub Voracek
24 Matt Read - 14 Sean Couturier - 17 Wayne Simmonds
12 Michael Raffl - 25 Max Talbot - 18 Adam Hall
15 Tye McGinn - 45 Kris Newbury- 36 Zac Rinaldo
44 Kimmo Timonen - 22 Luke Schenn
8 Nicklas Grossmann - 5 Braydon Coburn
32 Mark Streit - 41 Andrej Meszaros
29 Ray Emery
[35 Steve Mason]
Scratches: Jay Rosehill or Tye McGinn (healthy), Erik Gustafsson (healthy), Hal Gill (healthy), Scott Hartnell (upper-body), Vincent Lecavalier (lower-body), Chris Pronger (LTIR, post-concussion syndrome).
RED WINGS
40 Henrik Zetterberg - 13 Pavel Datsyuk - 8 Justin Abdelkader
93 Johan Franzén - 90 Stephen Weiss - 11 Daniel Alfredsson
71 Daniel Cleary - 18 Joakim Andersson - 44 Todd Bertuzzi
20 Drew Miller - 25 Cory Emmerton - 37 Mikael Samuelsson
55 Niklas Kronwall - 52 Jonathan Ericsson
65 Danny DeKeyser - 4 Jakub Kindl
27 Kyle Quincey - 2 Brendan Smith
35 Jimmy Howard
[34 Petr Mrazek]
Scratches: Jordin Tootoo (healthy), Tomas Tatar (healthy), Brian Lashoff (healthy), Patrick Eaves (LTIR, knee and ankle), Darren Helm (LTIR, back), Jonas Gustavsson (IR, groin).
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WRAPUP: COYOTES 2 - FLYERS 1
After a terrible preseason, a pair of awful efforts in their second and third games of the season, an 0-3-0 start and a coaching change, the Flyers really had nowhere to go but up. Their 2-1 win over the Florida Panthers on Tuesday was a baby step in the right direction.
Friday night's game against Phoenix was actually an overall improvement on the Florida game. The Flyers played reasonably solid defense, displaying better coverages (stick and body positioning were improved) and breakouts. The goaltending remained very solid. At junctures of the game, especially in the first period, Philadelphia's forechecking pressure was also better and more sustained than the last game.
Offensively, the Flyers generated plenty of scoring chances.
There was a pair of two-on-one rushes during the game involving Brayden Schenn and (pre-injury) Vincent Lecavalier. Adam Hall had a first-period penalty shot opportunity after getting tripped up on a shorthanded breakaway. There were a few other golden scoring opportunities such as when Matt Read had a one-timer opportunity in prime scoring range, Wayne Simmonds had three quarters of a net to shoot at after getting to a rebound on the doorstep, and when Jakub Voracek broke the Phoenix penalty killing box and found an open Brayden Schenn in the middle of it.
Unfortunately, scoring chances don't mean a thing when you don't finish them.
The Flyers came up empty on each and every one of the aforementioned chances, as well as on all four shots on goal generated by Giroux. In total, they produced one measly goal for the fourth time in five games. That's simply not going to win very many hockey games.
First and foremost, the Flyers still aren't getting enough traffic the net for deflection and rebound opportunities. The lone goal they scored on Friday came off a Max Talbot deflection of a Zac Rinaldo shot, after some good initial forechecking work and a centering feed by Sean Couturier. I thought Couturier was Philly's best shift-in and shift-out forward on Friday.
Moving forward, however, the Flyers did lay a bit of foundation work on Friday for starting to put some more pucks in the net. Very often, offensively slumping teams and players emerge from those slumps in stages.
Stage one is generating increased chances. Stage two is scratching out a few more hustle goals on loose pucks. deflections and bang-bang goals off turnovers. Keep at it long enough and the pretty line rush goals might come back, too. Right now, the Flyers are only at stage one but that's better than where they were last Saturday in Montreal and Sunday in Carolina.
Rinaldo, an emotional player who has to push the physical play envelope to be successful, fell on the wrong side of the fine discipline line three different times in this game. First, he got an offensive zone charging minor (and subsequently more than held his own in a fight with the bigger Paul Bissonnette after starting slowly in the bout).
Shortly after assisting on Talbot's game-tying goal, Rinaldo took a horrendous retaliatory high sticking penalty after the whistle. That led seconds later to Oliver Ekman-Larsson stepping around Talbot to snap a shot off the tip of Mason's glove into the net with just 13 seconds left in the second period. Philly never did find another equalizer.
Early in the third period, Rinaldo took his third minor of the game for cross-checking Bissonnette near the Flyers net. The Coyotes' enforcer used the opportunity to barrel into Mason forearm first. Philadelphia survived the kill.
With 1:48 remaining in regulation, Andrej Meszaros took a holding penalty that put the team shorthanded for the rest of the game. He then argued with the officials, drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty (which would have come into play as a 4-on-3 disadvantage had the Flyers scored to tie the game and send the match to overtime) and then complained even more vociferously to earn a 10-minute misconduct.
The Flyers got Mason pulled for an extra attacker, and spent a fair amount of time in the final minute in the offensive zone but to no avail.
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS
* Luke Schenn's ice time thus far this season has been cut drastically. He is averaging exactly 15 minutes per game through the first five games; the least among the Flyers' six starters and a playing-time cut of seven minutes per game compared to last season. Between this drastic reduction of ice time and the recent comments made by TSN's Darren Dreger, I am wondering whether Schenn has gotten himself in the doghouse. Since Berube has made reference to being unhappy with some players' "skating shape" from training camp onward (not the same thing as muscular shape and body-fat percentages, as Berube noted on Thursday), I think number 22 may be one of the guys that Chief is unhappy with right now.
* The Flyers won 52 percent of their faceoffs this game, led by Couturier's 10-for-17 showing. Faceoffs were one of the main areas that Couturier wanted to improve upon from his first two NHL seasons. He added some muscle over the summer. That has helped him both on the boards and on faceoffs. So, too, has the evolutionary process of becoming a bit more experienced in the NHL. To date, Couturier has won a robust 57.5 percent of his draws. He has also had a much stronger stick and has been noticeably tougher to bump off pucks than he was last season.
* In my opinion, the reunited pairing of Braydon Coburn and Nicklas Grossmann has been the best of Philadelphia's three defense pairings since the coaching change and juggling of all three units. Coburn in particular has strung back-to-back excellent games together. I thought Grossmann was better in the Florida game than against Phoenix.
* I did not see how either Scott Hartnell (four shifts, 3:28 TOI) or Lecavalier (13 shifts, 12:42 TOI) got hurt. Their injuries forced Craig Berube to do a lot of line juggling.
* Adam Hall's unsuccessful penalty shot saw the checking forward move in slowly and try a couple of dekes on Phoenix netminder Thomas Greiss. Hall then lost control of the puck, but it nearly fooled Greiss and slid under the goaltender's pads. The puck lay just in front of the goal line near the left post when it came to a stop.
* The Camden Courier Post's Dave Isaac made the official three-star selection in this game, choosing Greiss as the first star, Ekman-Larsson as the second and Mason third.
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RAFFL IMPRESSES, PHANTOMS LOSE VIA SHOOTOUT
The Adirondack Phantoms were unable to protect a 3-1 lead and fell to the host Hartford Wolfpack, 5-4, via shootout on Friday night. The two teams will rematch in Glens Falls on Saturday in the Phantoms home opener.
Michael Raffl scored his first North American goal in this game, and later added an assist. The Austrian winger, who is probably the top candidate to get called up to the Flyers following Friday's injuries to Scott Hartnell and Vincent Lecavalier, has three points in his first two AHL regular season games.
The Phantoms also got two-point games from defenseman Bruno Gervais (one goal, one assist) and winger Petr Straka (two assists). Rob Bordson and Chris VandeVelde supplied the other goals for the Phantoms. The Phantoms outshot the Wolf Pack by a 35-20 margin for the game.
As is common in the front end of home-and-home matchups, especially in the AHL, this was a chippy, penalty- and fight-filled match. Meanwhile, while it was a productive offensive night for the line of Raffl, Straka and Ben Holmstrom, it was a tough night for the trio of Jason Akeson, Tye McGinn and Nick Cousins. They came up blank on the score sheet and were on the ice for at least two even strength goals by Hartford.
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SATURDAY QUICK HITS
* Congratulations go out to former Phantoms/Flyers defenseman John Slaney and former Flyers head coach and scout Bill Dineen (a highly successful AHL coach for Adirondack when they were affiliated with the Red Wings) for their inductions into the AHL Hall of Fame.
I will have more about this in a special section in Sunday's blog, including reaction to news of the well-deserved honor for the Dineen patriarch by former Flyers captain and current Florida Panthers head coach, Kevin Dineen.
* Flyers 2012 first-round pick Scott Laughton figured in the scoring of both Oshawa Generals goals in his team's 2-1 win over the Barrie Colts on Friday night. With a goal and an assist in the match, the OHL's Player of the Week for last week ran his season totals to five goals and seven assists in five games since being re-assigned to his junior club after making the Flyers' opening night roster.
* Flyers 2013 first-round pick Samuel Morin is slated to return to the lineup for the Rimouski Oceanic on Saturday night. He had been sidelined with a hand injury.
* Flyers 2013 second-round pick Robert Hägg has been getting sparing ice time in recent games for Swedish Hockey League club Modo. The 18-year-old is essentially being used as his club's sixth defenseman right now. The offensively skilled youngster has not been getting any power play time in about the last six games, but has gotten a bit of penalty killing work in addition to third-pairing duty at even strength. Modo has a road game against Färjestad on Saturday.
* Flyers 2012 second-round pick Anthony Stolarz had the evening off on Friday when his London Knights club was in action against Belleville; a 6-1 win for the Knights. He should get the start on Monday afternoon in Kitchener.
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