Bruins vs. Flyers 10/25/18 PREVIEW

Just the Facts:

The Time: 7pm EST

The Place: TD Garden, Boston, MA

Place to Watch: NESN, Sportsnet 360, TVAS

Place to Listen: 98.5 The Sports Hub (The NHL App has a direct feed if you need it)

Opposing SBNation Blog: Broad Street Hockey

Players to Watch:

• Leading the Flyers in points right now is Jakub Voracek, with 12. The vast majority of which are assists. Philly’s leading goalscorer is Wayne Simmonds, with 6.
• Shayne Gostisbehere is having kind of a rough start so far; only 2 points and is getting shredded at even strength. A fact half of the Flyers defense shares with only exceptions being Gudas, Folin, and Sanheim.
• Because someone has to be considered the starter, Brian Elliot is kind of in the lead for playing time, but his SV% at the moment is pretty rancid; clocking in at .882
• Providence may or may not be sending any defenders up as Boston deals with the fallout of losing Urho Vaakanainen to a boneheaded elbow to the head. The guys people tend to be leaning towards as candidates for this are either Jakub Zboril because he’s young and probably eager to try and prove himself, or Cody Goloubef, who has played in the NHL and understands the rigors better.
• Torey Krug has been getting better! He may even be ready by today! Who knows! Here’s Hoping! Cuz they need him more than ever these days!
• Halak probably starts tonight as the B’s have been divvying up the role of goaltender fairly equally.

Preview:

The Flyers have been off since Monday, and have probably badly needed it for practice, bag-skating, and line re-jiggering as they’ve spent their fairly heavy early schedule flip-flopping between high-event wins and brutal losses as they battle injuries to key players across their lineup, goaltending controversies, and slow starts that end up dooming them in the long run, all culminating in a middling 4-5-0 record. Fans are pissed, and even their new, fun, coked out mascot cannot save Dave Hakstol from being the prime target of ire of the fanbase and in general looking like a prime candidate to getting his ass fired.

Boston meanwhile is dealing with a somewhat similar situation at least when it comes to depth concerns, however a lot of that comes from the catastrophic run of injury luck on their blueline and from at least one line that has been getting torn apart by opposing offenses. Thankfully, the Joakim Nordstrom version of the third line seems to be slightly better than most other versions of this particular experiment and everyone there looked markedly better than they did some time ago, and the nightmare of injury concern could finally be coming to a close as guys are getting closer to getting back on the ice, but until that time comes, the B’s will continue to go next man up on their back end.

Two teams who desperately want to get two points before they play division rivals on the weekend are ready for a hell of a night in Boston. Who wins? Tune in tonight to find out!

Never Forget:

The composition of this shot could almost make it a renaissance work.