Highlights Beyond Highlights: Sept. 28 vs. Bruins

Matvei Michkov now has three goals and three assists in three preseason games after his game-winning overtime goal. Those are the plays that show up in your social media feeds. This one should be there as well, if you want to put it there. The Flyers are on the power play and Michkov is well-below the goal line – his feet are actually below the back of the net – and three of the four Boston PKers have him in jail. There’s nowhere for him to go, right? Well, hockey pucks are only three inches wide, and that space between Joonas Korpisalo’s stick and his pad is at least eight inches wide… plenty of room! So let’s go there.

The next two come from forwards who are going to give Flyers general manager Daniel Briere some very difficult decisions to make. Jett Luchanko is trying his best to become the youngest Flyer in franchise history. Here, he nearly finds Bobby Brink with a fantastic diagonal feed that would have made it if it didn’t just happen to hit a Boston stick shaft.

Flyers associate coach Brad Shaw summed up situations like this in his postgame media availability.

“He finds solutions on the ice,” Shaw said of Luchanko. “When it's starting to unravel, there's certain guys that grab it and figure it out. And he's one of those guys. And to me, there's a huge value in getting those guys. Doesn't matter if they're forwards or D. There's always going to be predicaments that present themselves on the ice. He finds solutions. And I love that part of his game. It points to a long and healthy, fantastically successful career.”

Then there’s Olle Lycksell, who’s taken a massive step forward in this training camp. This is actually a highlight, not a beyond-highlight, but it just illustrates the kind of game Lycksell had on Saturday.

All of a sudden, if you consider Rodrigo Abols and Oskar Eklind to be ticketed for the Phantoms, the Flyers still have 15 forwards for essentially 14 spots with the addition of Michkov and the sudden onset of Luchanko and Lycksell. Just those three alone added to the Flyers forward group makes the future look pretty bright.