UPDATE 4:30 PM
It has been confirmed that Mark Alt is in the Flyers' starting lineup tonight. He will wear uniform No. 39. The Flyers have placed Nolan Patrick on injured reserve, backdated to last week; if cleared to play by then, he would still be eligible to suit up in Chicago on Wednesday.
UPDATE 12:30 PM
Coyotes goaltender Antti Raanta (upper-body injury) remains unavailable for the time being and has been placed on IR. Scott Wedgewood will get the start in net, backed up by call-up Hunter Miska.
Former Flyers forward Nick Cousins is back in the Arizona lineup for this game, while Anthony Duclair is a healthy scratch. Cousins will start on a line comprised entirely players originally drafted by the Flyers, along with Zac Rinaldo and ex-Phantoms forward Mario Kempe. The Coyotes lineup has been updated.
UPDATE 11 AM
The Flyers skated with five defensemen during the morning skate. Afterwards, Ron Hextall said that Samuel Morin (who was in the building) was dealing with a minor nagging injury that worsened over the weekend. A decision will be made in the afternoon about his availability for the game, but there is a significant chance the team will recall Mark Alt from the Phantoms.
Shayne Gostisbehere is day-to-day with an upper-body injury and the status quo also holds for Nolan Patrick. The latter is expected to skate on Tuesday.
GAME 12 PREVIEW: FLYERS VS COYOTES
Returning home briefly to start a grueling three-in-four gauntlet of matches, Dave Hakstol's Philadelphia Flyers (6-5-0) must first navigate a potential trap game against Rick Tocchet's winless Arizona Coyotes (0-10-1) on Monday evening before facing back-to-back games on Wednesday in Chicago and Thursday in St. Louis.
Monday's game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7 p.m. EDT. The game will be televised on NBCSP.
This is the first of two meetings between the inter-conference teams. Last season, the Flyers failed to rise to the opportunity against Arizona, going 0-1-1 including a 4-3 road overtime loss in the second game of the 2016-17 season and a 5-4 home defeat on Oct. 27, 2016.
FLYERS OUTLOOK
The Flyers enter this game coming off a 4-2 road win over the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday night. Philly went 3-2-0 on their first homestand of the season, but dropped three of four games before the solid win in Toronto.
Brandon Manning (1st goal of the season, one assist), Jakub Voracek (2nd goal, 14th assist), Valtteri Filppula (power play, 5th goal) and Claude Giroux (6th goal) tallied for the Flyers. Brian Elliott was sharp in making 28 saves on 30 shots for his fifth win of the season (5-2-0).
Saturday's win was a costly one for the Flyers. Off to the best start of his career both offensively and in his two-way game, Shayne Gostisbehere (one goal, 12 assists, 13 points in 11 games) sustained an upper-body injury when he was boarded by Toronto's Leo Komarov during a Flyers' second period power play. The team is already without Andrew MacDonald (lower-body injury) for three to five more weeks.
There will be an update on Gostisbehere's status on Monday.
The Flyers recalled towering rookie defenseman Samuel Morin from the Lehigh Valley Phantoms on Sunday night. Morin was on the Flyers' opening night roster but sat out as a healthy scratch during the team's season-opening four-game road trip. After settling back in with the Phantoms, Morin strung together several strong games.
Statistically, Morin had four points (one goal, three assists), 17 penalty minutes including a lopsided fight win over an instigating Bobby Farnham and a plus-seven rating at even strength during his eight-game return to the Phantoms. Morin appeared in one NHL regular season game in the final week of the 2016-17 regular season.
The Flyers are still awaiting medical clearance for rookie center Nolan Patrick. The second overall pick of the 2017 NHL Draft has been practicing with the team ever since hitting his face on the end-boards glass in last Tuesday's game against the Anaheim Ducks but had not yet completed the NHL's concussion protocol as of Saturday to obtain clearance to play.
Through 11 games, Voracek leads the Flyers in scoring with 16 points (two goals, 14 assists), followed by Sean Couturier (seven goals, six assists, 13 points, +10), Gostisbehere and Giroux (six goals, six assists, 12 points). Wayne Simmonds has bagged six goals among his 9 points and shares the team power play goal lead with three along with Filppula (five goals, two assists, seven points overall).
The Flyers enter Monday's game ranked 12th in the NHL in power play efficiency (21.4 percent) and tied for 17th on the penalty kill (80.0 percent). Overall, they have scored 38 goals and yielded 31. Philly has scored 23 goals and 5-on-5 and yielded 18, as well as one 4-on-4 goal scored and two yielded.
COYOTES OUTLOOK
Arizona has tied an unwanted record: the longest winless streak to start a season in NHL history, matching the 1943-44 New York Rangers. Through 11 games, the Coyotes have scored 26 goals and yielded a league-worst 48.
To date, the Coyotes are 0-4-1 at home and 0-6-0 on the road. Monday's game is the fourth game of a five-game eastern road trip, the front end of back-to-back games and the middle game of a three-in-four. The trip concludes on Tuesday night in Detroit.
Tocchet has tried pushing different buttons with his young team over their first 11 games. The club has been competitive in some of its games, not-so-competitive in others. On Saturday, the Coyotes played one of their best games of the young season but still came up short in a 4-3 loss to the New Jersey Devils.
The Coyotes took a 3-2 lead into the third period but were done in by a pair of New Jersey power play markers in the final stanza as well as an earlier penalty shot goal. Christian Fischer (power play), Brendan Perlini and Clayton Keller tallied in a losing cause for the Coyotes.
Louis Domingue took the loss on Saturday, stopping 21 of 25 shots to fall to 0-6-0 on the season (4.33 GAA, .856 save percentage). On Sunday, the Coyotes places Domingue on waivers after acquiring Scott Wedgewood from the Devils the previous day in exchange for a 2018 fifth-round draft pick. The Coyotes reassigned Adin Hill, who appeared in three games this season (0-3-0, 3.76 GAA, .880 SV%) to the AHL's Tuscon Roadrunners on Saturday.
Arizona is awaiting the return of Antti Raanta (0-1-1, 3.33 GAA, .911 SV%), whom they acquired from the New York Rangers in the offseason in exchange for defenseman Anthony DeAngelo and a first-round pick in the 2017 draft (Lias Andersson). Raanta is day-to-day with a lower-body injury. There is a chance he could be ready to play by Monday, per the Coyotes' official website.
Not all is doom-and-gloom in the desert. The seventh overall pick of the 2016 NHL Draft, 19-year-old center Clayton Keller, is off a great start offensively with eight goals (3 PPG) and 12 points through 11 games. Oliver Ekman-Larsson has ugly stats so far (minus-12, one goal, five points) but remains a prime threat to join the rush. Speedy young forward Max Domi has eight points (one goal, seven assists).
Rehabbing from off-season knee surgery that has kept him out for the entire season to date, fast-rising young defenseman Jakob Chychrun is said to be ahead of schedule in his timetable to return to the Coyotes' lineup. However, he is still on IR at present.
The Coyotes have a number of ex-Flyers on their roster: forwards Nick Cousins (one goal, one assist in nine games played) and Zac Rinaldo (six games, zero penalty minutes) as well as veteran defenseman Luke Schenn (two assists, 7 PIM, plus-one). Fast-skating forward Mario Kempe (two goals, one assist in nine games) is a former Flyers draft pick and briefly played for the Philadelphia Phantoms in the spring of 2009.
Arizona enters Monday's game ranked 15th in the NHL on the power play at 17.1 percent efficiency (7-for-41) but dead last on the penalty kill at 69.0 percent (20-for-29). The Coyotes have yielded two shorthanded goals to date and have yet to score one. At 5-on-5, they have scored 17 goals and yielded 31. Third periods have been especially troublesome, with 19-7 cumulative goal deficit.
PROJECTED LINEUPS (Note: will be updated after morning skate)
Flyers
28 Claude Giroux - 14 Sean Couturier - 93 Jakub Voracek 40 Jordan Weal - 51 Valtteri Filppula - 17 Wayne Simmonds 24 Matt Read - 15 Jori Lehterठ- 11 Travis Konecny 20 Taylor Leier - 21 Scott Laughton - 12 Michael Raffl
9 Ivan Provorov - 8 Robert Hà¤gg 23 Brandon Manning - 39 Mark Alt 6 Travis Sanheim - 3 Radko Gudas
37 Brian Elliott [30 Michal Neuvirth]
Scratches: Nolan Patrick (IR, upper body), Dale Weise (healthy), Andrew MacDonald (IR, lower body), Shayne Gostisbehere (upper body), Samuel Morin ("nagging injury").
Coyotes
16 Max Domi - 21 Derek Stepan - 9 Clayton Keller 11 Brendan Perlini - 18 Christian Dvorak - 8 Tobias Rieder 34 Zac Rinaldo - 29 Mario Kempe - 25 Nick Cousins 48 Jordan Martinook - 15 Brad Richardson - 36 Christian Fischer
23 Oliver Ekman-Larsson - 55 Jason Demers 33 Alex Goligoski - 4 Niklas Hjalmarsson 44 Kevin Connauton - 2 Luke Schenn
40 Scott Wedgewood [1 Hunter Miska]
Scratches: Antti Raanta (IR, lower body), Anthony Duclair (healthy), Adam Clendening (healthy), Louis Domingue (healthy), Jakob Chychrun (IR, knee surgery).