5 Things: Flyers @ Maple Leafs

John Tortorella's Philadelphia Flyers (5-2-2) are in Ontario on Wednesday to play Sheldon Keefe's Toronto Maple Leafs (4-4-2). Game time at Scotiabank Arena is 7:00 p.m. EDT.

This is the first of three meetings between the team this season. The Flyers and Maple Leafs will rematch in Toronto on the afternoon of Dec. 22 and conclude the season series at the Wells Fargo Center on the evening of January 8.
The Flyers enter this game coming off an overtime 1-0 loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday. The Maple Leafs have idle on the schedule for two nights since concluding a rough five-game western road trip with a 4-3 overtime loss to the Anaheim Ducks on Sunday.
Here are five things to follow in this game:
1. Sandström vs. Samsonov
The Flyers had a late night on Tuesday. After playing the Rangers in New York, the team flew to Toronto, cleared customs and checked into their hotel. With Carter Hart having started Tuesday's overtime match, which went 64-plus minutes of game action before a Chris Kreider OT breakaway accounted for the game's lone goal, Felix Sandström is likely to get his third start of the season in Wednesday's game.
Sandström has played fairly well in his two starts to date. He was victimized by loose play in front of him in a 4-3 road loss to the Florida Panthers and had no goal support in a 3-0 defeat (the final goal was an empty netter) by the San Jose Sharks.
Overall, Sandström has stopped 54 of 60 shots (.900 save percentage) across the two games he has played to date.His play might not have quite matched up to Hart's (5-0-2, 2.10 GAA, .943 save percentage in 429 minutes). Nonetheless, Sandström has given his team a chance in both starts this season. The Swedish netminder is still looking for his first career NHL win.
For Toronto, Ilya Samsonov is slated to make his seventh start of the season. Thus far, he's 4-2-0 with a 2.35 goals against average and .920 save percentage in 358 minutes played. The former Washington Capitals netminder allowed four goals on 29 shots in a losing effort on the road against the LA Kings on Oct. 29.
2. Committee members needed
Through the first nine games of the 2022-23 season, the Flyers have been shut out twice. On the flip side, the club has scored at least three goals in each of the other seven games. Tortorella has said all along that the team is going to have to "score by committee" to be successful.
In order to muster enough goals to defeat the offensively gifted Maple Leafs, the Flyers will need to find more goal-scoring sources and point generators in general. The club unexpectedly got three goals from its fourth line in a recent two-game span against Florida and Carolina. That helped temporarily but the bottom line is that more players need to contribute.
Kevin Hayes leads the Flyers with 10 points to date and has been the team's best distributor by far. However, he needs to shoot the puck a little more to keep defenses honest. Hayes has one goal (but nine assists) to date Travis Konecny (four goals, five assists) has been the primary beneficiary of Hayes' playmaking.
Beyond Konecny and Scott Laughton (3g, 0a), no Flyers player has scored more than two goals through the first nine games. Tony DeAngelo leads the defense corps with two goals and seven points (one power play goal, four power play points overall).
Morgan Frost (2g, 1a) notched a pair of opening night goals but is pointless in the last six games. Joel Farabee (2g, 3a) seemed to be settling into an offensive groove last week but has been unable to generate much offensively in the last two games.Noah Cates has continued to play a strong checking game but the move back to left wing has not spurred his offensive game as hoped. Cates is still stuck on one goal (game-winner in Tampa), zero assists and just five shots on goal through nine games.
Both Frost and Wade Allison (2g,1a) have seen their ice times cut significantly by Tortorella over the last week. Allison, who had a goal and an assist in last Saturday's 4-3 overtime loss against Carolina in less than seven minutes of ice time, skated 10:52 against the Rangers on Tuesday.
Claimed off waivers from the New York Islanders last Thursday, Kieffer Bellows has been quiet offensively (one shot attempt, which got blocked) across his two games as a Flyer thus far. Unlike Bellows, players such as Zack MacEwen (2g, 1a) and Nicolas Deslauriers (1g, 2a) are not expected to score but their recent contributions have come in quite useful.
Another recent waiver pickup, Lukas Sedlak has been effective on both sides of the puck for the Flyers thus far as well as strong in the faceoff circle. As a fourth-line center and penalty killer, Sedlak (0g, 2a in five games) is not looked to primarily for
offense but he's been involved in five or six scoring chances to date and had nice assists on Deslauriers and Allison goals against Carolina.
Owen TIppett has looked strong in his three games since coming off injured reserve, showing his combination of good wheels, offensive zone entry prowess on the power play and demonstrating ever-improving backchecking ability.He's posted a goal and an assist over the three games but was involved in several additional chances at both five-on-five and the power play. That's a hopeful sign.
On the blueline, Ivan Provorov is tied with DeAngelo for the most assists (five) among Flyers' defensemen. Provorov is off to a strong two-way start. He is also capable of providing a few goals in the mix, but yet has to tally one through nine games. Travis Sanheim has played well defensively and is also capable of chipping in up ice but he's still looking for his first point of the season. Rasmus Ristolainen, who dealt with preseason injuries that carried over into missing the regular season's first six games. has struggled at times on both sides of the puck since returning three games ago.
The Flyers are going to be without Sean Couturier (back revision surgery) for at least the next three to four months. Cam Atkinson (upper body injury) is week-to-week with a mysterious issue that has kept him off the ice for several weeks and prevented him from any sort of high-tempo skating since the first weekend of training camp. James van Riemsdyk (2g, 3a in six games) had surgery last Friday to repair a broken left index finger.
Bottom line: The Flyers need to find more regular scoring sources beyond Konecny. More regular individual contributors to the "scoring committee" need to step forward.
3. Long change period
Overall this season, the Flyers have been a greatly improved second period team compared to 2021-22. This season, getting off to better starts and scoring first more often (which the club has only done once through nine games) have taken over as the main theme of needed improvements.
However, on Tuesday against a powerful Rangers team, the Flyers played pretty evenly with New York in the first and third periods. Philly had quite a few scoring chances in the third period but could not solve Igor Sheshterkin. Overall, the Flyers' 19 shots on goal were insufficient to adequately test the Rangers' superstar goaltender, but had opportunities in the third period to win the game in regulation.
Where the Flyers ran into trouble on Tuesday was in the second period (plus in sudden death overtime, where they were outshot, 6-0). Those are the long line-change periods, where both teams have to get to the bench further away from their defensive blueline in order to get fresh troops on the ice.
Toronto is another team that is eminently capable of burning an opponent off a bad line change or victimizing an opposing line that gets caught out on a very long shift. On Tuesday, the Flyers also had players who were guilty of over-staying some shifts when there was a chance to change.
Better shift discipline is needed by the Flyers in Toronto, especially in the second period. This would be the case regardless but is imperative in the second game of a back-to-back.
4. Laczynski and Zamula
Flyers right winger/ center Tanner Laczynski (two opening-night assists on Frost goals, no points and limited ice time since the second period of Game 3) missed two games while he was with his wife late last week for the birth of their first child. Laczynski was unavailable in the home games against the Panthers and Hurricanes. He was a coach's decision scratch in New York.
Defenseman Egor Zamula was benched midway through the first period of the Flyers' win against Florida after a couple of glaring turnovers. He returned in the second period but was used sparingly. With RIstolainen returning to play in a six-man rotation (the Flyers dressed seven D against Florida), Zamula was a scratch in the games against Carolina and the Rangers.
One or both of Laczynski and Zamula could dress in Toronto with the Flyers on the back-to-back. The team does not have a morning skate on Wednesday but Tortorella will address the media before the game.
Who would sit for Zamula and/or Laczynski? On the blueline, it might be Nick Seeler who rotates out for the night. For Laczynski, it could be Zack MacEwen if he's still less than 100 percent after missing the latter first period against the Rangers before returning to finish the game. Other possibilities include Bellows, Allison or even Frost (if Laczynski were to dress at center or if Cates were to move back to center again).
5. Behind Enemy Lines; Toronto Maple Leafs
It is hardly uncommon for Eastern Conference teams to struggle during west coast and/or western Canada road trips.The same is true in reverse; prolonged eastern trips can be troublesome for Western Conference after they are annually carved out within the marathon-like regular season schedule.
The Maple Leafs concluded a four-game homestand with a disappointing 4-2 upset loss at the hands of the Arizona Coyotes and then dropped a 4-3 overtime verdict against the Dallas Stars in the final game. During the recent five-game western trip, the Leafs started off with a 4-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets and then 0-2-2 over the rest of the trip.
The Maple Leafs are a team that is hyper-scrutinized not only in the Toronto market itself but across the national Canadian media. For all the top-end talent up, the lack of deep playoff runs and the team's "hockey .500" start to the 2022-23 regular season has many folks in Toronto on edge.
Unsurprisingly, there is heat on Keefe, despite the team's stellar 54-21-7 record last year during the regular season and 35-14-7 the previous year. The team is going to have abundant skeptics because it hasn't been past the Eastern Conference Quarterfinal since losing in the second round to the Flyers back in 2003-04. Keefe is in his fourth season as Maple Leafs' head coach.
Through 10 games, veteran center John Tavares leads the team with 10 points (4g, 6a) along with William Nylander (4g, 6a). Mitchell Marner (2g, 7a) has nine points. Coming off a pair of Rocket Richard Trophies, the 2020-21 Hart Trophy and the 2021-22 Ted Lindsay Award, 25-year-old superstar Auston Matthews has eight points (3g, 5a) assists to date. The expectation for Matthews, though, is for him to match his 60-goal, 106-point pace from last year. On the blueline, Morgan Rielly leads with 7 points to date (0g, 7a).