Quick Hits: October 18, 2019
1) On Thursday afternoon, the Flyers returned from Edmonton, where the team completed an unsuccessful western Canada trip (0-2-1) the previous night with a 6-3 defeat at the hands of the Oilers. The Flyers will practice at noon on Friday at the Skate Zone in Voorhees.
On Friday morning, the Flyers assigned Connor Bunnaman to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms .
2) On Saturday, the struggling Dallas Stars (1-6-1) pay their annual visit to the Wells Fargo Center. The biggest issue thus far for a Stars team that came within a Game 7 overtime loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues of advancing to the 2019 Western Conference Final has been its inability to finish scoring chances.
The team has just 15 goals to date, including a 1-for-18 spell on the power play to start the season. Team captain Jamie Benn (1g, 1a), Tyler Seguin (2g, 2a), Alexander Radulov (1g, 3a) and John Klingberg (0g, 1a, -7) are all off to slow offensive starts. Sooner or later the Stars will get cranking. The Flyers hope it's not until after the Stars leave town.
One pleasant early-season development for Dallas has been the play of Roope Hintz. The young Finn has been a force -- hard to knock off the puck, diligent in winning battles, and finishing off his chances. The second-year NHLer (third-year pro) has four goals to date after scoring nine a year ago in his rookie year.
A year ago, goaltending was one of the Stars' biggests assets. That will probably be the case again when the team gets on track but so far, neither Ben Bishop (1-4-1, 2.84 GAA, .899) nor Anton Khudobin (0-2-0, 3.59, .877) have been able to eras the chances that develop in front of them.
3) Over the Flyers' first five games, I would say that the team has played with good pace and generated sufficient scoring chances to win three of them, dominated the third period in another winnable match (Vancouver game) and struggled all night to move the puck in Calgary. I don't think the "too much travel" excuse washes to explain what happened in the recent road trip.
In the Vancouver game, a 3-2 shootout loss, the Flyers played a poor first period (their first bad period of the season) but stayed in striking distance and eventually took over the game. Jacob Markström legitimately played a great game in goal for the Canucks. Carter Hart also played very well for the Flyers, especially in OT, but Markström was just a little bit better.
The 3-1 loss in Calgary was the one where the Flyers deserved to get blown out. They were very poor with the puck, unable to exit the defensive zone, navigate the neutral zone or enter the attack zone with any sort of pace. The 12 icings the Flyers took spoke a lot about how the team played.
Even so, there was a 2-on-1 (Travis Konecny and Oskar Lindblom) that could have changed the course of the rest of the game had it been finished by Lindblom. Late in regulation, still trailing 2-1, the Flyers got the puck where they wanted it (lower left slot, off a passout by Claude Giroux) and to the player they wanted (James van Riemsdyk) but the result was a shot attempt that didn't have much on it. David Rittich played well in net for Calgary, but really didn't have to be great, except for the 2-on-1 on which Lindblom double-clutched just enough to let the goalie get over and a rapid three-save sequence on JVR around the net.
I discussed the Edmonton game at length in yesterday's blog. I don't blame Hart at all on the first or fourth Edmonton goals. Both of those were shot from inside the dot by an open shooter, which is a high-danger situation (especially when the shooter on the first goal was Leon Draisaitl). The shot-from-a-cannon third goal by Connor McDavid was probably going to be scored regardless, but Hart's ill-advised poke check attempt gave himself no chance once he came up empty.
4) Dating back to Jan. 14 of last season -- the game when he set a then-career high TOI, and 41 games ago (a statistical half season) -- Flyers left winger Oskar Lindblom has 16 goals and 24 points. Over on the Flyers' official website, I wrote an article yesterday about how his confidence and production have soared in that span:
Oskar Worthy.
5) The new edition of "Therien's Take" on the Flyers' site will run at some point this weekend. Bundy's topic this time around is on the give-and-take of the chirping that takes place on the ice. There are stories about Craig Berube, Herb Brooks and Daymond Langkow in the article. A sneak peak at one section:
I laughed so hard [at a return chirping volley from Luke Richardson to Nashville's Denny Lambert] that Lambert got red in the face. He glared at me.
“Therien, you’re dead! Next shift!”
I laughed even harder. Earlier in Langkow's career, when he was playing for Tampa Bay, he fought Lambert and won decisively, knocking out a tooth or two in the process.
The response: “Sorry, Denny. You don’t get a shot at anyone over 6-feet tall ‘til you take down Langer. We know all about how he beat the [stuffings] out of you.”
This whole time, Daymond had been silent. He looked incredulously at Luke and me as we pulled a Don King – that’s literally what we called it at the time -- and tried to arrange a fight.
“Yo, guys! What the hell?!” Langkow said to Richardson and me.
Luke and I laughed even harder.
6) AHL: The Lehigh Valley Phantoms (1-1-1) return to action on Friday night at the PPL Center when the Binghamton Devils (1-2-1) pay a visit. The Phantoms remain at home on Saturday to play the Springfield Thunderbirds (currently 2-3-0). Thereafter, starting on Oct. 25, Lehigh Valley will head out on its first road trip of the season.
7) With a practice off-day for the Flyers yesterday, I used the time to start working on the November slate of trivia questions that I send to the Flyers upon completion. Typically, in terms of starting coverage preparations for upcoming games, I don't look too far ahead in the schedule. I work on things one week at a time. With the trivia, I try to have it done two weeks to a month ahead of time.
At any rate, in looking at the November game slate, it struck my just how busy the Flyers are going to be next month, and how many tough opponents are in the mix. The Flyers play 16 times in the 30-day month. Along the way, they have three separate sets of 3-in-4s including two where the three games are in three different cities.
During one juncture, the Flyers host Montreal (Nov. 7) and then are in Toronto (Nov. 9) and Boston (Nov. 10) with the Washington Capitals coming to Philly on the other side of it (Nov. 13). The Flyers play Toronto, Carolina and Montreal twice apiece next month and the season series against Chicago (within Oct.), Vancouver and Calgary will all be completed before the start of December.
In short, for those who were lamenting all the travel-driven off-days the Flyers have had in October, you'll soon get your wish: The Flyers have one hell of a gauntlet to navigate in November.
8) Flyers Warriors: Back on Oct. 6, the Philadelphia Flyers Warriors defeated the Carolina Warriors, 7-3, to win the USA Hockey Warrior Classic championship in Las Vegas. That same weekend, 15 other Flyers Warriors players held practice at the Flyers Skate Zone in Pennsauken. The Flyers Warriors have since all gotten back together at the rink to prepare for the challenge of moving onward from exclusively playing fellow fledgling Warrior teams to some of the most established teams in the USA Hockey affiliated program, including the Tier 1 champion Dallas Warriors, as well as non-Warrior teams and events.
The upcoming slate is a work in progress. However, on Nov. 15, the Flyers Warriors will travel to North Carolina to play the Carolina Warriors in something of a rematch from the Warrior Classic championship game. The rosters will change somewhat from the game in Vegas to get more players involved, and the relative experience levels of the players on both sides will be scaled roughly equally to keep the game competitive and fair. The championship game in Vegas was a very competitive and dramatic game.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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