{"id":169691,"date":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/169691\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T23:01:09","slug":"preview-pittsburgh-penguins-philadelphia-flyers-face-off-for-game-1-of-first-round-of-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/169691\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins, Philadelphia Flyers face off for Game 1 of first round of playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">PITTSBURGH \u2014 This article originally appeared on <a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/\">PGHHockeyNOW.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">A pair of underdogs, supposed to be in the throes of rebuilding, surprised everyone and finished second and third in the Metro Division. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/tag\/pittsburgh-penguins\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Pittsburgh Penguins<\/a> claimed second place and their first playoff appearance since 2022, while the <a href=\"https:\/\/phillyhockeynow.com\/how-the-flyers-can-win-and-lose-the-series-prediction-vs-penguins\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Philadelphia Flyers<\/a> surged to third place and their first playoff appearance since 2020. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The Penguins are 3-4 all-time in a postseason series against the Flyers, but the Penguins have advanced to at least the second round of the playoffs eight times in the 16 playoff runs they\u2019ve had with <a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/tag\/sidney-crosby\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sidney Crosby<\/a> and Evgeni Malkin in the lineup. In five of the 16 runs, the Penguins have gone to at least the Conference Final.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The Penguins have four players who will make their Stanley Cup Playoffs debut: Egor Chinakhov, Ben Kindel, Elmer Soderblom, and Ryan Shea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The Penguins scored seven power-play goals on 18 opportunities (38.9%) during the regular season against the Flyers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/pittsburgh-penguins-philadelphia-flyers-game-1-scouting-reports-lines-how-to-watch\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/pittsburghhockeynow.com\/pittsburgh-penguins-philadelphia-flyers-game-1-scouting-reports-lines-how-to-watch\/\">Click here to read more from PGHHockeyNOW.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PITTSBURGH \u2014 This article originally appeared on PGHHockeyNOW.com. A pair of underdogs, supposed to be in the throes&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1064,41972,1902,76380,4845,73,75,74,1067,76383,76381,8664,62043,76382],"class_list":["post-169691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-ben-kindel","tag-egor-chinakhov","tag-penguins","tag-penguins-vs-flyers","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news","tag-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-pittsburgh-penguins-stanley-cup-playoffs","tag-pittsburgh-penguins-vs-flyers","tag-sidney-crosby","tag-stanley-cup-playoffs","tag-when-is-the-penguins-game"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=169691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}