Hidden Stat II: The Flyers are the first team in NHL history to qualify for the playoffs after facing a point deficit of at least nine points 60 games into the regular season, per NHL Stats.<\/p>\n
Getting to know the Flyers<\/p>\n
Projected lines (from Friday\u2019s practice)<\/p>\n
Tyson Foerster – Trevor Zegras – Owen Tippett<\/p>\n
Travis Konecny – Christian Dvorak – Porter Martone<\/p>\n
Denver Barkey – Noah Cates – Matvei Michkov<\/p>\n
Luke Glendening – Sean Couturier – Garnet Hathaway<\/p>\n
Travis Sanheim \/ Rasmus Ristolainen<\/p>\n
Cam York \/ Jamie Drysdale<\/p>\n
Nick Seeler \/ Emil Andrae<\/p>\n
Goalies: Dan Vladar, Samuel Ersson<\/p>\n
Potential scratches: Garrett Wilson, Carl Grundstrom, Noah Juulsen<\/p>\n
Injured Reserve: Rodrigo Abols (fractured ankle), Nikita Grebenkin (upper body)<\/p>\n
The Flyers capped off the regular season by signing their No. 6 pick from the 2025 draft, Porter Martone, to an entry-level contract. Martone responded by putting up 10 points (four goals, six assists) in his first nine NHL games. He could be noticeable during this season for his size\u2014 he\u2019s listed by the Flyers at 6-foot-3\u2014 and his habit of posting up in front of the net.Dan Vladar is likely to get the start in net against the Pens. He\u2019s coming off a month of April during which he posted a 5-1-0 record, .921 save percentage and 1.81 goals against average.Rasmus Ristolainen, who is in his 13th NHL season, is set to make his playoff debut tonight with the Flyers.<\/p>\n
Regular season stats Take a closer look at the Flyers\u2019 18-7-1 run since returning from the Olympic break, and there seem to be some clear issues with this team. Here are some stats from the Flyers over that span<\/a>:<\/p>\n Power play: 14.9 percent (30th in NHL)Penalty kill: 74.0 percent (26th)Shots per game: 25.1 (27th)Goals per game: 3.00 (21st)<\/p>\n But here\u2019s where they excel:<\/p>\n Shots against per game: 25.0 (5th fewest in NHL)Goals against per game: 2.38 (3rd fewest)<\/p>\n The Athletic\u2019s Kevin Kurz<\/a> provided a look at some of the Flyers\u2019 midseason defensive changes in early March. As written by Kurz:<\/p>\n \u201cA big part of it is just energy,\u201d said Cam York. \u201cWe want to be as aggressive as we can in the (defensive) zone. I think the time off just let us refresh a little bit, mentally and physically. That goes a long way being able to defend hard and close out time and space for the other guys.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCaptain Sean Couturier said: \u2018I think we\u2019re just harder to play against by being more aggressive, taking away time and space.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cThat aggressiveness that York and Couturier mentioned is by design. Tocchet has attempted to simplify the Flyers\u2019 defensive zone structure, even going so far as to move away a bit from the standard zone defense that he\u2019s known for implementing in previous head-coaching stops.\u201d<\/p>\n The Flyers don\u2019t always get a lot of run support, so they\u2019ve relied in large part on this shutdown defense at even strength during their late-season climb into the playoff picture. The Penguins\u2019 ability to solve this could be key to taking control early in the series.<\/p>\n Projected lines (from Thursday and Friday\u2019s practice<\/a>)<\/p>\n Egor Chinakhov – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust<\/p>\n Tommy Novak – Rickard Rakell – Evgeni Malkin<\/p>\n Elmer Soderblom – Ben Kindel – Anthony Mantha<\/p>\n Connor Dewar – Blake Lizotte – Noel Acciari<\/p>\n Parker Wotherspoon \/ Erik Karlsson<\/p>\n Ryan Graves \/ Jack St. Ivany<\/p>\n Goalies: Stuart Skinner and Arturs Silovs<\/p>\n Potential Scratches: Ilya Solovyov, Justin Brazeau, Kevin Hayes<\/p>\n IR: Filip Hallander, Caleb Jones (season-ending shoulder surgery)<\/p>\n Connor Dewar has been back at practice after missing the end of the regular season with a lower-body injury. Getting both him and Blake Lizotte back means that the Penguins will be able to reunite the fourth line of Dewar, Lizotte and Noel Acciari that clicked so well earlier this season.Justin Brazeau was the odd man out at practice this week now that Lizotte is back on the fourth line. The Pens also seem to be preparing to try Elmer Soderblom on the third line alongside Ben Kindel.As of Friday\u2019s practice, the Penguins goaltenders hadn\u2019t been told<\/a> who will be starting Saturday\u2019s matchup. Stuart Skinner certainly has the edge in experience after back-to-back conference final appearances with the Edmonton Oilers over the last two seasons.This will mark Erik Karlsson\u2019s first time back in the playoffs since he went to the 2019 Western Conference Finals with the San Jose Sharks. It will also mark Egor Chinakhov\u2019s first postseason action in the league.Both of the NHL\u2019s active leading playoff scorers will be on the ice in Sidney Crosby (201 goals in 180 playoff games) and Evgeni Malkin (180 goals in 177 playoff games). Among active defensemen, only the Tampa Bay Lightning\u2019s Victor Hedman ranks ahead of Kris Letang (90 goals in 149 games).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who: Philadelphia Flyers (43-27-12, 98 points, 3rd place Metropolitan Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (41-25-16, 98 points, 2nd place…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3264,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-170411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-game-preview","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170411","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=170411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>There are a few pieces of Flyers history on this stat sheet. Matvei Michkov is the first Flyers player since Simon Gagne in 2001 to start out his Flyers career with consecutive 20-goal seasons, per NHL Stats<\/a>.Trevor Zegras also scored 26 goals in his first season with the Flyers, the most by any first-year player with the franchise since Wayne Simmonds in 2012, per NHL Stats.<\/p>\n