GAME 46: FLYERS vs. BRUINS
In the final game of a three-game homestand, Alain Vigneault's Philadelphia Flyers (23-16-6 overall, 14-3-5 home) host Bruce Cassidy's Boston Bruins (27-8-11, 12-6-2 away) on Monday night. Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. ET.
The game will be televised on NBCSP. The radio broadcast will be on 97.5 The Fanatic with an online simulcast on Flyers Radio 24/7.
This is the second of three meetings between the teams this season, and the first of two in Philadelphia. The Flyers are 1-0-0 this season against Boston. The season series will conclude with a March 10 game at the Wells Fargo Center.
On Nov. 10, the Flyers faced a fatigue-factor game in Boston. The Bruins, 7-0-1 on home ice at the time, were a rested team that had only played once in the previous four nights. The Flyers were a tired team, playing for the third time in four nights and having won via shootout the previous night in Toronto.
Nevertheless, it was the Flyers who dictated the opening 40 minutes of the game, and took a 2-0 lead to both the first and second intermissions. Thereafter, the ice was tilted in Boston's favor in the third period. The Flyers ran out of gas while the Bruins now felt a sense of urgency. Boston bombarded Carter Hart with both a high volume of shots and high quality of scoring opportunities.
Although the Bruins battled back to tie the game on two pucks that bounced off Flyers (one a Claude Giroux partial block, the other a wired Brad Marchand shot that deflected into the net off Matt Niskanen) it was Hart who prevented the game from turning into a regulation loss. Most notably, Hart stoned the deadly David Pastrnak on a penalty shot.
After a scoreless overtime, the game went to a shootout. Hart denied Charlie Coyle, Brad Marchand and Pastrnak, while Flyers rookie Joel Farabee scored in round two against Jaroslav Halak. One of the guttiest Flyers wins of the season, 3-2 (1-0), was in the books.
FLYERS OUTLOOK
If the season ended today, the Flyers would be out of the playoffs. The team's 1-4-1 mark on the post-Christmas road trip and 1-7-1 mark in its last nine road games left them with no margin for error by the time they returned to Philadelphia for the current homestand. Florida's win on Sunday pushed the Panthers one point ahead of the Flyers for the lower wildcard spot.
That being said, the Flyers are still within striking distance of the upper wildcard spot currently held by Carolina (four points plus tiebreaker disadvantage) and even the automatic playoff spot represented by third place in the Metro, currently held by recently struggling New York Islanders (six points plus tiebreaker disadvantage). The bad news is that the Flyers are only halfway through their toughest four-game sequential stretch of the season in terms of difficulty of opposition on an every-game basis.
During the Flyers' current spate of four consecutive measuring-stick games, Philadelphia is playing four of the top six teams in the NHL's overall standings. The gauntlet includes games against each of the last two Stanley Cup champions and last year's President's Trophy winner (Tampa Bay). Boston, of course, was a Stanley Cup finalist last season and is leading the Atlantic Division this year.
On Saturday, in a tight-checking game, a single bounce of the puck determined the outcome as the Philadelphia Flyers fell, 1-0, Tampa Bay Lightning. It was just the Flyers' third regulation home loss of the season and the first time, home or road, that they've been shut out this season Hart stopped 27 of 28 shots for Philly in a losing cause. The Flyers went 4-for-4 on the penalty kill against Tampa's fearsome power play (which entered the game at a robust 29 percent success rate) but struggled on their own power plays.
On Sunday, the Flyers took a complete off day. They made a roster move, however. returning winger David Kase to the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms (after a one-game stay with the big club in his second recall of the season) and calling up center Connor Bunnaman for his second stint of the season with the NHL club.
Bunnaman, a training camp dark horse, unexpectedly won an opening night roster spot with the NHL team. He dressed in four games before getting sent to the Phantoms. Very shortly after his return to the Phantoms, Bunnaman suffered a lower-body injury on Nov. 1 that kept him out of the lineup for just shy of one full month. Even after his return, Bunnaman struggled rather severely and did not look like a healthy player. He was ineffective on both sides of the puck for the next five weeks after his return.
Very recently, however, Bunnaman seemed to be rounding back into form. Three of his four goals on the season and his lone assist of the AHL season have come over his last four games prior to the callup to return to the Flyers.
Projected lineups will be adjusted after Monday's morning skate.
On the injury front, the Flyers will be without Shayne Gostisbehere (knee) for approximately three weeks from Jan. 9. Defenseman Justin Braun (groin) is out until after the All-Star break. Lindblom will miss the rest of the season while undergoing bone cancer treatments. There is no update on the status of Nolan Patrick (chronic migraine disorder).
BRUINS OUTLOOK
Despite Tampa Bay's recent 10-game winning streak, which came to an end in New Jersey on Sunday, the Bruins still have a seven-point cushion (plus a tiebreaker edge) atop the Atlantic Division. Boston is 11 points (plus tiebreaker advantage) up on third-place Toronto.
The Bruins went through a lull for a bit but have heated up again recently. The team has won three in a row heading into Monday's game in Philadelphia and has points in nine of their last 10 games (6-1-3).
On Saturday, the visiting Bruins earned a 3-2 overtime win against the Islanders. On a 4-on-3 power play, Patrice Bergeron netted the game winner (19th goal of the season). Tuukka Rask made 35 saves to earn the win, including 13 in a first period that was less-than-ideal from the Bruins' perspective. Jake DeBrusk and John Moore tallied the regulation goals for the Bruins, and defenseman Charlie McAvoy logged 28:43 of ice time.
Bruins defenseman Matt Grzelcyk, who took a slash on the leg from Derick Brassard in Saturday's game and limped off the ice, is officially a game-day decision for Monday's game.
Monday's game will be a milestone for the ageless Zdeno Chara. It will be the Bruins captain's 1,530th NHL regular season game overall and his 1,000th game as a Bruin. Five other players in franchise history, including teammate Bergeron, have reached the 1,000-game milestone within their careers in Boston. The others are Ray Bourque, John Bucyk, Don Sweeney, and Wayne Cashman.
PROJECTED STARTING LINEUPS
FLYERS
28 Claude Giroux - 13 Kevin Hayes - 11 Travis Konecny 12 Michael Raffl - 14 Sean Couturier - 93 Jakub Voracek 25 James van Riemsdyk - 21 Scott Laughton - 62 Nic Aube-Kubel 49 Joel Farabee - 82 Connor Bunnaman - 18 Tyler Pitlick
9 Ivan Provorov - 15 Matt Niskanen 6 Travis Sanheim - 5 Phil Myers 8 Robert Hà¤gg - 59 Mark Friedman
79 Carter Hart [37 Brian Elliott]
Power Play 1: Giroux, JVR, Konecny, Hayes, Provorov. Power Play 2: Couturier, Aube-Kubel, Voracek, Sanheim, Niskanen.
Scratches: 44 Chris Stewart (healthy), 62 Justin Braun (groin), 53 Shayne Gostisbehere (knee). LTIR: 55 Sam Morin (torn ACL, out for season), 23 Oskar Lindblom (Ewing sarcoma, out for season), 19 Nolan Patrick (migraines).
BRUINS
63 Brad Marchand - 37 Patrice Bergeron - 88 David Pastrnak 74 Jake DeBrusk - 46 David Krejci - 10 Anders Björk 43 Danton Heinen - 13 Charlie Coyle - 18 Brett Ritchie 20 Joakim Nordström - 52 Sean Kuraly - 14 Chris Wagner…‹
33 Zdeno Chara - 73 Charlie McAvoy 47 Torey Krug - 25 Brandon Carlo 27 John Moore - 48 Matt Grzelcyk
41 Jaroslav Halak [40 Tuukka Rask]
Power Play 1: Marchand, Bergeron, DeBrusk, Pastrnak, Krug Power Play 2: Heinen, Krejci, Coyle, Grzelcyk, McAvoy…‹
Scratches: 26 Pà¤r Lindholm (healthy), 42 David Backes (healthy), 44 Steven Kampfer (healthy), 48 Matt Grzelcyk (knee, game-day decision). IR: 75 Connor Clifton (upper body), 81 Anton Blidh (shoulder), 86 Kevan Miller (kneecap).
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Phantoms Update: January 13, 2020
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms still have a steep mountain to climb to get back into the Calder Cup playoff race, but they can take some goaltending-related positives out of their last couple games as they recorded back-to-back home shutout victories on Saturday and Sunday.
On Saturday, the Phantoms hung tough through a first period against the Laval Rocket in which they got outshot by a 9-3 margin and generated virtually no pressure in the process. Lehigh Valley goaltender Alex Lyon got the game to second period still scoreless. The Phantoms were outshot, 28-18, over the final 40 minutes but captured the victory.
Kyle Criscuolo (5th) scored a gritty goal near the net, re-directing a James deHaas attempt, for a 1-0 lead in the second period. Early in the third period, defenseman Tyler Wotherspoon (3rd) found the net after Mikhail Vorobyev (10th assist) won the puck back to Nate Prosser. That was all the goal support Lyon needed, and he recorded a 37-save shutout.
On Sunday against the Cleveland Monsters, J-F Berube was in goal for the Phantoms. The game was scoreless until the third period, as Lehigh Valley got outshot by a 22-6 margin through 40 minutes in their third game in less than three nights.
In the third period, Berube was called upon to make 13 additional saves. Finally, with 2:14 left on the regulation clock, the often offensively-starved Phantoms found something that worked on the attack as a power play was about to expire. Morgan Frost (9th assist) made a pass through the box to Cal O'Reilly (3rd goal) on the other side, and O'Reilly found the net as Andy Andreoff created a diversion at the other side of the net. Vorobyev (11th assist) got the secondary helper.
Rookie Maksim Sushko added an empty net goal (6th) with 1:01 left in regulation to complete a 2-0 victory despite a 35-16 shot disadvantage for the game. Berube's shutout earned him first-star honors, one night after Lyon's 37-save shutout earned the same.
The Phantoms (15-19-5) are still 13 standings points below the current playoff cutoff -- to account for unbalanced conference schedules, the AHL officially goes by points percentage rather than points -- and still dead last offensively in both the Eastern Conference and entire AHL with just 88 goals scored in their 39 games played to date.
After near-constant losing in December and early January, the Phantoms have won three of their last four games; so it least it's a results improvement on the way things had been going ever since the bottom dropped out on the team for a span of five-plus weeks.
The Phantoms have three games remaining on their current five-game homestand. On Wednesday, they'll host the Syracuse Crunch. On Friday, it's Binghamton. On Saturday, Rochester pays a visit to the PPL Center.