My friends, this has all the makings of a legendary game.
The Philadelphia Flyers have lost… nine straight games to start their season. Your Ottawa Senators? A lucky 6-2-0, persisting through a slew of injuries to start the year.
The venue? Xfinity Mobile Arena, home of the Broad Street Bullies and a passionate fanbase that will explode tonight either way. Will it be joy? Or will it be anger. We will find out at 7:00pm EDT.
Sens lines
As a reminder, here’s how the Sens lined up last time out against the Islanders. If Sanderson plays, I imagine he might line up with Jordan Spence in a second-pair role for his first game, before Travis Green resets his defenders into his preferred configuration of Sanderson – Zub, Chabot – Spence.
Today’s alignment #Sens
Will see if Sanderson plays. This is the first time he’s been with the team.
Halliday-Stutzle- Batherson
Burakovsky- Cozens- Giroux
Cousins -Pinto- Amadio
Foegele -Greig- Zetterlund
MacDermid-Hodgson
Chabot -Zub
Sanderson -Spence
Kleven…
— Bruce Garrioch (@SunGarrioch) October 15, 2026
Flyers lines
Here’s how the Flyers have been lining up this week, as they wait for Konecny, Grebenkin, Ristolainen, and York to return from injury. Ristolainen is the closest to returning, and if he plays, it’ll likely be in place of Oliver Bonk.
Flyers lines and pairs (Vladar in net) in pregame warmups:
Barkey – Dvorak – Foerster
Zegras – Couturier – Tippett
Martone – Cates – Michkov
Bunting – Studnicka – Acciari
Sanheim – Bonk
Seeler – Drysdale
Benoit – Jiricek
— Charlie O’Connor (@charlieoconn.bsky.social) 2026-10-13T22:35:11.361ZGame notesI’ve seen some analysis blame the Flyers goaltending for their bad start and I just don’t see the evidence for that. While Dan Vladar had a poor game 1, he’s only given up -2.2 goals more than expected. Joseph Woll is definitely not the problem – he ranks as the league’s ninth best goaltender (4.3 GSAx) coming into tonight’s game. Linus Ullmark? A league-best 7.7 GSAx. The Sens have been “goalie-ing” the other team, not the other way around like last season. What will happen tonight? Outside of Philadelphia’s fourth line, I see skill spread out quite evenly across their other units. Konecny and Grebenkin are big blows, but the Sens got to see Tyson Foerster, Owen Tippett, and Matvei Michkov look dangerous in their earlier meeting this season. Since beating Philadelphia last week, Travis Green has continued to shuffle his lines. I thought Stützle and Greig’s lines looked great against the Islanders, while Dylan Cozens continues to try to find his feet. Claude Giroux always turns up against his former team, so if those two play together tonight, this would be a good time for a big game from #24. If Jake Sanderson plays, I’ll be watching his skating carefully. We know that one of his injuries was a lower-body injury, and all of Sanderson’s game depends on his skating as his elite physical tool. How does it look on retrievals? Does he have the confidence to jump into the rush? Ottawa’s 5-on-5 statistics are near the bottom of the league to start the season, in part because they didn’t have Sanderson and Zub on the ice for ~20+ minutes tilting the ice in their favour. That needs to change now that they’re back.
Regular seasonSenatorsFlyers
Category#Rank#Rank
Goals/GP2.6324th1.2232nd
Goals against/GP2.57th3.5624th
Shots/GP22.829th20.432nd
Shots against/GP2614th33.732nd
Powerplay %13.528th7.731st
Penalty Kill %80.616th82.913th
Corsi % (5v5 SVA)43.3629th38.4832nd
xGF% (5v5 SVA)43.0628th32.8632nd
SenatorsFlyers
CategoryPlayer#Player#
GoalsTim Stützle5Matvei Michkov3
AssistsStützle6Travis Konecny3
PointsStützle11Many players3
ShotsThomas Chabot18Owen Tippett21
TOI/GPChabot26:59Travis Sanheim25:14