In the third game of a five-game road trip, Lindy Ruff's Dallas Stars (29-27-10) are in Pennsylvania to take Craig Berube's Philadelphia Flyers (28-26-13) on Tuesday night. Game time is 6:00 p.m. CDT. The game will be televised locally on Fox Sports Southwest Plus.
A full game preview with both teams' outlooks is available on today's
Flyers blog.
The Stars and Flyers are interesting study of contrasts and similarities.
A big reason why Philly is on the distant periphery of the Eastern Conference wildcard case -- after being less than 15 seconds away on Saturday afternoon from closing within two points of Boston -- is that team hemorrhages opposition power play goals on the road (69.8 percent). This has heavily contributed to the Flyers' 9-18-7 road record.
Yielding two power play goals to the Bruins, including Brad Marchand's game-tying goal with 14.1 seconds remaining on the third period clock, served to haunt the Flyers in what turned into a 3-2 overtime loss and a three-point swing in the standings.
The Flyers looked like a haggard team on Sunday as they went down to a 5-2 loss in New Jersey punctuated by yielding a 3-on-2 shorthanded goal, a 2-on-0 breakaway goal and a "conventional" breakaway goal, as well as yet another power play goal on a shot that may have deflected off a Philadelphia penalty killer.
As such, Dallas may be catching the Flyers at a good time. With that said, Philly has been a very different club on home ice -- where they are 19-8-6 with one of the NHL's top special teams indexes including an 83.3 percent penalty kill -- than they have on the road.
Incredibly, Flyers' star center Claude Giroux has gone the entire 2014-15 season to date without scoring an even strength goal on home ice. Philadelphia'a team captain has done plenty of damage -- both of the goal-scoring and assist varieties -- on power plays at home season.
The duo of Giroux and Jakub Voracek, which had been consistently dominant together during the first half of the season, hit an offensive dry spell after the All-Star break. As such, Berube eventually broke them up for a spell at five-on-five. The two players are the backbone of what is an excellent top power play unit with Wayne Simmonds as the net-front forward, Mark Streit atop the umbrella and Brayden Schenn working the corners and sliding to near the hash marks.
There is a severe drop off from the Flyers' first power play unit to the secondary unit. Even when circumstances -- such as a long shift for Giroux leading up to a Philadelphia power play -- dictate that the second unit get more than cursory ice time, the group struggles to produce chances.
When the Stars played the Flyers back on Oct. 18, the top Dallas power play unit scored an almost identical pair of back-door goals with Trevor Daley pinching into the right circle to one-time shots into the net. Daley is out with a knee injury right now, but it would not be surprising if the Stars look for a similar puck rotation, especially if John Klingberg (questionable with a minor knee injury) is able to play.
Although Berube frequently insists that his troops are good at being aware of defensemen coming up on the play as trailers, the Flyers seem by the eyeball test -- I have not seen official stats in this regard or crunched the numbers myself -- to yield more goals to opposing defensemen than most teams around the NHL. Let's put it this way: It would not be shocking if one of Alex Goligoski or Jason Demers scores his fourth goal of season even if Klingberg doesn't play or is held off the board.
One area of strength for the Flyers, pretty much ever since his arrival on the team, has been the goaltending of Steve Mason. Forget what his dwindling number of critics say, because none of them see him on a sufficiently regular basis in games and practices. Mason has matured into an excellent NHL goaltender, and has been particularly good at home this season. When he is locked in on his rebound control, he becomes exceptionally tough to beat: quick glove, good feet with excellent lateral movement, fast recoveries, excellent puck handler.
The Flyers' blueline is a much-maligned unit. There are no superstars or true top-pairing defensemen on the squad. The team is also currently missing the resurgent Michael Del Zotto (out for seven to 10 days after an injury in Saturday's game) as well as former Dallas blueliner Nicklas Grossmann (out since getting injured on Feb. 28 and questionable for Tuesday's game with a better chance of returning on Thursday).
As far as the Flyers' defensive issues go -- the Stars can relate to this -- it is really more a matter of teamwide commitment to defense and execution than it is of individual personnel. When the Flyers' forwards move their feet and provide back pressure with good gap control, the Flyers' defensemen suddenly don't seem quite so bad. For most of the Flyers' defensemen, less is usually more.
Getting Philly spread out on its gaps is the number one key for the Stars to defeat the Flyers. The Stars love to attack with speed on breakouts and counterattacks off turnovers. In terms of defending against the Flyers, it is imperative that the Stars force Philly to chip pucks in deep and try to recover them; the current-day Flyers are not nearly as good in this area as most folks typically associate with Flyers teams. The current Flyers don't grind out enough goals. Most of the team's non-power play goals come off the rush. Apart from Simmonds, it is actually some of the supporting cast players, such as Chris VandeVelde and Michael Raffl, who do the best job at scoring gritty-but-good goals.
Although the Stars will have to pay close attention to Giroux and Voracek, Simmonds is the type of player who has given Dallas fits this season. The Stars defensemen do not box out very well, and Simmonds is fearless about going to the net.
Dallas Stars Blogger • 
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