Returning from the NHL's holiday break, Rick Tocchet's Philadelphia Flyers (19-10-7) are in Washington State on Sunday to take on Lane Lambert's Seattle Kraken (15-14-6). This is the second and final meeting this season between the inter-conference teams.
Game time at Climate Pledge Arena is 8:00 p.m. EST. The game will be televised on NBCSP.
Back on October 20, the Flyers skated to a 5-2 home win over Seattle to deal the Kraken its first regulation loss of the 2025-26 season. Owen Tippett scored twice for the Flyers, while Tyson Foerster (PPG), Travis Konecny and Noah Cates (PPG) notched one goal apiece. Jordan Eberle and Jani Nyman (PPG) had goals for Seattle.
In the same game, Cam York had three assists for the Flyers and Sean Couturier had two helpers. Dan Vladar earned the win with 20 saves on 22 shots.
For the Kraken, Joey Daccord made 16 saves on 21 shots through two periods. Philipp Grubauer stopped all six shots he faced in relief duty during the third period. Making his NHL debut that night, Berkly Catton was credited with his first career assist.
The Flyers last played on December 23, a 3-1 road win against the Chicago Blackhawks. The Kraken earned a 3-2 road win over the Los Angeles Kings the same night.
The Kraken stay competitive by keeping games as low-scoring as possible. The team's 2.97 goals against average ranks 13th in the NHL. Offensively, only the St. Louis Blues (2.51) have had to make due with fewer goals per game than the Kraken (2.54). The Flyers rank 20th offensively (2.94 goals per game) and ninth defensively (2.75 GAA).
Trevor Zegras leads the Flyers offensively with 37 points through 36 games. He tops the team with 15 goals and is tied with Travis Konecny for the team assist lead with 22 helpers. Konency is second on the Flyers in overall scoring with 11 goals and 33 points.
Heading to Sunday's match, Eberle leads Seattle with 13 goals and 23 points for the season. Chandler Stephenson is second with nine goals among his 22 points. Eeli Tolvanen also has 22 points, leading the Kraken with 17 assists to go along with five goals.
Here are the RAV4 Things to watch in Seattle on Monday.
1. Getting to their game.
Every team in the NHL is in the same boat in terms of trying to get back into the swing of the regular season after multiple days off from Christmas Eve day through Boxing Day. Most of the teams that won on December 27 (13 games around the league) were the ones that recovered the details of their games the fastest.
The same thing goes for Sunday's game between the Flyers and Kraken. Whichever team is superior at recovering its timing and executing both with and without the puck will probably win the game. The early minutes of Sunday's game will likely entail a feeling out process and there may be a higher-than-average volume of faceoffs due to icings, offsides and goalie-induced stoppages. Thereafter, it's a race to recover their legs and in-game attention to detail.
2. Zegras streak.
Zegras brings a career-best nine-game point streak into Sunday's tilt. Over those nine matches, Zegras has posted five goals and six assists for 11 points. Overall, he's posted at least one point in 13 of the Flyers' last 14 games.
Konecny, meanwhile, has racked up six points (3g, 3a) in Philly's last five games. For the season, only Cates (+12) has a higher traditional plus-minus rating than Konecny (+11) among Flyers forwards.
3. Barkey's fourth NHL game.
Flyers rookie winger Denver Barkey appears to have dodged a bullet in Tuesday's game in Chicago. For precautionary reasons, he left the game after taking a forearm shiver up high from the Blackhawks' Wyatt Kaiser.
Barkey practiced with the club in Seattle on Saturday and is expected to be good to go for Sunday's game. The same is true with top-pairing defenseman Travis Sanheim. He exited the Chicago game in the third period but has had no ill-effects since then.
Barkey's first three NHL games have seen him highly involved in the play. Despite his stature, Barkey has constantly been around the puck and won more battles than he's lost. His speed, elusiveness and tenacity have come to the forefront in each game he's played to date.
4. Special teams reset.
With the lack of practice time and games over the holiday break, even the NHL's top power plays and penalty kills have been in reset mode with the schedule resuming.
Overall, the break came at a good time for the Flyers. The team went through a stretch of losing the special teams battle in the majority of their December games. However, just before the break, the Flyers did come ahead on special teams in their final couple games.
For the season, the Flyers' power play ranks 24th in the NHL at 16.8 percent success. Philly's penalty kill slipped for several weeks but it comes into Sunday's match ranked 9th in the league at an 82.5 percent success rate. Seattle has had trouble scoring at 5-on-5 but their power play ranks 11th at 21.0 percent. The Kraken penalty kill ranks 32nd (last) in the NHL at 70.3 percent efficiency.
