Rick Tocchet's Philadelphia Flyers (3-8-4) are home on Sunday to take on Andre Tourigny's Utah Mammoth (9-5-0). The Flyers have had three nights off since their last game on Wednesday. Utah is in the second match of a six-game road trip.
Game time at Xfinity Mobile Arena is 4:00 p.m. EST.
The Flyers have dropped each of their last three games since putting together a three-game winning streak. On Tuesday, the Flyers recovered from a 3-0 deficit to force overtime against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Unfortunately, they fell to a 4-3 home overtime loss after the Blue Jackets had a pair of 2-on-0 breakaways in sudden death. The next night, Philly suffered a 5-2 loss in Washington.
The Mammoth started their current road trip with a 4-3 overtime win against the Pittsburgh Penguins. Hometown product Logan Cooley assembled a hat trick. Mikhail Sergachev notched the winning goal in sudden death.
Here are the RAV4 Things to watch on Sunday.
1. Play from ahead
The Flyers have yielded the game's first goal in 10 of the first 15 games this season. They are 1-6-3 in those games. Even if they score first, Philly still needs to do a better job of building on or protecting their leads. When scoring first, the Flyers are 2-2-1.
Through 14 games, the Mammoth have scored first just six times. However, they are a perfect 6-0-0 in those matches. When yielding the first goal, Utah is 3-5-0.
2. Balanced scoring
It is not confirmed as of this writing whether Travis Konecny (10 games missed) and/or Owen Tippett (six games missed) will be ready to be activated yet from the Injured Reserve list. Any which way, it's important for the Flyers to start getting a wider array of contributions from the lineup.
Across the roster, only three players -- Matvei Michkov (9), Trevor Zegras (4), and Porter Martone (3) -- have more than two goals to their credit to date.
Meanwhile, only five players -- Zegras (9), Denver Barkey (5), Oliver Bonk (5), Travis Sanheim (4), and Nick Seeler (4) -- have generated more than three assists. Note that just two forwards have done so thus far.
3. Between the pipes
In recent weeks, the Flyers goaltending chores have alternated on a game-by-game basis. During the back-to-back games this past week, Dan Vladar started against Columbus (11 saves on 15 shots) and Joseph Woll got the game against Washington (25 saves on 29 shots).
4. Special teams
The power play has been a bright spot for the Flyers after struggling over the season's first eight games. Overall, the Flyers enter Sunday ranked 26th in the NHL at 16.3 percent efficiency. Meanwhile, the Mammoth come in with the NHL's top rated power play: 16-for-47 (34.0 percent).
