PHILADELPHIA \u2014 If their first back-to-back, common-opponent games on the same sheet of ice in nearly five years, the last team the Flyers would least want to see twice in a row would have to be Tampa Bay.<\/p>\n
The Flyers are set to play the Lightning at Xfinity Mobile Arena Saturday night, then again Monday night. Not much to worry about there unless you consider the fact that Tampa had won eight straight games and moved back into serious contention in the Atlantic Division.<\/p>\n
In case you\u2019re wondering, the Flyers hadn\u2019t done this same foe for two straight games in the same building thing since May 3-4, 2021 against Pittsburgh, mostly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
At Saturday\u2019s morning skate, Garnet Hathaway discussed the challenge of taking on a powerhouse team twice in about 72 hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a mindset,\u201d Hathaway offered. \u201cYou look at it like it\u2019s a playoff series. This game is going to make a big impact on the next 120 minutes. How we prepare now is going to get our feet rolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re a really good team and we know that. We have respect for them. Our best hockey is when we\u2019re aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coach Rick Tocchet knew the Flyers would have their hands full with a team retraining some of the big pieces from its pair of Stanley Cup championships.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat top line (Nikita Kucherov, Brandon Point, Gage Goncalves) is hard to shut down,\u201d Tocchet said. \u201cYou have to pay attention. You have to be aware of changes because they use the weak side a lot. So you have to be aware of what is behind you going on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost like chess. You got to read the play two moves ahead. Because that\u2019s what they do, they put you in those situations. They\u2019re one of the better weak-side teams in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
Jamie Drysdale and Bobby Brink both took part in the morning skate but remained out of the lineup. Drysdale is on IR and will not play in either Tampa game.<\/p>\n
Travis Konecny did not skate.<\/p>\n
\u201cQuite honestly, I think Drysey and Brink felt better today,\u201d Tocchet said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a real good sign. TK felt a little bit better but not good enough to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n
NOTES >> Matvei Michkov skated on a line with Trevor Zegras and Christian Dvorak at morning skate.. \u2026 Defenseman Emil Andrae had his plus-minus up to plus-13, tops for D-men on the team and just three behind Noah Cates for the overall team lead. \u2026 Samuel Ersson started in goal for the Flyers Saturday . He has had only one victory (at Chicago on Dec. 23) since Dec. 4. \u2026 Going into Saturday night, the Flyers ranked fourth in the NHL in shots allowed per game at 25.5. That isn\u2019t too far behind NHL leader Carolina (24.6). \u2026 In the aforementioned bookend series with Pittsburgh, the Flyers took to home ice to win the first game by a 7-2 score and then returned to home ice and dropped the second game by a 7-3 margin.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA \u2014 If their first back-to-back, common-opponent games on the same sheet of ice in nearly five years,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400564,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5112],"tags":[1468,5,4,1467,56,5205,43,5095],"class_list":{"0":"post-400563","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia-flyers","8":"tag-flyers","9":"tag-hockey","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-philadelphia-flyers","13":"tag-philadelphiaflyers","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-top-stories-tmc"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115873697481365150","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}