Preview: Flyers start preseason with bout against Bruins

Sep 24, 2022 - 5:00 PM

It felt like just yesterday that we were saying goodbye to the terrible and disgusting 2021-22 Philadelphia Flyers season. We were so full of hope for a nice draft pick, and wishing that management would not make terrible decisions to force their hand into not being able to acquire the hometown player that finished with 115 points last season. But that is old news — because it was yesterday.

A brand new Flyers season is starting tonight, and while we can be optimistic and understand that every team is starting its preseason with their own hope that they can outperform the consensus projection, we are probably destined to be looking up draft lottery odds in several months from now.

That’s for another time though, we are getting our first look at a handful of players that will be on the final roster of this team up against the Boston Bruins, a team that has even worse prospects and just keeps on getting older no matter what.

Thankfully for us, the Flyers got ahead of the mess of line guessing on the day of the game and let us all know the players that will be dressed and on the ice tonight. With no clear lineup decision coming from head coach John Tortorella quite yet, we took our own crack at guessing what the lines will be — these will surely be completely wrong, so please do not yell at us.

Projected Flyers lines:

Morgan Frost—Tanner Laczynski—Owen Tippett
Wade Allison—Max Willman—Linus Sandin
Noah Cates—Olle Lycksell—Tyson Foerster
Antoine Roussel—Jackson Cates—Hayden Hodgson
Linus Sandin

Nick Seeler—Cam York
Egor Zamula—Ronnie Attard
Kevin Connauton—Louie Belpedio
Linus Hogberg

Felix Sandstrom
Samuel Ersson

At forward, we are basically getting everyone that will be fighting for the same damn spots on the final roster. Aside from Tippett, Frost, and maybe Cates, everyone else could be either in a depth offensive position in Philadelphia a few weeks from now, or getting loads of minutes in Lehigh Valley.

On the blue line, it is more of the same. York should have already been penned into one of the final six defensemen positions, and other than that it’s a whole lot of guys. Zamula and Attard represent at least some of the future and could be fun if they played together — or completely chaotic — but seeing Nick Seeler and Kevin Connauton again does not inspire confidence that we will have a good time.

Carter Hart will be getting a rest and his two young counterparts will most likely split the load tonight. Sandstrom and Ersson can provide at least a little bit of an interesting battle as the two young Swedish netminders — the former well-experienced in the organization and the latter just arriving to North America last season to appear in five AHL games — fight for more opportunity through the season.

And when it comes to the Bruins lineup and roster...well, we don’t know yet. It’s the preseason. In a similar vein to the Flyers, they will probably trot out a hot prospect like Fabian Lysell and surround him with depth players or AHL talent. So, yeah, that’s about it.

Will Tyson Foerster make enough an impression to stick on the NHL roster? Can Wade Allison look good and healthy, finally? What if Olle Lycksell suddenly scores a billion points and solves a lot of problems at the center position on the Flyers? Hopefully the answer to these questions will become clear after 60 minutes of action tonight. See you then.