5 THINGS: Flyers vs. Penguins

GAME NOTES
Interim head coach Mike Yeo's Philadelphia Flyers (13-14-6) begin a three-game homestand with a game on Thursday against Mike Sullivan's Pittsburgh Penguins (19-8-5). Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. ET. The game will be streamed on ESPN+ and Hulu. The radio broadcast is on 97.5 The Fanatic.

This is the second meeting of the season between the teams. On Nov. 4 at PPG Paints Arena, the Flyers dropped a 3-2 overtime decision decided by a Kris Letang wraparound goal that just barely crossed the goal line at 1:57 of 3-on-3 sudden death.
The Dec. 23 game scheduled between the Flyers and Penguins in Pittsburgh was postponed by the NHL. A makeup date for that game is TBD. After this game in Philadelphia, the teams will rematch at the Wells Fargo Center again on April 24.
The Flyers are returning home from a four-game Pacific Coast road trip that saw the team claim three of four possible points from games in Seattle and San Jose but then lose 6-3 in Los Angeles and 4-1 in Anaheim.
The Penguins have won nine straight games and have points in 10 of their last 11 (9-1-1) matches. The Penguins earned a come-from-behind 5-3 home victory against the St, Louis Blues on Wednesday night.
Pittsburgh trailed 3-1 in the latter stages of the second period and 3-2 entering the third period after Bryan Rust tallied a pair of goals. In the middle stages of the third period, Sidney Crosby and Evan Rodrigues scored just 12 seconds apart to turn a one-goal deficit into a 4-3 lead. Brock McGinn added an insurance goal for the final margin. Casey DeSmith started in net, stopping 13 of 16 shots in 33:49 of action before he was replaced by Tristan Jarry. Denying all 13 shots he faced, Jarry earned the win in relief.
Here are five things to track in this game:
1. Handling adversity: A tale of two teams
Both the Flyers and the Penguins have been riddled with sustained major absences from the lineup for most of the season to date. The difference has been that the Penguins have found ways to win regardless of who is missing from the lineup and the Flyers have been a streaky team hovering around hockey .500.
Evgeni Malkin has yet to play in 2021-22 after undergoing knee surgery last June, although he's said to be finally getting close to a return. Sidney Crosby was out for much of the early season. Jake Guentzel missed six games. Kris Letang was out for four games early in the season while battling COVID. Rust has missed more than half of the games this season. Jason Zucker is week-to-week with a lower-body issue.
Recently, Jeff Carter was in COVID-19 protocol, along with goaltender Tristan Jarry (15-5-4, 1.93 GAA, .932 SV%), winger Kasperi Kapanen and center Teddy Blueger. All have since exited. With Casey DeSmith starting Wednesday's game against St. Louis Jarry is likely to get the start against the Flyers. Ex-Flyer forward Carter, who celebrated his 37th birthday earlier this week, may also make his return to the lineup for this game.
For the Flyers, team captain Claude Giroux and top-pairing left defenseman Ivan Provorov will each miss their respective second game due to COVID-19 protocol. Meanwhile, winger Travis Konecny and defenseman Travis Sanheim went into protocol on Wednesday. Defenseman Nick Seeler and checking forward Jackson Cates also remain in protocol.
Before losing Giroux, Provorov, Konecny and Sanheim to COVID, the club was already without first-line center Sean Couturier (upper-body injury, week-to-week) and top-pairing right defenseman Ryan Ellis (lower-body injury, out indefinitely). Both on injured reserve. Ditto fourth-line center Nate Thompson (shoulder surgery).
2. Playing with focused urgency.
The hockey cliché of a team "needing to play with desperation" is a misnomer. A desperate team is one that, as the word implies, gives in to despair. It makes low-percentage "hope" plays with the puck. It takes bad penalties born of frustration. It plays as a collection of individuals rather than as cohesive five-minute units.
Rather than playing with desperation, what a team in the Flyers situation actually needs to do is to play with a focused sense of urgency. In the first two games of the recent road trip, the Flyers were largely outplayed by the Kraken and Sharks but received stellar goaltending and just enough opportunistic offense to come away with an overtime win and a regulation tie.
In the subsequent game in Los Angeles, the Flyers' overall process was better than in the previous two games but the team paid for some untimely miscues. In both the LA and Anaheim games, the Flyers generated sufficient scoring chances to achieve different outcomes but were unable to finish off chances against LA's Jonathan Quick or Anaheim's John Gibson at various crucial junctures.
Specific to the Anaheim game, James van Riemsdyk had an early second period breakaway with a chance to tie the game at 2-2 but his backhanded five-hole try was denied. Minutes later, Travis Konecny had back-to-back chances at the doorstep but Gibson was equal to the test. Overall, JVR and Konecny had about five good scoring chances between them in the game but neither was able to pot a goal.
The Flyers were not a very resilient team during their 10-game winless skid in November to the early part of December. Things had a tendency to unravel, both in process and result. More recently, the Flyers have shown improved resiliency and competitiveness but there is still plenty of room for process improvement from period-to-period and game-to-game.
3. Inside the Numbers
How have the Penguins been able to withstand so many key absences this season, especially as a team that no longer has the sort of overwhelming on-paper depth it boasted during its back-to-back Stanley Cup championship seasons of 2015-16 and 2016-17? The answer: Consistent teamwide commitment to structure.
There's a good process in place and Sullivan, to his credit, gets strong buy-in from his players to not only give lip service to executing the system but to actually paying attention to the many small details and games-within-the-game. The Penguins rarely beat themselves. Both by the eye test and the underlying analytics, Pittsburgh is a team that makes opponents earn the puck.
In doing so, the Penguins play the game the same way no matter who is in or out of the lineup. They support one another on both sides of the puck. They give their goalie a fair chance to track the puck and see the shots. In return, Jarry in particular has come up with both timely and challenging saves. Offensively, the Penguins get scoring from various sources beyond just their biggest-name players.
The bottom line: The Penguins rank 5th in the NHL in team goals against average (2.50) and 11th in goals per game (3.22). The team has also hovered just outside the top in fewest giveaways per game (11th, 7.25 average) and 5th in shot attempt share at 5-on-5 (53.1 percent).
The main area where the Penguins have felt the lineup absences this season, not surprisingly, has been the power play. The team ranks 23rd in the NHL on the power play (17.2 percent), but moved up four spots after going 2-for-5 against the Blues. The Flyers are 27th in the NHL at 16.0 percent.
The Penguins penalty kill has been stellar, although they gave up a PPG to the Blues on St. Louis' only opportunity on Wednesday. Pittsburgh enters this game ranked atop the NHL at 89.9 percent on the PK. They also do a good job of staying out of the box in the first place, ranking in the NHL's top three least penalized teams.
At 5-on-5, the Penguins have been dominant. Entering this game, the team enjoys a plus-19 (73 GF/ 54 GA) goal differential. Meanwhile, the Flyers come in this game at minus-12 (58 GF/ 70 GA).
Today's Penguins are a team that knows how to grind out a win as needed. The team ranks eighth in credited hits per game (the Flyers rank 17th at 21.8 per game)
Add up all of these factors, and they strongly hint as to why the Penguins have overachieved in light of the roster attrition and why the Flyers still face an uphill climb to push for the lower wildcard playoff seed.
4. Behind Enemy Lines: Pittsburgh Penguins
On Sunday, the Penguins earned a 8-5 home win over San Jose. Pittsburgh roared out to a 4-0 lead in the opening 6:09 a and took a 6-1 lead to the first intermission. By the end of the night, Rust had a five-point game (hat trick, two assists) and Rodrigues also enjoyed a three-goal game. That was followed by Wednesday's comeback win over the Blues for Pittsburgh's ninth straight victory.
The Penguins have been getting scoring from a variety of different sources. They come into this game with four different players (Jake Guentzel, Rodrigues, Letang and Crosby) who have posted 20 or more points this season. The Flyers have only two: Giroux (29 points) and Cam Atkinson (24).
In total, the Penguins have 13 players who have posted double-digit points across the 32 games the team has played so far.
On Wednesday, the Penguins acquired 23-year-old forward Alex Nylander from the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for forward Sam Lafferty.
5. Players to Watch: York and Guentzel
Cam York acquitted himself well in his hometown during Tuesday's game in Anaheim. He logged 20:22 of ice time for the Flyers. He had two shots on goal, three credited hits and two blocked shots. York showed a good defensive stick and improved strength along the walls. The Flyers could use a similarly solid performance against the Penguins.
Few NHL players have been as consistent all season as Guentzel. It's the rare night that he's held off the scoresheet. The Flyers will have their hands full.