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Preview: Flyers @ San Jose |
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UPDATE 2:45 PM EDT
Brian Eliott will get the start in goal for the Flyers. Sam Morin and Travis Sanheim appear to be the healthy scratches among the defensemen. Lineups are updated below.
GAME 1 PREVIEW: FLYERS @ SHARKS
It has been 178 days since the Philadelphia Flyers concluded their 2016-17 season. Tonight, the puck finally drops on the 2017-18 campaign as Dave Hakstol's Flyers take on Peter DeBoer's San Jose Sharks at the SAP Center. Game time is 10:30 p.m. EDT. The game will be nationally televised on NBCSN.
This is the first of two meetings between the teams this season, and the lone game in San Jose. The clubs will rematch in Philadelphia on Nov. 28. Last season, the Flyers sustained a 2-0 shutout loss in San Jose (Dec. 30) and then skated to 2-1 overtime home win (Feb. 11).
The Sharks are a team that habitually gives the Flyers' trouble. Dating back to Feb. 16, 2004, the Flyers have gone just 2-10-5 against San Jose. The Flyers' last road win in San Jose was back on Feb. 3, 2014, in a game where the Flyers entered the third period trailing, 2-1, and then exploded for four unanswered goals to win the game, 5-2.
Flyers Outlook
The 2017-18 season marks the second straight year the Flyers have started the regular season with a game in California. This year's opener is the start of back-to-back games for the Flyers and the beginning of a three-in-four gauntlet through the state. Tomorrow night, the Flyers are in Los Angeles (site of last year's opener) and, on Saturday, the team is in Anaheim.
If the Flyers are to push for a playoff spot this season, posting a significantly improved road record will be a must. Last season, the Flyers compiled a robust 55 points on home ice (25-11-5) but just a meager 33 points (14-22-5) on the road.
This was not a one-season aberration. Over the last four seasons, the Flyers enjoy the NHL's 7th best home record but rank 24th on the road. Dating back to the 2013-14 season, the Flyers have only claimed a cumulative 149 point in away games. Not coincidentally, the Flyers missed the playoffs in two of the four seasons.
The Flyers will enter the 2017-18 season with five rookies on the opening night roster: center Nolan Patrick, left winger Taylor Leier and defensemen Robert Hägg, Sam Morin and Travis Sanheim. All have changed from their training camp uniform numbers to new numbers. Patrick has switched from No. 64 to No. 19 (his junior hockey number with the WHL's Brandon Wheat Kings). Morin has switched from No. 50 to No. 5, while Sanheim has gone from No. 57 to No. 6, Hägg now wears No. 8 instead of No. 48, and Leier has swapped No. 58 for No. 20.
Patrick, the second overall pick of the 2017 NHL Draft, will make his regular season NHL debut on opening night. So will Sanheim if he is in the Flyers' lineup against the Sharks. Leier has played in 16 games over the last two seasons, including 10 games last season. Morin and Hägg each made their respective NHL debuts in the final week of last season.
While the Flyers' opening night forward line appears set, it is much less predictable to forecast how the opening-night defense combinations will be arranged. The holdover pair of 20-year-old reigning Barry Ashbee Trophy winner Ivan Provorov and serially maligned veteran Andrew MacDonald will likely remain intact for opening night. The rest will become clearer after the Flyers' morning skate.
Third-year offensive defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere suffered an upper-body injury in the third period of Sunday's exhibition finale against the New York Islanders. As a precaution, the Flyers took along eight defensemen for the season-opening road trip and waived veteran forward Matt Read (who cleared waivers on Tuesday and was assigned to the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms).
However, Gostisbehere participated fully in Tuesday's practice and declared himself ready to go for opening night. Whether he plays or not against the Sharks and how the pairings are arranged should become clearer on Wednesday based on the morning skate combinations and which two defensemen (the scratches) take extra skating after the starters leave the ice.
Twenty-two-year-old rookie defenseman Hägg, now in his fourth North American pro campaign after three full AHL seasons with the Phantoms, appears to be the least likely of the Flyers three rookie defensemen to be a scratch on opening night. He played in Sunday's "dress rehearsal" game against the Islanders and was informed that he'd made the NHL roster outright.
In the meantime, neither the 21-year-old Sanheim nor the 22-year-old Morin were in Sunday's lineup. It seemed as if one or the other was going to be the final preseason roster cut before Gostisbehere went down late in Sunday's game. For whatever it is worth, it was the more offensive-minded Sanheim who practiced in Gostisbehere's spot at Tuesday's practice on a pairing with hard-nosed veteran Radko Gudas. Hägg, who played with Gostisbehere for much of Sunday's game, was paired with veteran Brandon Manning at Tuesday's practice.
Since last season, there have been a variety of other changes to the Flyers' look.
Steve Mason was not re-signed as an unrestricted free agent, as general manager Ron Hextall opted instead to sign veteran Brian Elliott to a two-year contract. Elliott will share playing time with Michal Neuvirth, who was inked to a two-year extension last season ahead of his own potential unrestricted free agency.
The Flyers traded Brayden Schenn to the St. Louis Blues during the 2017 NHL Draft weekend, obtaining two first-round picks (Morgan Frost in 2017, and a conditional 2018 or 2019 first-rounder) plus veteran Finnish forward Jori Lehterä. It appears that Lehterä will be a healthy scratch on opening night.
Perhaps the most notable development during training camp this year, apart from the many rookies battling for roster spots, was the adoption of a new top line combination. After seven years of almost exclusively playing center, Claude Giroux was moved to left wing. Typically a shutdown center as his primary role, Sean Couturier now centers Giroux and Jakub Voracek.
After last season, the Flyers dismissed longtime forwards and power play coach Joe Mullen in favor of 39-year-old Kris Knoblauch (late of the 2016-17 Ontario Hockey League champion and Memorial Cup runner-up Erie Otters). Knoblauch has begun to implement a few tweaks to the system employed by Mullen, including having four forwards on the second unit as well as the first. Knoblauch also hopes to see more player movement within the offensive zone and somewhat different methods of offensive zone entries.
As of now, it looks as if veteran Finnish forward, Valtteri Filppula, will remain in the first power play unit spot (left hash marks to mid-center slot) previously occupied by Schenn. Although Filppula is much more of a pass-first player than a frequent shooter, Hakstol and Knoblauch have said they believe the veteran Finn can adapt to shooting more often. He was placed on the top unit, according to Hakstol, to aid in clean offensive zone entries and puck retrievals within the attack zone.
During the preseason, the team's new second power play unit -- Couturier, Patrick, Jordan Weal, Travis Konecny, and Ivan Provorov -- often generated greater pressure than the first unit. That, along with the play of the new fourth line combination of Leier, Scott Laughton and Michael Raffl, was among the bright spots in a 32-3 exhibition season showing for Philly.
On Tuesday, the Flyers voted on a new alternate captain, to go along with captain Giroux and holdover alternate Wayne Simmonds. The players decided that MacDonald, the senior-most defenseman on the roster, would wear the second A for all road games while Filppula, a Stanley Cup winner during his Detroit Red Wings days, would sport the A at home.
Sharks Outlook
A Stanley Cup finalist for the first time in 2015-16, the Sharks finished third in the Pacific Division last season with 99 points before going out at the hands of the Edmonton Oilers (four games to two) in the first round of the 2017 Western Conference playoffs.
San Jose's Stanley Cup window is not entirely closed yet but it appears to be getting there rapidly. Nucleus forwards Joe Pavelski (now 33 years old), Joe Thornton (38), reigning Norris Trophy winning roving defenseman Brent Burns (32) and fellow blueline regulars Marc-Edouard Vlasic (30), Paul Martin (36) and Justin Braun (30) are one of the older collections of key players in the increasingly youth-oriented NHL. Even Logan Couture is no longer a kid. He will turn 29 in the latter portion of the coming season. Veteran supporting-cast player Jannik Hansen (31) was acquired from Vancouver at the trade deadline last season in exchange for forward prospect Nikolay Goldobin and a 2017 fourth-round draft pick (Tim Söderlund).
One longtime fixture in San Jose departed in the offseason. For the first time since he was the second overall pick of the 1997 NHL Draft, franchise icon Patrick Marleau is not a member of the Sharks. He signed as an unrestricted free agent with the Toronto Maple Leafs over the summer. On July 1, however, the Sharks signed Vlasic to an eight-year contract extension and 27-year-old workhorse starting goaltender Martin Jones (35-23-6 record, 2.40 GAA, .912 save percentage last season) to a six-year contract.
Two other notable departures during the offseason: defensemen David Schlemko and Mirco Mueller. Schlemko is now a member of the Montreal Canadiens. Originally drafted by the Sharks with the 18th overall pick of the 2013 NHL Draft, Mueller was traded to the New Jersey Devils on June 17 for 2017 second-round (Mario Ferraro) and fourth-round (Brandon Crawley) selections.
The Sharks scored only a few more goals as a team than the Flyers did last season. While Pavelski, Couture and Burns can be relied on for at least 25 goals and sometimes 30-plus, there's not a lot of proven goal scoring support.
A prominent multi-year-deal free agent signing last year, Mikkel Boedker still has never produced even a 20-goal season in the NHL and disappointed offensively in San Jose last year (10 goals, 26 points in 81 games). Tomas Hertl, now 23, broke through for 21 goals and 46 points in 2015-16 but was limited by injury to 49 games (10 goals, 22 points). The Sharks also still employ skilled Finnish import Joonas Donskoi and Swedish two-way winger Melker Karlsson as supporting cast players but the duo combined for a modest 17 goals last year.
Moving forward, San Jose is quite high on 2015 first-round pick Timo Meier. The 20-year-old Swiss winger is entering his second pro year. Last season, he played 34 NHL games (three goals, six points) and 33 games in the American Hockey League with the San Jose Barracuda (14 goals, 23 points, plus-14).
The Sharks were a much better home ice team last season (26-11-4, 56 points) than they were on the road (20-18-3, 43 points). As with many DeBoer-coached teams, however, the Sharks were stingy defensively. The team ranked 5th in the NHL in goals against average last season. During the preseason this year, the Sharks posted a 4-2-0 record, scoring 20 goals and yielding 16.
Key team stat comparisons (2016-17 NHL overall ranking)
Non-shootout goals per game: Flyers 2.59 (T-20th), Sharks 2.67 (19th)
Non-shootout goals against per game: Flyers 2.82 (T-19th), Sharks 2.44 (5th)
5-on-5 Goals For/Against Ratio: Flyers 128/154, Sharks 152/135
Power play efficiency: Flyers 19.5% (14th), Sharks 16.7% (25th)
Penalty killing efficiency: Flyers 79.8% (T-20th), Sharks 80.7% (T-17th)
Shots per game: Flyers 31.5 (5th), Sharks 29.9 (T-19th)
Shots against per game: Flyers 28.5 (7th), Sharks 27.7 (3rd)
Faceoff percentage: Flyers 52.3% (5th), Sharks 48.1% (23rd)
PROJECTED LINEUPS (Subject to change, will be updated)
Flyers (Tuesday practice lines)
28 Claude Giroux - 14 Sean Couturier - 93 Jakub Voracek
40 Jordan Weal - 19 Nolan Patrick - 17 Wayne Simmonds
22 Dale Weise - 51 Valtteri Filppula - 11 Travis Konecny
20 Taylor Leier - 21 Scott Laughton - 12 Michael Raffl
9 Ivan Provorov - 47 Andrew MacDonald
23 Brandon Manning - 3 Radko Gudas
53 Shayne Gostisbehere - 8 Robert Hägg
37 Brian Elliott
[30 Michal Neuvirth]
Scratches: Jori Lehterä (healthy), Travis Sanheim (healthy), Sam Morin (healthy), Anthony Stolarz (SOIR).
Sharks
62 Kevin Labanc - 19 Joe Thornton - 8 Joe Pavelski
27 Joonas Donskoi - 39 Logan Couture - 89 Mikkel Boedker
28 Timo Meier - 48 Tomas Hertl - 36 Jannik Hansen
68 Melker Karlsson- 50 Chris Tierny - 42 Joel Ward
7 Paul Martin - 88 Brent Burns
44 Marc-Edouard Vlasic - 61 Justin Braun
4 Brenden Dillon - 74 Dylan DeMelo
31 Martin Jones
[30 Aaron Dell]
Scratches: Barclay Goodrow, Ryan Carpenter, Tim Heed.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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