Game 11 Preview: Flyers @ Senators
John Tortorella's Philadelphia Flyers (5-3-2) are in Canada's capital city on Saturday evening to take on D.J. Smith's Ottawa Senators (4-6-0). Game time at the Canadian Tire Centre is 7:00 p.m. EDT.
The Flyers are winless in their last three games (0-1-2) while the Senators have dropped four in a row in regulation after a four-game winning streak. One team, of course, will get back in the win column. However, the primary storyline around this game centers around it being Claude Giroux's first career game against the Flyers team with whom he played exactly 1,000 regular season games before being traded as a rental to the Florida Panthers.
Philadelphia's most impressive forward in the last few games has been right winger Owen Tippett. Since returning to the lineup from a suspected concussion, Tippett has posted three points (two power play goals and one assist) in four games. He's also been part of roughly four or five other scoring chances for Philly and has made several nice defensive plays on the backcheck.
Travis Konecny has taken over the Flyers overall scoring lead with 11 points (four goals, seven assists) through the season's first 10 games. Kevin Hayes still leads the Flyers in assists with nine helpers among his 10 points. Tony DeAngelo paces the Flyers' blueline corps in scoring with seven points (2g, 5a) to date.
Forward Joel Farabee (six points) notched his third goal of the season in Wednesday's 5-2 loss in Toronto. Across the entire Flyers roster, only Konecny, Farabee and Scott Laughton (four points) have notched as many as three goals to date.
During the Toronto game, Tortorella did quite a bit of line combination juggling as the game progressed. Whether any of these changes hold for Saturday remain to be seen.
The team practiced on Friday in Toronto before traveling to Ottawa but no Philadelphia print/web media attended (the Flyers do not send me on road trips, the newspaper beats who were in Toronto traveled a day earlier to Ottawa, and the other full-time beats are not on the road trip).
In Wednesday's game, Morgan Frost was a healthy scratch. The timing was unfortunate, as Frost hails from the Toronto suburbs and his father, former longtime Maple Leafs PA announcer and well-known classic rock disc jockey Andy Frost in attendance for the game. Tanner Laczynski, who missed two games to be present for the birth of his first child and then was a healthy scratch against the Rangers, returned to the lineup for the Toronto game. He was used sparingly until the outcome had already been decided.
Young defenseman Egor Zamula was back in the lineup in Toronto after being a healthy scratch the previous two games. Veteran defenseman Justin Braun was scratched in Zamula's favor for the Maple Leafs game.
Additionally, within Wednesday's game, Tippett was moved up to the first line to play with Hayes and Konecny. Farabee switched to Scott Laughton's line with Zack MacEwen moved up to skate on the right wing. Noah Cates (15:13 TOI), who had been a fixture at center then left wing on the second line for the first nine-plus games, was moved down in the latter portion of the game in Toronto to play left wing on Lukas Sedlac's checking line with Wade Allison (11:45 TOI, four hits). Kieffer Bellows, who had his best game among the three he's appeared in as a Flyer to date, skated 14:26.
Nicolas Deslauriers (11:21 TOI) got caught in a mismatch at one point out on the ice against Auston Matthews and took a tripping penalty. Laczynski skated 10:41 (least among the forwards) across 15 shifts.
Carter Hart will return to the net on Saturday in Ottawa. He'll be opposed by friend and (brief) former Flyers teammate, Cam Talbot. Talbot came off IR earlier this week and made a relief appearance in a 5-4 home loss to Vegas. Saturday's game will be Talbot's first start of 2022-23 and first start as a Senator.
Ottawa has yet another ex-Flyer on the roster in veteran forward Derick Brassard. Brassard (1g, 0a in four games played) appears to be slated to center the Sens' third line against Philly.
For an in-depth game preview see
Five Things on PhiladelphiaFlyers.com. Starting lineups, once officially confirmed, will be added here to today's blog.
STARTING LINEUPS
FLYERS
74 Owen Tippett - 13 Kevin Hayes - 11 Travis Konecny
86 Joel Farabee - 21 Scott Laughton - 57 Wade Allison
49 Noah Cates - 23 Lukas Sedlak - 17 Zack MacEwen
44 Nicolas Deslauriers - 48 Morgan Frost - 58 Tanner Laczynski
9 Ivan Provorov - 77 Tony DeAngelo
6 Travis Sanheim - 54 Egor Zamula
24 Nick Seeler - 61 Justin Braun
79 Carter Hart
[32 Felix Sandström]
Senators
7 Brady Tkachuk - 18 Tim Stützle - 28 Claude Giroux
12 Alex DeBrincat - 57 Shane Pinto - 19 Drake Batherson
14 Tyler Motte - 61 Derick Brassard - 21 Mathieu Joseph
45 Parker Kelly - 47 Mark Kastelic - 16 Austin Watson
72 Thomas Chabot - 26 Erik Brännström
85 Jake Sanderson - 23 Travis Hamonic
5 Nick Holden - 22 Nikita Zaitsev
33 Cam Talbot
[ 31 Anton Forsberg]
********
Phantoms Lose to Belleville, Head to Laval
With the Flyers idle on Friday evening before the team's game in Ottawa on Saturday, general manager Chuck Fletcher attended the Lehigh Valley Phantoms' road game against Ottawa's AHL affiliate, the Belleville Senators. The Phantom lost, 3-2.
The game wasn't without some positives. Lehigh Valley generated a season-high 39 shots on goal, and the ice was tilted in their favor for at least the first 10-12 minutes of the second period on the way to a 20-10 shot on goal edge from the frame. From an eye-test standpoint, the Phantoms were up on their skates much more than in most of their previous games this season. They won the majority of puck battles over the course of the night.
Samuel Ersson (28 saves on 31 shots) was solid in net. None of the three goals he yielded would be categorized as soft.
Zayde Wisdom chipped in his first two points of the season and made an especially nice play including a drop pass to goal-scorer Jackson Cates (2nd goal of the season). The Phantoms whittled down what had been a three-goal deficit to 3-2 with a little more than half of the third period remaining. Earlier in the third period, Wisdom got the primary helper on a Phantoms' power play goal, as Olle Lycksell (first career AHL goal) cut in from the left circle and fired a shot home to the far side. Lycsell also got an assist on the subsequent Cates goal.
Now for the negatives. Although the Phantoms' penalty kill visually looked better on this night, they still yielded two PPGs to Belleville. One was a 5-on-3 goal and the latter was a 5-on-4 marker scored literally one second after they got a man back from a 4-on-4 to go on the man advantage.
The bottom line here: The Phantoms are still taking way too many penalties (Belleville had seven power plays on the night) and they have yielded at least one opposing power play in every game played so far. If you're looking for the No. 1 reason why the club is saddled with a 2-5-1 record through eight games, this is the biggest culprit.
Additionally, the Phantoms went just 1-for-7 on their own power plays and the one successful opportunity came with the team already trailing by a 3-0 score in the third period. Back in the first period, the Phantoms had seven consecutive minutes on the man advantage at one juncture and all they got out of it was a 1-0 deficit on a Rourke Chartier shorthanded goal after he was sprung by top Senators prospect Ridly Greig.
In the second period, Chartier potted a 5-on-3 power play goal (Ersson had little to no chance of stopping this one). That added to the Phantoms' frustrations because they'd been dominant all period but unable to solve Mads Sogaard (37 saves on 39 shots). Coming away empty from the middle stanza and seeing a one-goal deficit become two goals in the process was aggravating.
The performances of many of the younger players on the Phantoms were a mixed bag of solid plays bookended by puck miscues or play misreads. That's been a developmental frustration for quite a number of years: one step forward, one step back. On the bright side, Wisdom had his best game of the season to date, and Elliot Desnoyers knocked on the door several teams and made his speed evident.
Phantoms starting lineup:
13 Ryan Fitzgerald - 9 Cal O'Reilly - 42 Hayden Hodgson
17 Garett Wilson - 91 Elliot Desnoyers - 71 Tyson Foerster
28 Olle Lycksell - 18 Jackson Cates - 20 Max Willman
19 Isaac Ratcliffe - 15 Jordy Bellerive - 14 Zayde Wisdom
45 Cam York - 47 Louie Belpedio
44 Kevin Connauton - 12 Ronnie Attard
37 Adam Ginning - 29 Wyatte Wylie
30 Samuel Ersson
[1 Troy Grosenick]
Lehigh Valley is right back in action on Saturday night. They will be in Laval, Quebec, to take on the Laval Rocket (6-2-0). Game time is 3:00 p.m. EDT. The game will be streamed on AHL TV (subscription required).
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