There is no sugar-coating the start to the Philadelphia Flyers season. It has been dreadful. Two games in which they acted more like a practice squad for the other team’s stars to practice their offense rather than try and prevent scoring chances, and there is not much hope of things changing anytime soon. Since, you know, they’re facing the Stanley Cup champion Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night.

Ahead of the game though, Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet is looking for answers. At morning skate, he has made some major changes to the lineup to look for some specific combination or maybe some budding chemistry since no matter who they put out the season-opening back-to-back, they got absolutely shelled.

According to our buddy and NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jordan Hall, the Flyers have decided to go with these combinations of players for Saturday’s bout against the Hurricanes:

Travis Konecny — Christian Dvorak — Matvei Michkov
Carl Grundstrom — Trevor Zegras — Owen Tippett
Tyson Foerster — Noah Cates — Porter Martone
Alex Bump — Noel Acciari — Sean Couturier

Travis Sanheim — Rasmus Ristolainen
Cam York — Jamie Drysdale
Nick Seeler — David Jiricek

Those are certainly some changes! The entire forward group has been shifted around compared to how it was drawn up against the Devils on Thursday and let’s just hope that it gives them a bit of a lift. But ultimately, these changes make sense and we do have some optimism.

Will the new Flyers lineup provide some sort of spark?

Starting at the top, if we are right to assume that this lineup is in order, putting Christian Dvorak as first-line center makes us remember the start of last season, and Matvei Michkov is certainly deserving of the top spot. Through the first two games, it really has just been Michkov who has been consistently solid in the top half of the rink. He’s been making passes no one else is, he’s been looking for scoring chances as everyone else is deferring to their linemates — he has just been very good. Whether these performances are purely out of spite is still to be determined, but we’re loving his start either way and clearly so is Tocchet.

We’ve seen Michkov and Travis Konecny with a slower veteran center work in the past — their trio with Sean Couturier two years ago was some of the best hockey they played — and now we’re going to see it again.

Trevor Zegras is sticking down the middle and with regular linemate Owen Tippett but now they’re seen with Carl Grundstrom to provide just something else. Grundstrom isn’t anything special but he can at least maybe go on a similar shooting percentage hot streak like he did last year partnered up with two offensive players. It is probably the line that has the largest spectrum of potential performance.

Meanwhile, Porter Martone is given a new opportunity to try and get anything going. The rookie has been basically invisible through the Flyers’ first two games and now he’s being handed perhaps the most stable duo on the roster. Tyson Foerster and Noah Cates together is a big, giant, structured playdriving machine that can lead to very good results. Their line with Bobby Brink dominated teams. So now, they get a player so much more talented than Brink (we still love him, though) and someone who can take advantage of all the space they can create in the offensive zone. Tocchet is handing Martone a chance to thrive.

The fourth line has a new member in Alex Bump and it’s worrying. Bump has been even more invisible than Martone and the 22-year-old winger is really at risk of losing his spot on the roster if this continues for the next week or two. Now, he’s been demoted to the fourth line since others have earned the spot above him, like Grundstrom.

If we want to spin it with some optimism, Sean Couturier is a great center to play with and Noel Acciari is showing some jump in the early season. There is some energy and smarts there; so maybe Bump can take advantage of that and be the primary scorer on that line instead of playing with some like Michkov.

David Jiricek gets a chance with the Flyers

The only change on the blue line that we’ll see is David Jiricek coming in for Simon Benoit after the physical extra defenseman didn’t show much of anything at all.

Jiricek is going to make his season debut on Saturday night and will hopefully have his offense outweigh any bad defensive reads, like he is prone to have. But it is interesting that when the team was working on their power play at morning skate, the units stayed the same. Meaning, Cam York is being given the role on the second unit instead of Jiricek.

Flyers’ power play units:

Drysdale, Michkov, Zegras, Foerster, Martone

York, Konecny, Tippett, Cates, Bump

— Jordan Hall (@JHallNBCS) October 3, 2026

There could be a variety of reasons. They might just be looking for consistency in the units and in the strategy. Since having two players like Drysdale and York who would be more distributors compared to Jiricek, who would be firing off shots from the point as often as possible, would do exactly that. And, it might be handedness since York is a lefty and Jiricek is a righty, so however they are set up for that second unit, would change if Jiricek was included.

It’s a mystery but Tocchet did say before the season that they are going to stay committed to that first power-play unit even if they end up being really bad. It could just be exactly that.

Let’s see if these changes do anything against the Hurricanes. Or if we want to be extra optimistic, that these changes are given more of a chance beyond Saturday night since the Flyers are most likely losing against the reigning champions.