5 THINGS: Flyers @ Islanders
In the final game of a four-game road trip, John Tortorella's Philadelphia Flyers (29-36-13) are in Elmont, NY, to take on Lane Lambert's New York Islanders (40-30-9)
GAME NOTES
The game will be televised on NBCSP. The radio feed with be on 97.5 The Fanatic with an online simulcast on Flyers Radio 24/7.
This is the fourth and final meeting of the season between the teams and the second and final game in New York. The Flyers are 1-2-0 in three games to date against the Islanders: a 5-2 road loss on Nov. 27, a 3-1 home win on Nov. 29 (ending a 10-game winless streak), and a 2-1 home loss on Feb. 6 in the first game after the All-Star break.
The Flyers are 0-4-1 in their last five games and 0-3-0 on their current four-game road trip. Overall, Philadelphia is winless in its last nine road games and 12-19-8 for the season in road games.
The Flyers have allowed four goals in each of the three games on the road trip to date -- a 4-2 loss in Pittsburgh, a 4-2 loss in St. Louis and a 4-1 loss in Dallas -- and have not a lead in any of the games. On the flip side, the team showed resilience in staging comeback bids in third periods of the games against the Penguins and Blues.
Here are five things to watch tonight.
1. Who'll be behind the Flyers bench?
In three of the Flyers' last five games, Tortorella has delegated to an assistant coach the duty of running the game from behind the bench as acting head coach. Brad Shaw did it in two games, while Rocky Thompson did it in St. Louis. Tortorella has coached two of the games, including Thursday's game in Dallas.
With four games remaining in the Flyers' 2022-23 season, Tortorella said he'd give one the games to assistant Darryl Williams.
Tortorella has vehemently insisted that he's not interested in switching organizational roles from head coach to hockey operations president or general manager. He has said that his motivation for watching games from other vantage points is three-fold:
1) It provides a real-time opportunity to discuss the team and player personnel with interim GM Danny Briere ahead of their end-of-season meetings.
2) It offers hands-on NHL head coaching development opportunities for the assistants, since the duties and player interactions as a head coach are different from those of an assistant.
3) By this time of year, especially with the team destined to miss the playoffs, Tortorella said that players get tired of hearing the head coach's voice in their ear every game. Having the messaging come from someone else could be beneficial.
2. Fighting through fatigue, lack of practice
Tonight's tilt marks the Flyers' sixth game -- across six different cities, two times zones, and a round-trip crossing of the Canada and United States border -- in the span of 10 nights.
All teams have junctures of a given season where their travel schedule gets grueling and the total number of games played in that span pile up quickly. Tortorella announced ahead of the current road trip that the team would not hold any more practices this season; just optional morning skates on non-consecutive game days.
Lack of practice time can have a cumulative effect, particularly on goaltenders. Coming back into the Flyers' lineup on Thursday from a five-game absence due to a lower-body injury, Carter Hart was not at his best in the Dallas game. He wasn't awful but it also wasn't a game where he was at peak performance. On a team-wide basis, energy was noticeably lacking for the first two periods of the game in St. Louis. In Dallas, the team sagged early in the second period and a 1-1 tie became a 4-1 deficit before the Flyers even knew what had hit them.
After tonight's game against the Islanders, the Flyers will be right back in action on Easter Sunday, hosting the President's Trophy winning Boston Bruins: Game No.7 in 11 nights. It's gut-check time for the duration of the weekend for the Flyers.
3. Attention to Detail
Part and parcel to the topic of battling through mental and physical fatigue successfully this time of year is to look at whether a club is making things harder on itself through unforced errors. Many of the Flyers' recent losses have been marked by self-inflicted wounds.
A bad line change by the Flyers led to a crucial goal for the Sabres in the April 1 game. On April 2 in Pittsburgh, the Flyers cost themselves a would-be goal with a careless goalie interference infraction that caused the goal to be disallowed. On April 4 in St. Louis, an unforced turnover deep in the defensive zone led directly to an early deficit. Finally, in Dallas, the Flyers paid the price for a too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty and a botched goalie-to-D puck exchange that played directly into two goals for the Stars.
The Flyers are a team that operates with a narrow margin for error. Attention-to-detail lapses such as the ones that have proven costly in April can dig a hole from which the team is incapable of climbing out.
4. Flyers Line Play
The Flyers have done a lot of line juggling of late including player recalls from the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms, three different starting goals (Hart, Felix Sandström and Samuel Ersson), amd several games featuring 11 forwards and seven defensemen while others have seen them go with the more traditional 12F/6D.
Up front, for the last couple games, the Flyers have primarily opted to deploy center Noah Cates with wingers Travis Konecny and Owen Tippett. Last game, Kevin Hayes started on Morgan Frost's right wing. In the meantime, defenseman Ronnie Attard played well in a two-game recall from the Phantoms but has since been returned to Lehigh Valley for the rest of the season. Tony DeAngelo was a healthy scratch in Dallas.
Today, the Flyers will hold an optional morning skate at 11:30 a.m. EDT at UBS Arena. Tortorella will address the media beforehand. The projected lineup below, based primarily on Thursday's starting combinations, is subject to change.
74 Owen Tippett - 49 Noah Cates - 11 Travis Konecny
86 Joel Farabee - 48 Morgan Frost - 13 Kevin Hayes
25 James van Riemsdyk - 21 Scott Laughton - 57 Wade Allison
44 Nicolas Deslauriers 58 Tanner Laczynski - 22 Brendan Lemieux
9 Ivan Provorov - 45 Cam York
6 Travis Sanheim - 55 Rasmus Ristolainen
24 Nick Seeler - 77 Tony DeAngelo
79 Carter Hart
[32 Felix Sandström]
Available: 20 Kieffer Bellows, 61 Justin Braun
5. Behind Enemy Lines: New York Islanders
The Islanders are coming off a 6-1 home win on Thursday against three-time defending Eastern Conference champion Tampa Bay. Entering today's game, the Islanders have the slightest of holds on a wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference playoff chase:
Upper wildcard: Florida (79 GP, 89 points, 35 regulation wins)
Lower wildcard: Islanders (79 GP, 89 points, 34 regulation wins)
Below the cutoff: Pittsburgh (79 GP, 88 points, 30 regulation wins)
The Islanders scoring leaderboard this season features mainly familiar veteran names at the top: Brock Nelson (33 goals, 72 points), mid-season acquisition Bo Horvat (38 goals, 67 points), Mathew Barzal (14 goals. 37 assists, 51 points) and Anders Lee (27 goals, 49 points). Barzal is currently on IR.
Ilya Sorokin has had an outstanding season goal for the Islanders: 59 GP, 29-21-7, 2.38 GAA, .924 save percentage, five shutouts. The Islanders have also gotten solid play from veteran Semyon Varlamov (29 GP, 11-9-2, 2.70 GAA, .913 SV%, two shutouts).
Projected lineup (subject to change):
27 Anders Lee - 14 Bo Horvat - 10 Simon Holmstrom
18 Pierre Engvall - 29 Brock Nelson - 21 Kyle Palmieri
11 Zach Parise - 44 Jean-Gabriel Pageau - 20 Hudson Fasching
17 Matt Martin - 53 Casey Cizikas - 15 Cal Clutterbuck
3 Adam Pelech - 6 Ryan Pulock
25 Sebastian Aho - 24 Scott Mayfield
4 Samuel Balduc - 8 Noah Dobson
30 Ilya Sorokin
40 Semyon Varlamov
