UPDATES 10 AM
* The Flyers have recalled Andy Andreoff from the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms and returned Carsen Twarynski to the farm team.
* Carter Hart will start in goal.
* Travis Konecny will return to the Flyers lineup. He is desperately needed right now. TK has been skating for nearly a week but hasn't had the benefit of a practice with the team due to the recent road trip and a team off-day on Monday.
* Tyler Pitlick and Michael Raffl are on the ice with the team during the morning skate. Both are in non-contact jerseys. Raffl is not yet eligible to be activated from LTIR. Scott Laughton will be out until after Christmas and has been place on standard IR.
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GAME 34: FLYERS vs. DUCKS
Looking to move on from a disastrous three-game road trip, Alain Vigneault's Philadelphia Flyers (17-11-5 overall, 10-2-4 home) host Dallas Eakins' Anaheim Ducks (14-15-4 overall, 5-8-2 road) on Tuesday evening. Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. ET.
The game will be televised on NBCSP. The radio broadcast will be on 97.5 The Fanatic with an online simulcast on
Flyers Radio 24/7.
This is the first of two meetings between the teams, and the lone game in Philadelphia. They will rematch in Anaheim on Dec. 29. Last year, the Flyers swept the season series with a 3-2 win in Anaheim (Oct. 30, 2018) and 6-2 win in Philly (Feb. 9). The victory in Anaheim last season stands now as a rather poignant one, because it was Oskar Lindblom setting up Nolan Patrick for a goal with 1:51 left on the third period clock that won the game for the Flyers.
FLYERS OUTLOOK
If nothing else, the past week has shown how quickly things can change, both in hockey and in life. A week ago at this time, the Flyers were unaware that Lindblom was about to be diagnosed with a Ewing sarcoma (a form of bone cancer) in his upper body. Hockey-wise, the team was sitting in third place in the Metro Division, knocking on the door of challenging for second as they embarked on a tough three-game road trip.
Now, here it is Dec. 17. It is hard right now to think about hockey, given the fight for his life that Lindblom must embark upon immediately. Hockey-wise, the Flyers road trip was a disaster.
The Flyers didn't play poorly on Wednesday in Colorado -- in fact, they played rather well over the final 40 minutes after getting dominated in the opening 20 -- but only had a 3-1 loss to show for it. Claude Giroux scored the lone Flyers goal, and Carter Hart deserved a better fate in goal.
On Saturday in Minnesota, the Flyers generated very little offense after an early James van Riemsdyk goal. Hart played well again, but was abandoned by poor defensive play in front of him on two goals against and then finally beaten on a multi-shot attempt scramble for a third. To make matters worse, Philly lost both Tyler Pitlick (concussion) and Scott Laughton (groin) to injury before the game was half over. Just about the only thing the Flyers did well in this game was kill penalties effectively. A long-distance empty netter sealed a 4-1 loss.
Less than 24 hours later, the Flyers were back on the ice in Winnipeg. Philly trailed 2-0 at the the first intermission. An early second period push, including a Matt Niskanen power play goal, put Philly on the brink of pulling even as they had all the momentum. That came to a screeching halt when Joel Farabee was called for an interference major. Winnipeg exploded for two goals on the ensuing power play, and then two more shortly after the teams got back to full strength. Now a manageable 2-1 deficit with an ongoing offensive push was a 6-1 crater with no realistic shot at a comeback.
JVR and Shayne Gostisbehere (with rookie Nicolas Aube-Kubel assisting for his first NHL point) scored after the game was already out of hand. The Flyers lost, 7-3. Starter Brian Elliott went 40 minutes, stopping just 11 of 17 shots. None were soft goals but two were not unstoppable. Hart went the final 20 minutes, getting beaten on a double-deflection power play goal by the Jets (their third PP marker on five man advantages), but otherwise being unscathed on seven shots in garbage time of a 7-3 loss.
Monday was a desperately needed complete off-day for the Flyers. However, in the early evening hours, the NHL delivered yet another blow to the team as the Department of Player Safety announced a three-game suspension for Farabee resulting from the interference major. DOPS often tends to suspend based on play result (Mathieu Perrault sustained a concussion, even though the principle contact was to his chest) and level of public attention (the play got plenty of it).
The late hit on Perrault was born of frustration (he'd missed a half-open net on the earlier power play) and seeking retribution after being mugged in the Minnesota zone. Immediately after being cross-checked by Adam Lowry with no penalty on Winnipeg, Farabee got a burr under his saddles and went right at Perrault. Although he didn't leave his feet or target the head, it was an extremely late hit on a player who had no reasonable expectation of being body-checked with the puck as far gone as it was.
As such, a suspension was inevitable. However, a three-gamer for a 19-year-old rookie with no pre-NHL history of such things was mighty harsh. The injury to Perrault, which turned the interference major into an automatic game misconduct under the NHL's current Rule Book requirements, and the constant replays on NHL Network, Rogers, and the internet turned the supplemental discipline into a severe punishment.
With Farabee serving the first game on Tuesday, the Flyers are now down a staggering seven forwards that were projected or potential NHL starters entering training camp. In two cases, Patrick (migraine disorder) and Lindblom (Ewing sarcoma), it is health related. In four cases -- Travis Konecny (concussion), Michael Raffl (broken right pinky finger), Pitlick and Laughton -- it is due to injury. Farabee's suspension makes eight.
For cap reasons, unless the Flyers place Laughton on long-term injured reserve for a second time this season, they will not have enough cap space available to recall another forward. However, given Laughton's importance to the team, general manager Chuck Fletcher appears reluctant to use LTIR unless it becomes clear that the player will be out for several weeks. On Sunday, the Flyers hurriedly recalled Carsen Twarynski and Aube-Kubel. They arrived in Winnipeg with just enough time to check into the team hotel and get on the team bus to Bell MTS Place.
Finally, a bit of hopeful news: Team leading scorer Konecny has skated multiple times over the past week. He'll need a bonafide practice with the team, but there are hopeful signs that he might return soon.
There is no delicate way to put it: The Flyers need more offensive production from their veteran core group of forwards. They needed some multi-point nights on the trip from the likes of Giroux, Jakub Voracek, Sean Couturier. JVR did score twice on the trip but was part of other mixups that ended up in the Flyers' net. Rookie center Morgan Frost assisted on JVR's early goal in Minnesota and set up a sporadic play here and there but otherwise had a poor all-around trip, especially in the finale in Winnipeg.
Most of the Flyers major team rankings for the season took a big hit during the road trip, including PK after the 2-for-5 in Winnipeg. Individually, Elliott's save percentage took a major dip after the six goals against on 17 shots.
Entering this game, the Flyers have averaged 2.97 goals per game (17th) with allowing 2.85 per game (11th). The power play did score on its lone opportunity in Winnipeg but come in at 18.1 percent (17th) with two shorthanded goal allowed. The PK entered Winnipeg at a third-ranked 85.9 percent and exited at 83.5 percent (8th). The team still ranks 1st in the NHL in faceoff winning percentage (54.2 percent) but had a rough day in the circle in Winnipeg, where they'd entered at 54.6 percent for the season.
All of this is a long-winded way of saying the Flyers outlook boils down to desperately needing a win against Anaheim to right their ship. The team has gone from ahead of Carolina and Pittsburgh in the Metro standings at the start of the trip to three points behind both and having blown their game-in-hand opportunity in Winnipeg when the other two clubs were idle.
DUCKS OUTLOOK
A longtime Western Conference contender, the Ducks are no longer of that caliber. The club has scuffled along this season, periodically stepping up such as their 4-1 road win in St. Louis in mid-November, but never really putting anything sustained together. The Ducks have been decent defensively overall -- not great but respectable -- but have really struggled to score goals with any sort of consistency.
The Ducks are 4-5-1 over their last 10 games. However, Eakins' club is coming off a 4-3 home shootout win over the New York Rangers on Saturday. The game concluded a home-heavy portion of the schedule in late November to mid-December. The team will not return home again for another game until after the league's three-night Christmas break.
Tuesday's game in Philly begins a four-in-six gauntlet in the east. The Flyers game is the front end of a road back-to-back for Anaheim that will shift to New Jersey on Wednesday to play the Devils. The team then faces a weekend Empire State back-to-back on the weekend against the New York Islanders (Saturday) and Rangers (Sunday).
Tuesday's game is a special one for Ducks winger Ondrej Kase and his younger brother, Flyers winger David Kase. Their parents have traveled to Philadelphia from the Czech Republic to witness the game.
Entering this game, the Ducks have averaged 2.58 goals per game (26th) and allowed 2.91 per game (13th). The power play comes in at 13.9 percent (28th) and the penalty kill at 77.9 percent (23rd). The team has won 52.0 percent of their faceoffs (6th).
PROJECTED STARTING LINEUPS (subject to change, will be updated)
FLYERS
28 Claude Giroux - 14 Sean Couturier - 11 Travis Konecny
25 James van Riemsdyk - 13 Kevin Hayes - 62 Nicolas Aube-Kubel
72 David Kase - 48 Morgan Frost - 93 Jakub Voracek
10 Andy Andreoff - 24 Mikhail Vorobyev - 44 Chris Stewart
9 Ivan Provorov - 15 Matt Niskanen
6 Travis Sanheim - 61 Justin Braun
8 Robert Hägg - 53 Shayne Gostisbehere
79 Carter Hart
[37 Brian Elliott]
Power Play 1: Giroux, Couturier, Konecny, Voracek, Gostisbehere
Power Play 2: Hayes, Frost, JVR, Provorov, Niskanen
Scratches: 5 Phil Myers (healthy), 18 Tyler Pitlick (concussion).
NHL Suspension: 49 Joel Farabee (game 1 of 3).
IR: 21 Scott Laughton (groin)
LTIR: 55 Sam Morin (torn ACL, out for season), 23 Oskar Lindblom (Ewing sarcoma, out for season), 12 Michael Raffl (broken right pinky finger), 19 Nolan Patrick (migraines)
DUCKS
29 Devin Shore - 15 Ryan Getzlaf - 29 Ondrej Kase
67 Rickard Rakell - 14 Adam Henrique - 33 Jakob Silfverberg
53 Max Comtois - 34 Sam Steel - 61 Troy Terry
20 Nicolas Deslauriers - 38 Derek Grant - 24 Carter Rowney
47 Hampus Lindholm - 42 Josh Manson
4 Cam Fowler - 6 Erik Gudbranson
32 Jacob Larsson - 44 Michael Del Zotto
36 John Gibson
30 Ryan Miller
Power Play 1: Henrique, Getzlaf, Terry, Fowler, Kase
Power Play 2: Rakell, Grant, Comtois, Lindholm, Silfverberg
Scratches: 5 Korbian Holzer (healthy), 39 Sam Carrick (healthy)
IR: 37 Nick Ritchie (sprained left MCL)
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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