With the Philadelphia Flyers heading out west for the next four games and the team being depleted with COVID protocols and injuries, this becomes yet another critical juncture of their season. Then again, when you only claim two points out of a possible 20, every mini home-stand, every road trip, and every week becomes that much more important if they want to stay afloat in the Wild Card race, at the very least.
Not having played since the 18th of December, the Flyers had their final two games before the Christmas break postponed due to the COVID outbreak in the NHL. The league was supposed to start right back up on the 27th but pushed it one more day just to have several more games postponed. For the time being, the Flyers are still scheduled to play Wednesday and Thursday against the Seattle Kraken and the San Jose Sharks, respectively.
The Flyers already had Kevin Hayes, Max Willman, and Morgan Frost on the COVID list, until they added Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis on the 21st and 24th respectively. Yesterday they added Carter Hart, Scott Laughton, and Derick Brassard as the Flyers lineup just gets less and less by the day. At one point, it looked like the Flyers might avoid the cases as they were one of the few teams without any, but COVID waits for no one it seems.
Due to the massive outbreak, the NHL has granted the taxi squad to return for all 32 teams and the Flyers recently called up Jackson Cates, Gerry Mayhew, and Felix Sandstrom. Willman came off the COVID list on Monday, and the Flyers activated Frost and Hayes earlier today and both will find their way into the lineup.
As of Monday morning their lines and pairings at practice looked like the following:
Joel Farabee – Patrick Brown – Travis Konecny
Oskar Lindblom – Claude Giroux – Cam Atkinson
Jackson Cates – Gerry Mayhew – James van Riemsdyk
Max Willman – Nick Seeler – Zach MacEwan
Ivan Provorov – Justin Braun
Travis Sanheim – Rasmus Ristolainen
Keith Yandle – Kevin Connaunton
Adding Kevin Hayes and Morgan Frost back into the lineup is of the utmost importance moving forward, especially considering the length and often difficult terrain of a post-Christmas Western road trip.
Their practice lineup on Tuesday looked a lot more like the team we’ll probably see tomorrow night in Seattle:
Joel Farabee – Kevin Hayes – Travis Konecny
Oskar Lindblom – Claude Giroux – Cam Atkinson
James van Riemsdyk – Morgan Frost – Gerry Mayhew
Max Willman – Patrick Brown – Zack MacEwen
Ivan Provorov – Justin Braun
Travis Sanheim – Rasmus Ristolainen
Keith Yandle – Kevin Connauton
With Seattle being added to the fray of the 3 California-based teams, the Flyers find themselves facing some good competition, something that has been lacking out west for a few years. Outside of Seattle’s season (10-17-3), the California trio all have winning records and are playing some good to decent hockey. The Anaheim Ducks find themselves tied for the division lead with the Vegas Golden Knights at 17-9-6, good for 40 points. The Los Angeles Kings are knocking on the door at 14-11-5, as are the San Jose Sharks at 15-14-1.
Martin Jones is going to be tasked to take on the bulk of the four-game trip and could easily get both games of the back-to-back set, considering the back half is his former stomping grounds. The top guns of the Flyers are going to have to play their best stretch of hockey because of how depleted the rest of the lineup is.
The Lindblom-Giroux-Atkinson line has played a few times together, most notably against the New Jersey Devils, where Atkinson scored a hat-trick. Special teams are going to be even more important than ever because 5-on-5 goals could be hard to come by and stopping power plays from scoring goals will always be the key to victory, depleted roster or not.
In saying all that, Mike Yeo has done a better job in 7 games or less than Alain Vigneault did all season. Through the new coaching change, players like Konecny and Lindblom, who were being repressed by Vigneault’s tutelage, have reassumed their previous roles and are playing great hockey, or at least better hockey. The second pair of Ristolainen and Sanheim is proving to be a weapon for the Flyers if they can properly harness it, while waiting on Ryan Ellis to return to Provorov’s side.
Going from a 10-game winless streak to a 5-game point streak is nothing out of the ordinary for this club, but it’s a lot better than the alternative. Sitting at 12-12-5 and only a few points out of the Wild Card race with a few games in hand, this road trip is going to be extremely important if they wish to turn their season around. Also having to take into account that they haven’t played in almost two weeks, fresh legs and quick starts should be atop their list of priorities.
COVID could also play a hand in this road trip as several games are being postponed as we speak around the NHL. So maybe this trip happens, maybe it doesn’t but as of right now, they are still in line to play, depleted or not. Claude Giroux and company have a tall hill to climb, but they will be the first ones to tell you that they can’t start making excuses.
All of this is hearsay until the puck is dropped on Wednesday night and we finally have Flyers hockey returning to our homes.
