5 THINGS: Flyers vs. Lightning

In the second game of a challenging five-game homestand, John Tortorella's Philadelphia Flyers (8-10-5) will host Jon Cooper's three-time defending Eastern Conference champion Tampa Bay Lightning (13-8-1) at Wells Fargo Center on Thursday evening. Game time is 7:00 p.m. ET.

GAME NOTES
The game will be televised on NBCSP. The radio broadcast is on 97.5 The Fanatic with an online simulcast on Flyers Radio 24/7.
This is the second of three meetings this season between the teams, and the lone game in Philadelphia. Back on Oct. 18, the Flyers skated to a 3-2 road victory at Amalie Arena in Tampa as Philly overcame a 2-0 deficit. Scott Laughton, James van Riemsdyk (power play) and Noah Cates scored for the Flyers, while Carter Hart made 36 saves to earn the win. The season series will wrap up in Tampa on March 7.
Thursday's game is part of the Throwback Thursday series of games, honoring different decades of team history. This game will celebrate the Flyers teams of the 1980s. From the 1979-80 to 1989-90 seasons, the Flyers had a 476-293 record with 111 ties for a stellar .605 points percentage. During that span, the Flyers reached the Stanley Cup Final three times (1980. 1985, 1987) plus the Stanley Cup Semifinals in 1989. Among the Throwback Thursday activities, Alumni such as Mark Howe, Dave Poulin, Brad Marsh, Kjell Samuelsson, Dave Brown, Terry Carkner, and Doug Crossman will be on hand, while 1987 Stanley Cup Final Game 6 hero J.J. Daigneault will bang the pregame drum just prior to the opening faceoff. All fans in attendance will receive a custom 80s Throwback Thursday artwork print created by local Philadelphia artist Josh Ash. The current team will wear their reverse retro jerseys during the game and sport their Cooperalls-inspired hockey pants during warmups.
The Flyers enter this game coming off a 3-1 win over the New York Islanders at the Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday evening. The victory ended a 10-game winless streak (0-7-3) for the Flyers. Philly put forth one of its most complete 60-minute performances of the season, playing a structured game with strong puck support and receiving excellent goaltending when needed from Carter Hart. Kevin Hayes scored 5-on-5 and empty-net goals (7th and 8th of the season) after Travis Sanheim (2nd) erased an early 1-0 deficit with a shorthanded goal in the first period.
The Lightning are playing for the third time in four nights across three different cities. On Monday, the Lightning skated to a 6-5 overtime win in Buffalo secured by Steven Stamkos' second goal of the game and 12th of the season. On Tuesday in Boston, Tampa absorbed a 3-1 loss to a Bruins team that remains unbeaten on home ice (13-0-0) so far this season. A power play goal by Stamkos (13th) in the second period stood as the Lightning's lone goal. Stamkos, who scored two power play goals against the Flyers in the first meeting of the 2022-23 season series, enters this game one point away from attaining the coveted 1,000 points milestone for his NHL career. Superstar goalie Andrei Vasilevskiy made 23 saves in a losing cause for the Lightning in Tuesday's game. On Monday, former Flyers goalie Brian Elliott rode six goals worth of offensive support and 32 saves on 37 shots to his fifth win in six starts this season.
Here are five things to watch in tonight's game:
1. Staying connected.

As Tortorella noted after Tuesday's long-belated eighth win of the season, the Flyers' five-man units played with a high degree of structure and consistent puck support in the victory over the Islanders."We were connected in all three zones," Tortorella said, referring to the way the team took away the middle of the ice defensive most of the night, forechecked effectively both in the neutral and offensive zones and made generally sound decisions when they had the puck.
A similar performance will likely be needed by the Flyers to give themselves a fighting chance at a second upset win over the Lightning in the same season. The earlier 3-2 win road in Tampa was primarily achieved by Hart "standing on his head" at 5-on-5 and the Flyers somehow chipping away at 2-0 deficit to scratch out three goals punctuated by a late goal by Cates scored directly off a turnover.
The Lightning didn't win three straight Eastern Conference championships with a pair of Stanley Cup rings on their fingers by regularly blowing multi-goal leads for regulation losses. Philly did it once this season but it's unlikely they'd successfully duplicate the feat if they trail the Bolts by two or more goals again. The path the Flyers took against the Islanders, if it can replicated for a second straight game, is one that would be far likelier to produce a favorable outcome,
The Lightning enter this game averaging 3.45 goals per game (7th in the NHL) with a team 3.18 goals against average (ranked 18th). Philly enters as the NHL's lowest-scoring team (2.43 GPG, ranked 32nd) but their team goals against average is similar to the Lightning's (3.22 GAA, ranked 19th).
2. Evening out the special teams disadvantage.
The Flyers did not score on the power play against the Islanders and Philly yielded a 5-on-3 power goal goal that was, thankfully, canceled out by Sanheim's momentum-shifting shorthanded goal during the remaining 5-on-4. However, despite further slippage of their season stats on special teams, Philadelphia at least showed some signs of hope in how they maintained possession and generated puck movement on the power play and in how they defended during 5-on-4 penalty kills against what has recently been a scorching-hot Islanders' power play. An impressive third-period kill by the Flyers with Owen Tippett in the box proved vital to Philly's strong close-out.
The season numbers themselves are ugly, and the Flyers/Lightning comparison on paper is daunting. Philly comes in ranked last leaguewide in power play success rate (13.9 percent) and their penalty kill enters ranked 25th at 73.1 percent (but 31st leaguewide over Philly's last 10 games at an abysmal 58.6 percent). The Lightning's power play is still one of the team's primary weapons, which Philly can attest to firsthand. For the season, the Lightning rank 4th in the NHL in power play percentage at a 28.6 percent success rate. Tampa's PK is middling at 76.9 percent (ranked 20th).
At least from an on-paper standpoint, the Flyers' best bet in this game is if most of the game is played at 5-on-5 with Philly avoiding needless penalties to put them shorthanded. The Flyers took three bad penalties against the Islanders and overcame it minus the 5-on-3 goal scored by Noah Dobson. Even so, that's one aspect of the last game that Philly needs to clean up against the Lightning. Remember, in the first meeting of the season, the Flyers somehow (thanks to Hart) prevented the Lightning from scoring at 5-on-5 but no goalie in the world was going to stop either of Stamkos' howitzer-like power play goals from his off-wing office in the left circle.
At 5-on-5 this season, the Flyers and Lightning have similar bottom-line numbers: 40 GF/ 43 GA for the Flyers versus 44 GF/ 45 GA for Tampa. There are, of course, zero guarantees that the Flyers come out ahead of Tampa on the scoreboard at 5-on-5 in tonight's game but it's a much more promising avenue than if it's a game with lots of special teams play.
3. Will there be any "fatigue factor" in this game?
The Flyers are a little more rested right now than the Lightning. After a grueling stretch of four games in six nights last week, the Flyers returned home. They had a complete off-day on Sunday, a practice but no game on Monday, Tuesday's home-game win against the Islanders, and then a practice on Wednesday.
The Lightning, conversely have been on the road all week and are playing their third game in four nights. There was an off-day on Wednesday following the back-to-back in Buffalo and Boston but, from an historical standpoint, there is little difference in how teams leaguewide perform in a third game of a three-in--four whether the one idle night on the schedule is on the second night or the third night of that span. It's more about the cumulative effect of playing three times in four nights or four times in six nights --- if it proves to be a factor at all.
It's hardly uncommon for a team that should theoretically be more rested to get outskated or worn-down by the third period against a "tired" team. Conditioning levels in today's NHL are such that no team can hang its hopes on an opponent being too worn down to have the skating legs to beat them. The victory still has to be earned.
Case in point: Last year on Dec. 5, the Lightning were dealing with key injuries and a theoretical fatigue-factor disadvantage -- fifth game in seven nights, second game of a b2b -- when they came to Philadelphia to play a much more rested Flyers team that was mired in a seven-game winless streak (0-5-2). In what proved to be Alain Vigneault's final game as the Flyers' head coach, a thoroughly dispirited Philly absorbed a frightful 7-1 whipping.
This season's Flyers team has been a more resilient one than last year's version, despite Philly's recent 0-7-3 spell. But the central point is the same: If the Flyers are to beat the Lightning in this game, they'll have to earn it on their own. It won't be the energy Tampa expended in Buffalo and Boston earlier this week that elevates Philly.
4. Flyers line play: Injury updates
Cam Atkinson, who has missed the entire regular season with an upper body injury sustained early in training camp, believes he is close to being able to finally be cleared for game play. He practiced hard on Monday and also skated on Tuesday. However, Atkinson was not on the ice during Wednesday's practice at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees.
Defenseman Tony DeAngelo, who appeared to be hobbled from a puck he took off his foot in the Black Friday game against Pittsburgh, was able to finish that game and also played in Saturday's road game in Elmont. He was unable to play in Tuesday's rematch against the Islanders and did not practice on Wednesday.
In DeAngelo's absence, Rasmus Ristolainen was paired with Ivan Provorov in the second game against the Islanders. The Provorov-Ristolainen pairing, both collectively and individually, had a strong game.
Up front, the Flyers got Scott Laughton back from injury for the second game against the Islanders. Patrick Brown was the odd man out as a healthy scratch for that game. Apart from Atkinson, the Flyers are still awaiting the returns of Travis Konecny (right hand) and James van Riemsdyk (right index finger surgery). Both TK and JVR have done daily rehab skates this week but neither has rejoined practice quite yet.
Based on Wednesday's practice -- and subject to change on game day -- the Flyers' starting line combinations against Tampa could be as follows:
86 Joel Farabee - 23 Lukas Sedlak - 13 Kevin Hayes
21 Scott Laughton - 19 Noah Cates - 17 Zack MacEwen
44 Nicolas Deslauriers - 48 Morgan Frost - 74 Owen Tippett
20 Kieffer Bellows - 58 Tanner Laczynski - 71 Max Willman
9 Ivan Provorov - 55 Rasmus Ristolainen
6 Travis Sanheim - 61 Justin Braun
24 Nick Seeler - 54 Egor Zamula
79 Carter Hart
[32 Felix Sandström]
Patrick Brown (No. 38) could step in for Willman against Tampa Bay. If DeAngelo is able to return, Braun could be a coach's decision scratch. If DeAngelo remains unavailable, the defense pairs above are likely to hold for another game.
5. Behind Enemy Lines: Tampa Bay Lightning
The veteran-laden Lightning remain one of the NHL's most formidable teams, although are presently 11 points behind Boston in the Atlantic Division standings. The Bolts are 6-4-0 in their last 10 games. The team has gone 6-5-0 on the road.
The Lightning still revolve around much of the same core that spearheaded their rise to NHL elite team status and three straight trips to the Stanley Cup Final. Offensively, puck wizard Nikita Kucherov leads the team with 35 points (10 goals, 25 assists) in 22 games. He's followed by Stamkos with 27 points (13g, 14a), Brayden Point with 24 points (10g, 14a), defenseman Mikhail Sergachev with 22 points (4g, 18a, 24:04 TOI), and Alex Killorn with 18 points (7g, 11a).
Former Norris Trophy winning defenseman Victor Hedman (1g, 9a, 24:38 TOI) no longer is a fixture on the Tampa top power play unit -- that role goes to Sergachev in Tampa's 4F/1D alignments, with Hedman on PP2 -- but still absorbs massive ice time. His offensive production is down this year compared to his previous norms but he is still a threat on both sides of the puck.
Vasilevskiy, a perennial Vezina Trophy candidate and the Conn Smythe Trophy winner during the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, has not been in peak form by his standards so far this season. In 16 games, he's posted a record of 8-7-1 with a 2,88 goals against average and .906 save percentage while still looking for his first shutout of the season. However, the 28-year-old Russian netminder is eminently capable of going on a scorching hot run at any time with sufficient support in front of them.
Based on the team's last game, and subject to change, below is a potential starting lineup for the Lightning:
38 Brandon Hagel - 21 Brayden Point - 86 Nikita Kucherov
91 Steven Stamkos - 2- Nick Paul - 17 Alex Killorn
79 Ross Colton - 90 Vladislav Namestnikov - 10 Corey Perry
45 Cole Koepke -41 Pierre-Édouard Bellemare - 14 Patrick Maroon
77 Victor Hedman - 81 Erik Cernak
98 Mikhail Sergachev - 48 Nicklaus Perbix
28 Ian Cole - 24 Zach Bogosian
88 Andrei Vasilevskiy
[1 Brian Ellliott]