Rick Tocchet's Philadelphia Flyers (0-1-0) face another tough challenge on Saturday evening. The team is in Raleigh to take on Rod Brind'Amour's Carolina Hurricanes (1-0-0).
Game time at Lenovo Center is 7:00 p.m. EDT. The match will be broadcast on NBC Sports Philadelphia.
The Flyers are coming off a 2-1 road loss to the defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Thursday evening. Goaltender Dan Vladar played a strong game (32 saves on 34 shots) in a losing cause. Noah Cates scored Philly's lone goal of the game.
Carolina won their opening night game. The club doubled up the visiting New Jersey Devils, 6-3. Defenseman K'Andre Miller scored two goals, as did forward Seth Jarvis. Shayne Gostisbehere notched two assists.
Saturday's match is the first of a four-game season series between the teams. The Flyers and Canes will play a home-and-home set on December 13 (Philadelphia) and December 14 (Raleigh). The season series concludes on April 13 at Xfinity Mobile Arena.
Here are the RAV4 Things to watch on Saturday.
1. Puck possession.
Tocchet wants the Flyers to become a better puck possession team: winning battles and keeping the puck for longer stretches of time. Right off the bat this season, the Flyers have run into two elite possession teams.
The Hurricanes, in fact, have been the NHL's top-ranked puck possession team for several years. Their method isn't necessarily to carry the puck over the blueline. Rather, the Hurricanes' team speed and quickness through the neutral zone has made them outstanding at getting to the puck first on retrievals.
The Flyers got out-possessed by Florida on Thursday, primarily over the first 30 minutes of the game. Philly had trouble getting through the neutral zone at times. They were also plagued by turnovers (22 charged giveaways, two clean takeaways by the opponent).
The silver lining: As the game progressed into the latter half, Philly had some more success in generating an attack. They also started to get more pucks and traffic to the net. Philly needs to build off those baby steps on Saturday.
2. The Cates Line.
The trio of Cates centering Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink was a revelation for Philly over the latter two-thirds of last season. On opening night, they picked right up where they left off last season.
Even apart from the Cates goal, the line was the one Flyers unit that generated forechecking pressure on a sustained basis. The "secret" to that line really isn't a secret at all. It boils down to puck support (they are almost never too far apart or caught as flat-footed spectators). All three players are adept at shielding the puck and not throwing it away on "hope" plays.
At least based on Friday's practice in Raleigh, Tocchet may change around the personnel on three of the four forward lines. The one five-on-five trip that's likely to remain untouched: the Cates line.
3. The Drysdale factor.
Jamie Drysdale played fine overall in his 22:54 of ice time on opening night. He didn’t take any risky gambles, and held his own despite playing with a blueline partner (Adam Ginning) with whom he had not previously worked.
Unofficially at five-on-five, the Flyers had six high-danger chances on their side when Drysdale was on the ice and just one for the defending Stanley Cup champions.
In fairness, Drysdale didn't have many opportunities to jump into the attack. He didn't force things, which was a positive. Nevertheless, the Flyers need Drysdale to be a direct offensive catalyst.
The Flyers need a bit more against Carolina: Drysale's feet, breakout passing ability and offensive zone assertiveness. He's capable of it.
4. Drawing and converting power plays.
The Flyers were officially 0-for-2 on the power play in the regular season opener. However, their first power play was only 16 seconds in duration after 1:44 of four-on-four manpower. Not much of anything can be gleaned from a single full-length power play.
However, the fact that the Flyers took five minor penalties in the opener and Florida had two was notable. First, that's too many penalties to take even though Philly officially went 4-for-5 on the PK. Moreover, it reflected that the Flyers didn't put their first opponent under enough duress to force them into penalties.
The Flyers lone "real" power play of the opener was fairly nondescript. They never truly got set up to create more than perimeter play. They'll need more quantity and quality of power play scoring opportunities against the Hurricanes.
