After an abbreviated training camp and NHL preseason, Rick Tocchet's Philadelphia Flyers open their 84-game 2026-27 regular season schedule on Wednesday. The Orange and Black play host to Dan Muse's Pittsburgh Penguins at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Over the first four days of the season, the Flyers will play three games. On Thursday, the Flyers travel to Newark to play Sheldon Keefe's New Jersey Devils. Come Sunday, Rod Brind'Amour and his defending Stanley Cup championship Carolina Hurricanes come to Philly.
Of course, the Flyers opposed Pittsburgh and Carolina in the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs last year. Philadelphia took out Pittsburgh in six games. Carolina swept the Flyers, but two of the four games went to overtime. Another (Game Three) was tied at 1-1 until Carolina scored a shorthanded goal late in the second period. The Flyers lost their composure and ended up taking nine penalties in that game.
Offseason additions and subtractions
There is modest roster turnover from last season to the new campaign. The most notable additions are goaltender Joseph Woll, defenseman Simon Benoit and checking forward Noel Acciari.
Goaltender Samuel Ersson (now with Ottawa) and Garnet Hathaway (Florida Panthers) departed over the summer.
Flyers Youth
Officially, Porter Martone is the only Flyer on the opening night roster who qualifies as a rookie in 2026-27. However, the team features a lot of youth.
At the end of last season, the Flyers were the NHL's fourth-youngest team by average player age (26.9).
For the flyers to take the next steps toward contender status, they need numerous players in their early or mid 20s to build upon the foundations they've set in their careers to date. This includes the likes of Matvei Michkov, Trevor Zegras, Jamie Drysdale, Tyson Foerster, Cam York and more.
Currently dealing with respective day-to-day injuries, the Flyers need second-year pros such as Denver Barkey and Nikita Grebenkin to continue to progress. Meanwhile, rookie hopefuls like Oliver Bonk, Jett Luchanko and Cole Knuble are knocking on the door to earn an NHL recall.
Injury report
The Flyers are relatively healthy right now. Barkey and Grebenkin might miss the start of the season but neither is expected to miss significant time. Likewise, reigning Bobby Clarke Trophy (team MVP) winner Dan Vladar suffered a scare (upper body injury) during the second game of the preseason. However, he should be ready for opening night.
Tippett, Foerster and Cates (playoffs) dealt with significant injuries last season. All are fine to start the season on time. The same goes for Luchanko with the Phantoms.
Depth defenseman Helge Grans suffered a lower body injury in the preseason finale against Washington on Saturday. He will miss time at the start of the season. When healthy, he will report to Lehigh Valley.
Special Teams
The Flyers enter 2026-27 needing to improve their power play, which finished 32nd in the NHL last year. The team has focused on working more pucks down low and generating better puck movement. They also need to do a better job at getting pucks on net from a variety of shooting angles.
Based on recent days of practice and the preseason finale, the Flyers appear poised to enter the season with the following power play personnel:
1st unit: Martone, Foerter, Michkov, Zegras, Drysdale
2nd unit: Konecny, Cates, Bump, Tippett, York
Meanwhile, the penalty kill ran hot and cold last season. At U.S. Thanksgiving, the team the possessed one of the premier penalty-killing units in the NHL: 87.6 percent success, ranked sixth leaguewide.
Following the Thanksgiving threshold, the Philly penalty kill became streaky the rest of the season, including two prolonged slumps.
By the conclusion of the 82-game campaign, their cumulative penalty kill percentage dropped to 77.6%, placing 22nd overall in the final NHL team rankings.
Other key indicators for improvement
* Regulation wins: The Flyers finished last season with a modest 27 regulation wins. Fortunately, they excelled in shootouts. However, the RW category is the first tiebreaker if teams finish with the same number of points. In 2026-27, the Flyers aim to win more games in regulation and boost their overall points from 98 points in 82 games to 100 or more in 84 games.
By way of comparison, this is how the top five teams of the Metro Division finished strictly in regulation wins last season:
Carolina Hurricanes: 39 RW
Washington Capitals: 37 RW
Pittsburgh Penguins: 34 RW
Columbus Blue Jackets: 28 RW
FLYERS: 27 RW
* Scoring first: Over the entire 82-game regular season, the Flyers scored first roughly one-third of the time and finished with an overall record of 43-27-12, To increase the chances of matching or exceeding last year's point total, the Flyers will likely need to play from ahead more often via the game's first goal.
On a league-wide basis, the average winning percentage when scoring first was 66.6 percent last season. Among playoff teams, however, the average winning percentage when scoring first was 74.2 percent.
The Flyers were an exceptionally good come-from-behind team last year; a reflection of mental toughness and resilience. Nevertheless, it behooves the Flyers to go to the comeback well much less often in 2026-27.
Potential opening night lineup
Line combinations are always subject to change period to period, let alone game to game. Philly's starting combinations for the Pittsburgh and New Jersey games are far from being set in stone.
However, based upon recent practices, injury updates, and how they lined up as training camp progressed, below could be a reasonable facsimile of how the team lines up on Wednesday against the Penguins.
Owen Tippett – Trevor Zegras – Porter Martone
Tyson Forerster- Noah Cates – Matvei Michkov
Alex Bump – Christian Dvorak – Travis Konecny
Garret Wilson/Carl Grundstrom – Sean Couturier – Noel Acciari
Travis Sanheim – Rasmus Ristolainen
Cam York – Jamie Drysdale
Nick Seeler – Simon Benoit / David Jiricek
Dan Vladar
Joseph Woll
