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Flyers Gameday: 11/15/18 vs. NJ; Phantoms Update

November 15, 2018, 8:15 AM ET [446 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Game 19 Preview: Flyers vs. Devils

Dave Hakstol's Philadelphia Flyers (9-8-1) are at home on Thursday evening to take on John Hynes' New Jersey Devils (7-8-1). Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. ET.

The game will be televised on NBCSNP. The radio broadcast can be found on 97.5 FM The Fanatic with an online simulcast at FlyersRadio247.com.

This is the second of four meetings between the teams this season and the second and final one in Philadelphia. The scene shifts to the Prudential Center on Jan. 12 and March 1.

On Oct. 20, a Devils team that was 4-1-0 at the time came to Philly for a Saturday afternoon game. Putting forth their best 60-minute performance of the first 11 games of the season, a patient Flyers team methodically cranked out a 5-2 win over New Jersey.

Jakub Voracek scored on a 2-on-1 opportunity at 16:50 of the third period to put the Flyers ahead for good at 3-2. Late in the second period, Voracek made a perfect pass to Nolan Patrick to give the Flyers a 2-1 lead they took into the third period. The Flyers also got a first-period power play goal by Travis Konecny, and a pair of late empty-net tallies from Wayne Simmonds and Scott Laughton. Brian Elliott stopped 19 of 21 shots to earn the win. Keith Kinkaid took the loss for NJ, making 16 saves on 19 shots.

Flyers Outlook

The Flyers saw a six-game point streak snapped on Tuesday in a 2-1 loss to the Florida Panthers. Philly dropped to 2-1-0 on its current five-game homestand. After this game, the powerhouse Tampa Bay Lightning come to town on Saturday afternoon.

On Tuesday, the Philadelphia Flyers did not generate much sustained attack for two periods and fell to the Florida Panthers, 2-1. The Flyers put on a heavy push in the third period and drew back within a goal on a tally by Jakub Voracek off a perfect pass from Oskar Lindblom but could not find an equalizer among five or six subsequent near-miss Grade-A scoring opportunities.

Elliott was generally solid again in net, stopping 28 of 30 shots. A streak of 73 consecutive saves came to an end on an Aaron Ekblad rebound goal that banked in off Elliott's blocker. Later in the second period, Evgenii Dadonov beat Elliott to the glove side on a 35-foot shot using defenseman Christian Folin as a screen and shooting between the defender's legs.

The Flyers expect James van Riemsdyk to be back in the lineup on Thursday for the first time since taking taking a puck off his knee late in the first period of the regular season's second game. On Wednesday, he practiced on Jordan Weal's line and as the netfront forward on the first power play unit. Additionally, Voracek returned to PP1. The second unit consisted of Patrick, Travis Konecny, Weal, Wayne Simmonds (netfront) and Ivan Provorov.

Based on practice line combinations on Wednesday that saw Scott Laughton playing center and Jori Lehterä on left wing plus the fact that Lehterä saw only nice shifts and 7:19 of ice time on Tuesday including 2:41 on the penalty kill, it is possible that Lehterä will be a healthy scratch against the Devils. If so, Nicolas Aube-Kubel will remain in the lineup. It should be noted, however, that Dale Weise was excused from attending practice on Wednesday in order to be with his son for a medical procedure.

Entering play on Thursday, Claude Giroux leads the team with 22 points (seven goals, 15 assists) in 18 games. Giroux's next point will be the 700th of his career. Additionally, with 478 assists, Giroux is two away from catching Brian Propp for second on the Flyers' all-time list.

Voracek is second on the team with 17 points (five goals, 12 assists) in 18 games. He is followed by Couturier (seven goals, five assists), Simmonds (seven goals, three assists), Lindblom (four goals, six assists) and Patrick (five goals, four assists in 15 games played).

Through 18 games, the Flyers have scored 57 goals but allowed 62, an average of 3.17 goals scored per game (14th in the NHL) with a team 3.44 goals against average (28th). The power play, which struggled in its lone opportunity of Tuesday's game, comes in at 13.6 percent (29th) with four shorthanded goals yielded. The penalty kill, which went 2-for-3 on Tuesday, comes in at 70.3 percent (30th).

Devils Outlook

When the Devils came to Philly the first time, they entered as a team that was off to a strong start in October. Since their loss to the Flyers, very little has gone right. However, the Devils snapped a three-game losing streak on Tuesday with a strong performance in a 4-2 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Travis Zajac opened the scoring just 28 seconds into the first period. Reigning Hart Trophy winner Taylor Hall racked up a four-point game (two goals, two assists), punctuated with an empty-net goal. New Jersey defenseman Damon Severson (one goal, one assist) also had a multi-point game. Kinkaid earned the victory with 29 saves on 31 shots.

The Devils recalled Pavel Zacha on Tuesday. He dressed in the win over the Penguins. Second-year pro Nico Hischier (upper-body injury suffered in Sunday's game) missed the game against Pittsburgh and is officially day-to-day.

Veteran forward and frequent Flyers antagonist Brian Boyle also went down to an upper-body injury last weekend. He was placed on injured reserve. Likewise, Steve Santini, who sustained a broken jaw on Oct. 20 and has missed the last 10 games, remains on IR but has returned to practice this week.

Hall leads the Devils in scoring with 19 points in 16 games (five goals, 14 assists). He is followed by Kyle Palmieri, who has compiled 10 goals among his 18 points but has one goal and four pointless games among his last seven outings. Palmieri does have three assists in that recent span. Injuries kept fast-rising young forward Jesper Bratt out of the lineup for much of the early season, but he has points in back-to-back games among the three he's played to date.

The team has scored 49 goals and yielded 56. The Devils' average 3.06 goals per game ranks 20th overall, while the team 3.50 GAA ranks 29th. New Jersey's power play comes in at 22.9 percent (11th overall) but the team is only 20th in 5-on-5 goals (32 scored). The Devils' PK enters the game at 81.7 percent success (12th overall).


PROJECTED LINEUPS (Subject to change)

FLYERS

28 Claude Giroux - 14 Sean Couturier - 11 Travis Konecny
23 Oskar Lindblom - 19 Nolan Patrick - 93 Jakub Voracek
25 James van Riemsdyk - 40 Jordan Weal - 17 Wayne Simmonds
22 Dale Weise - 21 Scott Laughton - 62 Nicolas Aube-Kubel

9 Ivan Provorov - 8 Robert Hägg
53 Shayne Gostisbehere - 26 Christian Folin
6 Travis Sanheim - 47 Andrew MacDonald

37 Brian Elliott
[33 Cal Pickard]

Scratches: 3 Radko Gudas (undisclosed), 15 Jori Lehterä (healthy), 30 Michal Neuvirth (IR, lower body), 12 Michael Raffl (IR, lower body), 10 Corban Knight (IR, collarbone), 5 Sam Morin (ACL surgery).

DEVILS

9 Taylor Hall - 19 Travis Zajac - 21 Kyle Palmieri
90 Marcus Johansson - 37 Pavel Zacha - 63 Jesper Bratt
20 Blake Coleman - 43 Brent Seney - 49 Joey Anderson
44 Miles Wood - 10 Jean-Sebastien Dea - 23 Stefan Noesen ​

25 Mirco Mueller - 45 Sami Vatanen
6 Andy Greene - 28 Damon Severson
8 Will Butcher - 12 Ben Lovejoy​

1 Keith Kinkaid
[35 Cory Schneider​]

Scratches: 13 Nico Hischier (questionable, upper body), 18 Drew Stafford (healthy), 74 Egor Yakolev (healthy), 11 Brian Boyle (IR, upper body), 16 Steve Santini (IR, broken jaw).

**************

Phantoms Down Charlotte in OT, 3-2

An action-packed overtime frame went the Lehigh Valley Phantoms' way on Wednesday night, as veteran defenseman T.J. Brennan converted a setup by second-year forward Mikhail Vorobyev with 1:18 remaining to send the team off with a 3-2 victory against the Atlantic Division leading Charlotte Checkers at the PPL Center. The goal was Brennan's 5th of the season.

Phil Varone (power play, 5th) and Voroybev (power play, 2nd) scored during the second period. Brennan, Greg Carey, Mike Vecchione and rookie forward David Kase collected an assist apiece.

Rookie goaltender Carter Hart earned the win with a season-best 35 saves on 37 shots. He had some sporadic issues with leaving out rebounds on opportunities for clean saves, creating a little extra work for himself and the team in front of him, but he was sharp overall and made some much-needed momentum saves for his team. The win was well-deserved.

Andrew Poturalski (5th) and Julien Gauthier (6th) scored for Charlotte. Alex Nedeljkovic was strong in goal in a losing cause, stopping 28 of 31 shots including a third-period penalty shot opportunity for the Phantoms' Cole Bardreau.

Charlotte had the better of the play over the first period and early in the second, holding a 21-8 shot advantage at one point but only a 1-0 lead. The Phantoms then made a strong pushback, scoring a pair of power play goals over the latter half of the second period and finishing the frame strong to take a 2-1 lead to the second intermission. Lehigh Valley had opportunities to put the Checkers away in the third period but were unable to build on the narrow lead and Charlotte struck back in the latter part of the third period to force OT.

The Checkers opened the scoring at 4:22 of the first period. A turnover in the defensive zone by Brennan came back to bite the Phantoms moments later as Poturalski received the puck from Dennis Robertson and slid it past Hart from close range for a 1-0 Charlotte lead.

Hart kept the Phantoms in striking distance, however. The Checkers racked up a 16-8 shot edge in the first period -- much of the shot volume came from the perimeter but Hart was tracking most of the shots well and came up with second saves as needed. Charlotte also started the second period with a 5-0 shot edge until the Phantoms had a pair of shots on a delayed penalty and the momentum started to turn.

The veteran trio of Carey, Brennan and Varone moved the puck efficiently on the power play and Varone finished it off from the slot at 11:02 of the middle frame to knot the score at 1-1. At 14:07, Kase set up Vecchione for a scoring opportunity. With Nedeljkovic way over to the other side, the puck went directly to Vorobyev, who buried it into the half-open net from a flat angle to put Lehigh Valley on top. The Phantoms kept pushing from there, but couldn't extend the lead. Lehigh Valley ended up with a 13-9 shot edge in the middle frame.

In the third period, the Phantoms were unable to build on their one-goal lead. Bardreau's penalty shot was denied and a 5-on-3 power play opportunity went by the wayside. The Checkers drew momentum from the two-man kill and hemmed the Phantoms in the defensive zone, with Gauthier scoring glove side from the left circle to tie the game at 2-2 with 5:18 left on the clock. Jake Bean, formerly Travis Sanheim's run-and-gun from the blue line mate on the WHL's Calgary Hitmen, assisted on the tying goal.

Overtime saw virtually non-stop action, with the Phantoms generating several odd-man rushes and getting four shots on goal to zero (although there were a couple good looks) for Charlotte.
Finally, Vorobyev won a puck battle and Brennan finished it off for a measure of revenge from the last game against the Checkers.

Phantoms rookie center German Rubtsov, who missed the previous game with a minor lower-body injury and was considered questionable heading into Wednesday, returned to the lineup. He hit the post twice in the second period, including a power play chance in close that was briefly reviewed on video to make sure it didn't enter the net.

Second-year defenseman Mark Friedman, who was stung on a shot block last game and was held out as a precaution, was in the lineup as well. He had three shots on goal and was minus-one on the evening.

With Tyrell Goulbourne serving the first match of a two-game suspension from the AHL for a slew-footing incident late in the third period of the previous game against Charlotte, rookie forward Connor Bunnaman dressed for the Phantoms for the first time since Nov. 2. He had one shot on goal and was on the ice for the first Charlotte goal scored after the Brennan turnover.

The Phantoms starting lineup was as follows:

10 Greg Carey 26 Phil Varone 9 Cole Bardreau
24 Carsen Twarynski 21 Mike Vecchione 22 Chris Conner
25 Connor Bunnaman - 17 German Rubtsov - 38 David Kase
23 Taylor Leier - 15 Mikhail Vorobyev - 13 Colin McDonald

43 T.J. Brennan - 37 Mark Friedman
6 Philip Samuelsson - 5 Philippe Myers
7 Zach Palmquist 44 Reece Willcox

31 Carter Hart
[34 Alex Lyon]

Scratches: 12 Tyrell Goulbourne (AHL suspension), 19 Radel Fazleev (healthy), 2 James de Haas (healthy), 41 Anthony Stolarz (healthy).
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