Flyers Seek Revenge on Kraken
By Scott Cole
If you are a Philadelphia sports fan, this past Sunday sucked. Before the Eagles lost a heartbreaking Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs, the Flyers lost to the Seattle Kraken, 4-3, after a pitifully pathetic performance. The Flyers travel out west for the start of a four-game road trip. During their last homestand, against most of these same teams, Philly went 1-2-1. Can they do better during their Canadian road trip?
Their first stop is Seattle. The same team that they lost to on Sunday night.
Philadelphia Flyers
Record: 22-23-10 (54 points, 7th in Metro)
Eighteen shots. That’s all the shots that the Flyers were able to muster against a team that has given up more goals than the Flyers. Despite Seattle’s offensive prowess (6th in the league), they were not able to crack through their relatively weak defense. And even then, Philadelphia scored three goals on just 18 shots. Imagine if they had 30 shots! Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
James van Riemsdyk scored one of the goals. If he keeps this up, his trade value goes up. There is a lot of trade chatter around him as the Jets, Knights, and Wild are all keeping tabs on him. There are also rumors that Carolina may be interested if they can’t get Timo Meier. Either way, if he plays better, it will help the team out.
Speaking of helping the team out, Kevin Hayes has been on a little hot streak while Travis Konecny has not. Once TK gets rolling again, you will quickly see the fortunes of this team change.
Flyers Projected Lineup
Kevin Hayes — Noah Cates — Owen Tippett
James van Riemsdyk — Morgan Frost — Travis Konecny
Joel Farabee — Scott Laughton — Wade Allison
Nicolas Deslauriers — Patrick Brown — Kieffer Bellows
Ivan Provorov — Cam York
Travis Sanheim — Rasmus Ristolainen
Nick Seeler — Tony DeAngelo
Carter Hart
Seattle Kraken
Record: 30-18-6 (66 points, 3rd in Pacific)
Seattle was on a three-game losing streak before they beat Philly. Then they lost their next game, in OT, to the Jets. Their offense is sputtering right now and it is so very annoying that they defeated us with just 21 shots. But it isn’t the number of shots you take, it is how accurate they are. You can score the same amount of goals in three shots as you can with thirty.
One bright spot in that game was that heroic rookie center Matty Beniers was held pointless and limited to just one shot on goal. However, he won seven of the twelve faceoffs. Faceoffs are a fundamental thing that the Flyers need to work on. Seattle won 56% of the faceoffs in the last game. For the season, the Flyers are a measly 45.7%
Kraken Projected Lineup
Jared McCann — Matthew Beniers — Jordan Eberle
Jaden Schwartz — Alexander Wennberg — Brandon Tanev
Eeli Tolvanen — Yanni Gourde — Oliver Bjorkstrand
Ryan Donato — Morgan Geekie — John Hayden
Vince Dunn — Adam Larsson
Jamie Oleksiak — William Borgen
Carsen Soucy — Justin Schultz
Philipp Grubauer
Where, When, and How to Watch/Listen
Time: 10:00 PM
Where: Climate Pledge Arena
Watch: NBC Sports Philadelphia, ESPN+
Radio: 97.5 FM
Live Stream: FuboTV
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