5 THINGS: Flyers vs. Coyotes

Returning home briefly from a three-game road trip, Alain Vigneault's Philadelphia Flyers (4-2-1) host Andre Tourigny's Arizona Coyotes (0-8-1) on Tuesday evening. Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. ET (NBCSP, 97.5 The Fanatic).

The Flyers went 2-1-0 on their road trip through Western Canada. Backstopped by strong goaltending and some opportunistic goal scoring, the Flyers skated to a 5-3 win in Edmonton last Wednesday and then to a 2-1 win in Vancouver despite getting into penalty trouble. On Saturday, a heavy-legged Flyers team slogged to a 4-0 shutout loss at the hands of the Calgary Flames. Following Tuesday's game against the Coyotes, the Flyers go on the road to play the archrival Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday and the Washington Capitals on Saturday.
Here are five things to watch against Arizona:
1. Minor 5-on-5 tweak, significant PP unit shuffling.
At Monday's practice in Voorhees, there was one adjustment to the projected line combinations, with Nicolas Aube-Kubel back in the top-12 rotation after being a healthy scratch in Vancouver and Calgary and Patrick Brown as the 13th forward.
The more significant shuffling of personnel came on the power play. Keith Yandle was moved down to the second unit with Ivan Provorov playing the point on PP1.Cam Atkinson also moved up to PP1 with James van Riemsdyk on the second unit. In terms of positional alignment, the PP was arranged as follows. On PP1, Provorov was at the point with Claude Giroux on the right side, Atkinson on the left, Sean Couturier at netfront and Travis Konecny in the slot. on PP2: Yandle was at left-to-center point, Derick Brassard on the left side, van Riemsdyk at netfront, Rasmus Ristolainen on the right side (right point sliding down to the right circle) and Joel Farabee in the slot.
The Flyers went just 1-for-10 on the power play during the recent three-game road trip after going 4-for-11 on the four-game homestand that opened the schedule. Thus, Vigneault and power play coach Michel Therrien shuffled the personnel deck and figure to at least start Tuesday's game with the aforementioned combos.
With Ryan Ellis (lower-body injury) still out with Vigneault acknowledged to be the same nagging issue that bothered him in the latter part of the preseason, the Flyers defense pairs at five-on-five will hold from the ones used during the road trip. Vigneault said on Monday that Ellis' issue is taking longer to resolve than initially hoped and, with four games missed at this point, has turned from a day-to-day timeline into a week-to-week scenario. The thought had been prior to the western Canada trip that he had a realistic shot at playing at some point during the trip. Otherwise, Ellis would not have made the road trip with the team. On Monday, Ellis skated with the rehabbing Kevin Hayes (IR, abdominal muscle surgery) along with Danny Briere.

Carter Hart deserved a better fate in the Calgary game after holding the game scoreless after the first period and to a 1-0 deficit until midway through the third period. Hart won the road trip opener in Edmonton, getting better and better as the game progressed. Likewise, Martin Jones played an excellent game in the win against Vancouver.
Projected Flyers lineup:
28 Claude Giroux - 14 Sean Couturier - 11 Travis Konecny
86 Joel Farabee - 19 Derick Brassard - 89 Cam Atkinson
23 Oskar Lindblom - 21 Scott Laughton - 25 James van Riemsdyk
62 Nicolas Aube-Kubel - 44 Nate Thompson - 17 Zack MacEwen
9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
6 Travis Sanheim - 70 Rasmus Ristolainen
3 Keith Yandle - 24 Nick Seeler
79 Carter Hart
35 Martin Jones
2. Avoiding a "trap game" scenario.
Yandle acknowledged that Flyers players, including himself, were trying to force plays that weren't there to be made when faced with tight checking against Calgary. In the meantime, while Arizona has struggled on just about every front, the Flyers do not want to allow themselves to play down to their opposition and find themselves chasing the game or otherwise scrambling to come away with points from the game.
With the exception of the Calgary game, in which the Flyers never truly got untracked in any period, "showing up on time" has not been a problem for the Flyers in the early going of the season. They've generally played strong first periods. Through the first seven games of the season, the Flyers have an 11-5 goal edge and 74-58 advantage in getting shots on the net. Second periods have been a different story, though, and most of the negative underlying metrics that Flyers' critics in the analytics community cite stem from issues the Flyers had in the middle frame of five of the seven games to date. The bottom-line stats are a 10-6 goal disadvantage in second periods and a whopping 96-52 deficit in shots on goal. Third periods have been fairly even, with the Flyers still holding a positive goal differential (8-5) despite getting outscored 3-0 in the third period in Calgary. Shots on goal are fairly even in the third (70 for the Flyers, 75 for opponents over the seven games).

One problem that's reared its head in multiple games this season -- a home win over Boston being the exception, with Philly only taking one minor penalty -- has been a tendency for the Flyers to take too many penalties in general and too many avoidable ones in particular. Entering this game, the Flyers have already been shorthanded 30 times (the most penalties-per-game in the league thus far). The PK has been improved overall in the early going, and is still at 80 percent even after giving up two Calgary PPGs last game -- but has been put to work too often. There can be a cumulative wear-down effect when that happens, and excessive penalties seem to take the Flyers out of their line rotation flow in a home loss to Florida as well as adding up in the Edmonton and Vancouver wins that preceded the team's all-around clunker in Calgary.
Entering this game, Arizona is in the red just any way the games to date are sliced and diced statistically: They've been outscored across every period: 9-4 in first periods, an astounding 16-2 in second periods and 13-7 in third periods. They've also been outshot in every period: a cumulative 94-67 in first periods, 103-84 in second periods, and 89-71 in third periods. The power play clocks in at 2-for-25 overall (8.0 percent, ranked 31st in the NHL) and just 1-for-16 thus far on the road. The Coyotes penalty kill has been disastrous at 17-for-29 (58.6 percent, ranked last in the 32-team league). Arizona has also been doubled up on goals at 5-on-5, scoring 11 but yielding 22.
3. Giroux chasing franchise history
Claude Giroux is unlikely to tie or break Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Clarke's franchise record for career regular season power play points (333) in Tuesday's game against the Coyotes but he is getting close. With 329 career regular season power play points, Giroux is just four points on the man advantage away from matching Clarke's total. It is also worth noting that Clarke played in 1,144 regular season games (also a franchise record) while Giroux enters this game with 950 games played.
In terms of even-strength points, Clarke has 521 in his regular season career. He's 17 away from tying Brian Propp for third in franchise history. Clarke's franchise record 810 even strength points for his career is probably untouchable. Fellow Hockey Hall of Famer and longtime Clarke linemate Bill Barber is second in franchise history with 552 even strength points. Barber's mark is certainly within reach for Giroux.
4. Beyond enemy lines: Arizona Coyotes
Tuesday's game marks a "homecoming" of sorts for former Flyers defenseman Shayne Gostisbehere. The offensive-minded blueliner, who leads the Coyotes thus far with five points (0g,5a) over the team's nine games to date,will play his first career game against his longtime team. Gostisbehere had outstanding seasons in his rookie year (2015-16) and third NHL campaign. His other seasons were marked by inconsistency and/or injuries. However, when he's healthy and on top of his game, Gostisbehere can be a positive difference-maker. His latter-season play in 2020-21 amid a highly disappointing season for the Flyers showed hints that he was recovering his form.
Right now, though, it's hard to point to any significant positives with the Coyotes' play to date except the work in net of 25-year-old Karel Vejmelka. With Carter Hutton (0-2-0, 7.76 GAA, .741 SV%) on injured reserve, Vejmelka has been keeping his team in games (2.63 GAA, .920 save percentage) in his seven appearances despite being saddled with a record of 0-5-1. On Sunday, Vejmelka kept his winless team close against the undefeated Carolina Hurricanes (8-0-0) in a 2-1 heartbreaker that saw his 37-save performance go to waste after a late power play goal by Carolina put them on top to stay. Last Friday, Vejmelka stopped 31 of 32 shots from the dangerous Washington Capitals attack but the Coyotes got shut out. A John Carlson power play goal and a late empty-netter by Alex Ovechkin sent the Coyotes down to a 2-0 loss.
Goals have been extremely hard for the Coyotes to come by so far, and they've hemorrhaged opposing shots and chances. After a big breakout season in 2020-21, the Coyotes top defenseman Jakub Chychrun (son of Flyers Alumni defenseman Jeff Chychrun. who played in Philadelphia from the late 1980s to early 1990s) has struggled mightily along with the entire team. Averaging a hefty 25 minutes of ice time per game across all manpower situations, Chychrun's numbers reflect just how tough it's been not only for himself but for the club as a whole. He's still looking for his first point of the season (after piling up 18 goals and 41 points from the back end in 56 games last year). The player's minus-15 traditional plus-minus reflects everyone's struggles, and not just his own.
Forwards Clayton Keller (three goals) and Lawson Crouse (two) are the only Arizona players who have tallied more than one goal through the first nine games played. The team is also riddled with injuries, with the likes of Hutton, Connor Timmins and Ryan Dzingel on injured reserve.
Sunday's game against Carolina marked the Coyotes' third game in four nights. They had an off-day on Monday.
5. Players to watch: Provorov and Keller
Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov has played quite well overall in the early season.Even without Ellis in the lineup, Provorov has elevated his game from an inconsistent showing last season (despite winning the Barry Ashbee Trophy somewhat by default). One thing he hasn't been doing -- but hasn't been necessary yet with the way the team as a whole was scoring until the end of the road trip -- is putting up points. The move to put him back on the top power play unit, where he's played extensively the last two seasons, is an interesting one.
Keller, 23, is a dynamic talent whose early season play has been spotty despite his three goals and four points. The seventh overall pick of the 2016 NHL Entry Draft, Keller has racked up eight points (2g, 6a) in six career games against the Flyers. He's notched at least one point in all six games he's played vs. Philadelphia so far in his career.