5 THINGS: Flyers vs. Hurricanes

John Tortorella's Philadelphia Flyers (26-31-11) are home on Saturday evening to take on Rod Brind'Amour's Carolina Hurricanes (44-15-8) at the Wells Fargo Center. Game time is 5:00 p.m. EDT.

GAME NOTES
The game will be streamed on ESPN+ and Hulu The radio broadcast is on 93.3 WMMR with an online simulcast on Flyers Radio 24/7.
This is the fourth and final meeting of the season between the Metro Division teams and the second game in Philadelphia. The Flyers are 0-2-1 to date against the Hurricanes. Most recently, in Raleigh on March 9, the Hurricanes shut out the Flyers in a 1-0 decision.
The Flyers, who are 3-9-1 in their last 13 games, are coming off a 5-2 win on Friday evening against the visiting Buffalo Sabres.
Philly's win was highlighted by a "St. Patrick's hat trick" by right winger Owen Tippett; the first three-goal game of his NHL career. In the process, Tippett also reached the 20-goal milestone for the first season in his still-young NHL career (goals 19. 20, and 21). Additionally, Joel Farabee (10th goal of the season) ended a 26-game goal drought on Friday evening, while James van Riemsdyk (10th) ended an 11-game goalless stretch. Carter Hart earned the win in net with 34 saves on 36 shots.
The Hurricanes, who are 5-5-0 in their last games and 2-3-0 in the last five, suffered a disappointing 5-2 road loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs on Friday. Brady Skej (14th) and Martin Necas (26th) tallied in a losing cause. Pyotor Kochetkov stopped 19 of 24 shots on goal.
Here are five things to watch in tonight's game.
1. The Tippett Factor
From March 1 to 14, Owen Tippett had just one goal and one assist in a six-game span to show for a massive amount of scoring chances of both the self-created and linemate-assisted varieties.
Over the six games, Tippett one-timed, wristed, deflected, or backhanded 30 shots on goal. Across all game situations, he had 28 scoring chances with a dozen high-danger chances. Only one, a bang-bang power play goal against the New York Rangers directly off an Adam Fox turnover, found the net.

The floodgates ripped open against the Sabres on St. Patrick's Day. Tippett's three goals came off a pair of scorching shots -- one on the power play and one at 5-on-5 -- and a third period breakaway. Tippett, who had an earlier breakaway backhander denied by goalie Craig Anderson, finished the game with seven shots on goal on nine shot attempts.
"I try not to look too far ahead. Take each game by one, and just go from there. It's nice to get rewarded after the last couple of goals with so many shots," Tippett said after the Buffalo game.
Now that Tippett has gotten the 20-goal milestone out of the way for the season, he has a real shot at his first 25-goal season. He has 13 games to net four more goals.
He has been using his combination of size and speed very effectively of late. Tortorella has challenged him to power the puck to the net more often when he has possession or drive to the lower slot more often to create a target when a teammate has it. In the meantime, he's become consistently dangerous one-on-one and in turning on the jets in transition.
"t's kind of insane. He's so explosive. You see it in his skating. I've never seen a guy get breakaways from the D zone," Farabee said of Tippett.
2, Sandström between the pipes
With the Flyers on a back-to-back and Hart just getting over a bout with the flu, it is likely that Felix Sandström will get the start against the Hurricanes. He is 1-10-1 this season with a 3.37 goals against average and .887 save percentage. The majority of his starts have come in the second half of back-to-back sets.
Sandström has had a tendency to allow one stoppable goal in most of his starts this season. He's also been victimized by a severe lack of goal support. The former was not the case in the March 9 game in Carolina but the latter certainly was. Sandström gave the Flyers a chance to upset the Hurricanes and was strong in stopping 28 of 29 shots. Unfortunately, the team in front of him got shut out and he took the loss.
On Tuesday against Vegas, with Hart unavailable due to illness, Sandström yielded four goals on 32 shots. He'd have liked one of the goals back but had little chance on the other three. The Flyers lost, 5-3, with the final Vegas goal being scored into an empty net. That was a microcosm of how most of Sandström's games have gone this season.
For Carolina, with Kochetkov having started against Toronto on Friday, Frederik Andersen is the likely opposing goalie for the Flyers tonight. For the season, the veteran has gone 17-7-0 with a 2.41 GAA and .903 save percentage,
3. Special teams comparison
Despite Tippett's blistering power play goal against the Sabres and the Flyers building upon strong puck movement and extended offensive zone pressure (without getting rewarded) in the previous game against Vegas, the bottom line on the Flyers' power play is that is still the worst in the NHL for the second straight season.
Since the All-Star break, the Flyers have allowed as many opposing shorthanded goals (four) as they've scored power play goals. It took Tippett's goal on Friday to finally get the PP from net negative to net neutral since the start of February. However, Philly has taken baby steps forward the last couple games.
"It was all the kids," Tortorella said, referring to the current incarnation of the No, 1 power play unit. "Catesy [Noah Cates], Tipp, Tyson [Foerster]. Tony {DeAngelo] out there. We put Tony with Yorkie [Cam Yorj]. So, four of them are kids. The future of our team. I thought they moved it around. I thought Tony did a good job in getting things settled when he needed to. It's always nice to score a power play goal when you haven't scored many. I liked their patience as far as just keeping the puck and taking what they give you. Then Tipp just rips it."
Two games ago, Tortorella and power play coach Rocky Thompson removed Morgan Frost from the top unit and replaced him with Cates. Rasmus Ristolainen was playing netfront forward for several games, but the Flyers did not feature the Finnish defenseman in their lone power play on Friday.
In two of the Flyers' last three power play opportunities, PP1 was on the ice for the entirety of the man advantage. Against Vegas, it was because PP1 kept the puck in the Golden Knights zone the entire two minutes. Against Buffalo, it was because the lone Philly power play opportunity produced a goal.
Whether the progress from the last two games carries over remains to be seen. The Flyers have had brief phases of showing improvement and getting dividends this season but the prolonged droughts, zone entry issues, lost faceoffs leading to quick clears by the opposition and the near-constant personnel shuffling on and off both units have been much more frequent characteristics. Strategically, the Flyers have tried and largely failed various methods of trying to generate (and then finish) chances.
The Flyers' penalty kill also ranks at the bottom of the NHL since the All-Star break and has fallen to 28th for the season. Buffalo went 2-for-4 on Friday.
Largely due to his team's freefall on the PK, Tortorella has been vocally unhappy with the number of unnecessary penalties the team has taken of late. Frost's ice time has been cut over the last two games after he took an offensive zone penalty in Carolina and a neutral zone penalty for closing his hand on the puck in the Vegas game. After the Buffalo game, Tortorella criticized Scott Laughton for an offensive zone penalty in the opening minute of the third period. In Tampa Bay on March 7, Farabee took two offensive zone penalties in the first period -- the first for tripping, the latter a retaliatory minor after an unpenalized Tampa hit.
Carolina's power play enters tonight's game ranked 18th in the NHL at 20.9 percent efficiency. The PK comes in ranked second in the league (83.6 percent). Before Auston Matthews tallied a power play goal against Carolina on Friday, the Hurricanes had gone 12 straight games and 28 consecutive PK opportunities without giving up an opposing PPG. Both the Flyers and Hurricanes have scored 11 shorthanded goals this season.
4. Flyers line play
The Flyers will not hold a morning skate on Saturday. There is a seemingly strong possibility that Philly starts tonight's game with the same line combinations they had throughout most of Friday's game. Lines are subject to change:
86 Joel Farabee - 13 Kevin Hayes - 52 Tyson Foerster
21 Scott Laughton - 49 Noah Cates - 74 Owen Tippett
25 James van Riemsdyk - 48 Morgan Frost - 22 Brendan Lemieux
44 Nicolas Deslauriers - 58 Tanner Laczynski - 57 Wade Allison
9 Ivan Provorov - 45 Cam York
6 Travis Sanheim - 55 Rasmus Ristolainen
24 Nick Seeler - 77 Tony DeAngelo
32 Felix Sandström
[79 Carter Hart]
5. Behind enemy lines: Carolina Hurricanes
The Hurricanes currently hold a one-point lead atop the Metropolitan Division over the New Jersey Devils. Carolina has a game in hand (15 games remaining vs. 14 for New Jersey) and a very slight edge in the regulation wins tiebreaker category (33 to 32). However, with 14 points over their last 10 games, New Jersey is threatening to overtake the Hurricanes. Carolina has 10 points in their last 10 matches.
The Hurricanes will have to play the rest of the regular season and the playoffs without ther services of star winger Andrei Svechnikov. Carolina learned on Monday that Svechnikov needed season-ending knee surgery. On the flip side, Carolina Jalen Chatfield returned to the lineup Friday night in Toronto. He was paired with ex-Flyer Shayne Gostisbehere.
Potential lineup (based on Friday's game)
13 Jesse Puljujärvi - 20 Sebastian Aho - 24 Seth Jarvis
86 Teuvo Teräväinen - 82 Jesperi Kotkaniemi - 88 Martin Necas
48 Jordan Martinook - 11 Jordan Staal - 71 Jesper Fast
23 Stefan Noesen - 18 Jack Drury - 21 Derek Stepan
74 Jaccob Slavin - 8 Brent Burns
76 Brady Skjei - 22 Brett Pesce
41 Shayne Gostisbehere - 5 Jalen Chatfield
31 Frederik Andersen
52 Pyotr Kochetkov