The Philadelphia Flyers are set to face the Arizona Coyotes for the final time of the 2019-20 regular season.
Suffering a 5-4 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in their last contest, the Philadelphia Flyers will wrap up another season series with a Western Conference team as they’ll take on the Arizona Coyotes at the Gila River Arena. If you can recall, the Yotes took the first meeting between the two sides back in Philadelphia, riding the currently-injured Darcy Kuemper‘s hot hand all of the way to a 3-1 W. The Orange and Black will now aim to split the series with the Pacific Division squad while trying to avoid their fourth straight loss to Arizona, as well.
One way the Flyers can give themselves the best chance to get back into the win column is to maaaaaybe play better defensively. Philadelphia have allowed at least five goals in three of their last four games, combining for a total of 17 tallies during that span. Though this is already pretty worrisome in itself, what makes it more concerning is that neither of those two of those three teams wasn’t considered all that good offensively coming into each of those games.
I get that the Flyers were struggling a bit on the road before this trip, but you still expect them to earn more than one win over the likes of San Jose, Anaheim, and Los Angeles and not cough up a whole lot of goals. I guess I’m asking for a little too much positivity for the Flyers due to the fact that they still are the Flyers. Nothing can ever be perfect with this hockey team, never. Anyways, the stats say Arizona isn’t all that great in the attacking zone, but Philly can’t underestimate them and have to tighten up in front of the crease and slot.
Flyers Betting Odds
Courtesy of the Action Network, the Flyers were a +110 on the MoneyLine as of this morning while the Coyotes were a -135. This is likely due to how poorly Philadelphia’s played on the road this season and how they’ve lost three of their last four contests coming into tonight.
Flyers Projected Lineup
Here are the Flyers projected lines and defensive pairings for tonight, per Daily Faceoff:
Claude Giroux–Sean Couturier–Jakub Voracek
James van Riemsdyk–Kevin Hayes–Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee–Scott Laughton–Tyler Pitlick
Michael Raffl–Mikhail Vorobyev–Chris Stewart (AV said it’s possible Nicolas Aube-Kubel could slide in for Stewie this evening)
Shayne Gostisbehere–Justin Braun
Coyotes Projected Lineup
Here are the Coyotes projected lines and defensive pairings, also per Daily Faceoff:
Taylor Hall–Christian Dvorak–Conor Garland
Clayton Keller–Carl Soderberg–Nick Schmaltz
Lawson Crouse–Derek Stepan–Phil Kessel
Michael Grabner–Brad Richardson–Christian Fischer
Oliver Ekman-Larsson–Jason Demers
Puck drop is set for 8 pm EST. You can watch the game on NBC Sports Philadelphia and Fox Sports Arizona.