Game 42: Flyers at Capitals; 4/13/21 @ 7, NBCSP

[Howie58]

Greetings:

 

The bookies don't give the O and B much of a chance:

 

https://pickdawgz.com/nhl-picks/2021-04-13/philadelphia-flyers-at-washington-capitals-4-13-21-nhl-picks-and-prediction

 

Winning or losing the remainder of this season may not matter as much as effort and growth.  Pending a miracle, this isn't a playoff-bound team.  The performance of the younger players and Hart may be the most important things in our homestretch.  

[OccamsRazor]

Time to get this winning streak going.

 

HAHAHA....I crack myself up.

 

I guess we can pretty much expect the same lineup as last game except Laczynski in for Raffl I expect and not sure who goes in net.

 

We just can't expect them to control the game for 60 minutes - noted.

[Samifan]

15 minutes ago, OccamsRazor said:

 

We just can't expect them to control the game for 60 minutes - noted.

First loud laugh of the day, OUTSTANDING! 
Voracek’s comment will live on long after he is gone! 

 
*Flyers 21-22 Season PR Slogan:

Philadelphia Flyers Hockey: Hey Don’t Expect 60 minutes 

 

#IHATEJAKE  

 

 

[fan4ever]

So how many will Raffl score????

[OccamsRazor]

14 minutes ago, fan4ever said:

So how many will Raffl score????

 

Hat trick.

 

[Samifan]

23 minutes ago, fan4ever said:

So how many will Raffl score????

Shorty for sure!

 

Lavy will have him with Ovi tonight just watch.

 

3 pt night

[OccamsRazor]

Tanner Laczynski is on our active roster for the rest of the season.-Fletcher.

[pilldoc]

50 minutes ago, fan4ever said:

So how many will Raffl score????

 

36 minutes ago, OccamsRazor said:

 

Hat trick.

 

 

26 minutes ago, Samifan said:

Shorty for sure!

 

Lavy will have him with Ovi tonight just watch.

 

3 pt night

 

[OccamsRazor]

59 minutes ago, pilldoc said:

 

 

 

 

Hey here is too getting the 2nd overall pick again!!!

[radoran]

4-2 Flyers with an empty netter.

 

[mojo1917]

Raffl will not score a hatty tonight.

Book it.

He's not playing, he's out for 2 weeks with an injury.

So, we'll have to settle for an Ovechkin or Oshie  hatty instead.

 

[OccamsRazor]

Man this sucks Sam won't play i.was.wishing he would pound the **** out of Tom Wilson just for being Tom Wilson.

 

Projected lineups

FLYERS (Sunday's lineup, will be updated after Monday's off-day)

25 James van Riemsdyk- 14 Sean Couturier - 86 Joel Farabee
21 Scott Laughton - 13 Kevin Hayes - 19 Nolan Patrick
93 Jakub Voracek - 28 Claude Giroux - 11 Travis Konecny
23 Oskar Lindblom - 58 Tanner Laczynski - 62 Nicolas Aube-Kubel

9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
6 Travis Sanheim - 8 Robert Hägg
53 Shayne Gostisbehere - 5 Phil Myers

79 Carter Hart
37 Brian Elliott

 

 

Bill Meltzer

Flyers Gameday: 4/13/21 @ WAS; Trade Deadline Wrapup

April 13, 2021, 9:36 AM ET [90 Comments]

GAME 42:  FLYERS @ CAPITALS

Alain Vigneault's Philadelphia Flyers (19-16-6) are in DC on Tuesday to take on Peter Laviolette's Washington Capitals (27-11-4). Game time at Capital One Arena is 7:00 p.m. EDT. The game will be televised on NBCSP.

This is the fifth of eight meetings this season between the teams. The Flyers are 1-3-0 against Washington to date. Philly prevailed, 7-4, in a nationally televised game on Super Bowl Sunday after the NHL made a decision to go ahead with the game at Capital One Arena despite Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim being a close contact exposure to a COVID-19 case (Sanheim himself tested negative throughout but went into protocol for a week).

Two days later, positive COVID tests started to turn up among Flyers players. A game in Washington was postponed. The Flyers ultimately had six active-roster players, a couple of Taxi Squad players plus a positive test from a player on IR (Morgan Frost) and four total games postponed. Two postponements stemmed from a COVID outbreak on the New Jersey Devils and the other two were related to the Flyers' cases.

The Flyers ended up being off the ice for a week, played a home game against the New York Rangers on Feb. 18 (a 2-1 shootout loss) and the Lake Tahoe game against the Boston Bruins on Feb. 21 (a 7-3 loss) with six regular starters out of the lineup because they were still in COVID protocol.

Nonetheless, and despite the fact that they had much in their collective game that needed to be cleaned up, the Flyers entered March with an 11-4-3 record and the highest points percentage in the East Division. The month started with back-to-back-to-back road games in Pittsburgh, with the Flyers winning one in multi-goal comeback fashion and losing two.

The following week, the Flyers played the Capitals three times. In a fateful week that truly started Philadelphia's month-long free-fall from pushing for first place to sinking out out the playoff picture, the Flyers lost all three games to Washington in regulation (3-1, 5-3 and 5-4). An all-too-familiar pattern of giving up closely spaced goals, entering third periods trailing by multiple goals and then making a late comeback bid that fell a little short -- sometimes with a late-empty netter adding to the final margin of defeat, sometimes not -- doomed the Flyers.

As the teams reconvene for their next two games, the Capitals are in first place in the East. The Flyers are four points behind Boston for the final playoff spot with the Bruins holding both a tiebreaker edge and two games in hand (plus an easier on-paper remaining schedule). As such, the Flyers were not buyers at all at the NHL trade deadline on Monday. The Capitals continued to tweak their roster for a playoff run.

Flyers Outlook

On Sunday, the Flyers suffered an horrific collapse against the Buffalo Sabres as they twice blew leads by allowing goals spaced less than a minute apart. A dominant first period saw Philadelphia build a 2-0 lead. But a sleepy start to the second period allowed Buffalo to score two quick goals to tie the game and undo what the Flyers had done in the first. In the third period, the Flyers retook the lead and seemed in good shape with time ticking down near three minutes and the Sabres not generating any significant push.

That changed in a hurry, as Buffalo tied the game and then took the lead in a span of less than a half-minute. A needless icing (Claude Giroux), two rebounds (Carter Hart), an unfavorable replay review on a kicked-in puck that could have justifiably gone either way, a sloppy turnover (Sean Couturier) and Buffalo players going to the net turned the lead into a deficit. An empty-net goal then slammed the door on any chance of taking the game to overtime.

On Sunday evening, the Capitals tore apart the injury-riddled Bruins. The Flyers remained four points behind Boston, rather than two, on the eve of the trade deadline.

On deadline day, the Flyers re-signed impending unrestricted free agent forward Scott Laughton to a five-year contract at a $3 million cap hit. They traded out-of-favor defenseman Erik Gustafsson to the Montreal Canadiens at a bargain basement rental cost (the Flyers retaining half of the remainder of his prorated $3 million one-year contract and accepting a 2022 seventh-round pick as the return). Later, the team traded veteran Michael Raffl to the Capitals for a 2021 fifth-round pick with 25 percent retention of his expiring contract by the Flyers.

Raffl is currently out with an injury and is slated to miss about half of the remaining games in the season. Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher said on "Flyers Daily" that, had the Flyers been better situated in the standings, he'd likely had chosen to ride out the rest of the season with Raffl despite the fact that he's going to miss much of the stretch drive. The Capitals can afford to wait on Raffl, and then will plug him into a bottom-six role geared toward penalty killing, 5-on-5 forechecking and own-zone play.

Raffl spent eight years with the Flyers after being signed as a free agent out of Allsvenskan (the Swedish second-tier league). He moved all around the lineup, including a season on left wing with Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek, but primarily played on the fourth line over his Flyers career. Raffl played all three forward positions as needed, including center. He was a player of interest to other teams in past years when he was in the final year of a contract but the Flyers always opted to keep and re-sign him instead. At age 32 in the midst of an injury-riddled down season in 2020-21, his time with the Flyers finally came to an end.

Raffl's departure opens a spot for 23-year-old rookie center/winger Tanner Laczynski to see regular playing time the rest of the season. The Flyers believe that he can play a similar role to Raffl but perhaps with a little more regular offensive pop over time. Additionally, the Flyers plan to get some NHL games in for 23-year-old rookie power forward Wade Allison (four goals, nine points in his first eight AHL games after missing the start of the season due to ankle surgery in January).

Capitals Outlook

In addition to the Raffl acquisition, the Caps made one of the few "hockey trades" of the 2021 deadline, acquiring Anthony Mantha from the Detroit Red Wings in exchange for Jakub Vrana, Richard Panik, a 2021 first-round pick and a 2022 second-round pick. The Caps also sent off little-used defenseman Jonas Siegenthaler to the New Jersey Devils for a 2021 third-round pick.

Entering play on Tuesday, the Caps and Islanders are tied in points atop the East Division (58 points in 42 games played) but Washington is in first place by virtue of their 22-20 tiebreaker advantage in regulation wins.


Projected lineups

FLYERS (Sunday's lineup, will be updated after Monday's off-day)

25 James van Riemsdyk- 14 Sean Couturier - 86 Joel Farabee
21 Scott Laughton - 13 Kevin Hayes - 19 Nolan Patrick
93 Jakub Voracek - 28 Claude Giroux - 11 Travis Konecny
23 Oskar Lindblom - 58 Tanner Laczynski - 62 Nicolas Aube-Kubel

9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
6 Travis Sanheim - 8 Robert Hägg
53 Shayne Gostisbehere - 5 Phil Myers

79 Carter Hart
37 Brian Elliott

 

PP1: Giroux, Patrick, Farabee, Voracek, Provorov.
PP2: Hayes, Couturier, JVR, Konecny, Gostisbehere.

Scratches: 55 Samuel Morin (healthy).

Injured reserve: 48 Morgan Frost (shoulder surgery).

COVID-19 protocol: None.
 

 

 

CAPITALS

8 Alex Ovechkin - 92 Evgeny Kuznetsov - 43 Tom Wilson
73 Conor Sheary - 19 Nicklas Bäckström - 10 Daniel Sprong
28 Daniel Carr - 20 Lars Eller - 77 T.J. Oshie
62 Carl Hagelin - 26 Nic Dowd - 21 Garnet Hathaway

9 Dmitry Orlov - 74 John Carlson
4 Brenden Dillon - 2 Justin Schultz
33 Zdeno Chara - 3 Nick Jensen

30 Ilya Samsonov
41 Vitek Vanecek


PP1: Ovechkin, Oshie, Kuznetsov, Bäckström, Carlson
PP2: Wilson, Eller, Sprong, Ovechkin, Schultz

Acquired April 12, 2021: Anthony Mantha (available to play), Michael Raffl (unavailable due to injury).

Scratches: 28 Daniel Carr (healthy), 57 Trevor van Riemsdyk (healthy).

Injured Reserve: 6 Michal Kempny (Achilles tendon surgery), 35 Henrik Lundqvist (open heart surgery), 47 Beck Malenstyn (Achilles tendon surgery).

COVID-19 protocol: None.

[mkscrewy]

34 minutes ago, mojo1917 said:

Raffl will not score a hatty tonight.

Book it.

He's not playing, he's out for 2 weeks with an injury.

So, we'll have to settle for an Ovechkin or Oshie  hatty instead.

 

why not both??? hahah

[Samifan]

2 hours ago, mojo1917 said:

Raffl will not score a hatty tonight.

Book it.

He's not playing, he's out for 2 weeks with an injury.

So, we'll have to settle for an Ovechkin And  Oshie  hatty instead.

 

Fixed it got you.

[Podein25]

What's, er, everybody drinking?

[radoran]

3 minutes ago, Podein25 said:

What's, er, everybody drinking?

 

[CoachX]

I fcking hate the franchise....and now raffl too !

 

And the capitals

[mojo1917]

21 minutes ago, Podein25 said:

What's, er, everybody drinking?

Thinking I will go with a Howie inspired red wine tonight.

 

[OccamsRazor]

H2O

 

I have to work in the morning.

 

5:30 comes early...

 

[Howie58]

48 minutes ago, mojo1917 said:

Thinking I will go with a Howie inspired red wine tonight.

I hope you are inspired. This is third week of neurologist-mandated booze freeze.  It makes me sad.  Have one on me!

[mkscrewy]

i guess if this goes as poorly as we're all predicting,  you're welcome to watch the live stream of my former high school's lacrosse game which might be more exciting.

[flyer4ever]

So, day after trade deadline, after no moves, after losing 9-0, 8-3, 6-1, 6-1, 5-3, all to non playoff teams, this is how Chuckles holds the leadership and players accountable for their collective pathetic effort the past month. " Don't worry about it, you can play tomorrow night and cash your cheque on Thursday". Dysfunction Flyers. The only thing left to hope for is they get bucket skated a few times before the season ends.

[WordsOfWisdom]

45 minutes ago, flyer4ever said:

after losing 9-0, 8-3, 6-1, 6-1, 5-3, all to non playoff teams

 

Owch!  I think Duke Nukem said it best:

 

 

 

 

[AlaskaFlyerFan]

OK...I'll play the part of the optimist.  The Flyers have 15 games remaining, are 4 points behind the Bruins, and the Bruins just brought in the Taylor Hall curse.  

[Jimtown guy]

This one got ugly in a hurry