Playing their fourth game in six nights, Rick Tocchet’s Philadelphia Flyers (13-7-3) are in Newark on Saturday to take on Sheldon Keefe’s New Jersey Devils (16-7-1). This is the second of four meetings this season between the Metro Division rivals.<\/p>\n
Game time at Prudential Center is 7:00 p.m. EST. The game will be televised on NBCSP.<\/p>\n
The Flyers have posted a 5-4-1 record on the road to date. The team has posted points in eight of its last 10 games (6-2-2). Tocchet’s club is coming off a 4-3 (2-1) road shootout win against the New York Islanders on Friday.<\/p>\n
After scoring the final two goals of Thursday’s 4-2 road win over the Florida Panthers, Tyson Foerster and Sean Couturier opened the scoring against the Islanders. The Flyers later received a power play goal from Trevor Zegras. Both Zegras and Travis Konecny scored in the shootout.<\/p>\n
The Devils boast a nearly unblemished 9-0-1 record on home ice so far (7-7-0 on the road). They are in the same boat as the Flyers in terms of scheduling. It’s also their fourth game in six nights, third in four nights, and the second game of a back-to-back. The only slight difference is that Devils have had less travel this past week. Three of the four games have been at home.<\/p>\n
New Jersey enters this game coming off a 5-0 road win against the Buffalo Sabres on Black Friday. It was their third win a row since a 6-3 loss to the Flyers in Philadelphia last Saturday.<\/p>\n
In Friday’s game, Jake Allen stopped all 42 shots he faced. Arseny Gritsyuk tallied his fifth and sixth goals of the season. Paul Cotter and veteran defenseman Brenden Dillon each scored a goal and an assist. Team captain Nico Hischier, who tallied twice against the Flyers last week, opened the scoring with his ninth goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Here are the RAV4 Things to watch on Saturday evening in Newark.<\/p>\n
1. Vladar vs. Markstrom<\/strong><\/p>\n With both the Flyers and Devils playing the second half of back-to-back sets of games, the starting goaltending matchup for Saturday is expected to be straight forward (barring injury or illness). Dan Vladar will go for the Flyers. He’ll be opposed by Jacob Markstrom for New Jersey.<\/p>\n Markstrom (7-3-1, 3.56 GAA, .874 SV%) has had an inconsistent season so far by his normal standards. However, the 35-year-old Swede has won three of his last four starts and shown recent signs of rounding back into his accustomed form.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the late-blooming Vladar (9-4-1, 2.39 GAA, .913 SV%) hit a groove last season during the stretch drive. He’s carried it through so far in his first season with the Flyers. The Czech netminder is coming off back-to-back stellar performances in wins against the Devils and Panthers.<\/p>\n 2. Michkov performance<\/strong><\/p>\n With the score tied at 3-3, Matvei Michkov took a third period high-sticking double minor in Friday’s game against the Islanders. The Flyers’ penalty kill stepped up, and no harm ensued. Before the penalty, Michkov made several clever plays with the puck to create scoring chances. Overall, he skated 15:56 of ice time and chipped in an assist (sixth of the season).<\/p>\n Michkov scored a breakaway goal against the Devils last Saturday. He has three points (2g, 1a) in his last four games and fiv goals in the last 10 games.<\/p>\n 3. Fourth line contribution<\/strong><\/p>\n Given the very busy schedules both teams have played this week, it’s particularly important to roll all four lines and avoid excessive penalties. The main objectives for fourth-line shifts: don’t give up a goal, don’t take an undisciplined penalty, and set up the next line in an advantageous position for their shift.<\/p>\n The Flyers fourth line trio of Rodrigo Abols, Garnet Hathaway and Nikita Grebenkin had a tough game in Elmont on Friday. New Jersey’s line with Luke Glendenning centering Juho Lammikko and Stefan Noesen played more effectively in the Buffalo game.<\/p>\n 4. York – Sanheim defense pair<\/strong><\/p>\n Travis Sanheim has played four strong games over the past week, while logging 25-plus minutes of ice time in three of the last five games (including a goal and an assist). Defense partner Cam York has 10 assists and 11 points to date. He has topped 24:45 of ice time in three of the last five games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Playing their fourth game in six nights, Rick Tocchet’s Philadelphia Flyers (13-7-3) are in Newark on Saturday to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":413293,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,1448,2830,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-413292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-pa","10":"tag-pennsylvania","11":"tag-philadelphia","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115634201208260170","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413292"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413292\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}