Preview: Flyers visit Bruins in preseason matinée

Oct 1, 2022 - 2:45 PM

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The Philadelphia Flyers are halfway through their slate of preseason exhibition games, if you can believe it, and they begin the final slog of games with a game against the Boston Bruins on Saturday afternoon. What else do you have to do? Fun things? You can instead watch part of the Flyers real lineup play a fake hockey game.

This afternoon’s bout between one good team and one bad team will be available on NBCSP+ and NESNplus and on 97.5 The Fanatic, for those audio watchers. Puck drop is at 1:00 p.m.

During their first three preseason games, the offense of the Flyers has certainly lacked — which you could have somewhat predicted given the fact that at full strength they experience that problem as well, so imagine dressing up only 10 or so NHL players and trying to do that. In three games, they have scored four goals, leading to just one win (a 2-1 victory over this afternoon’s opponents to open the preseason) and two somewhat close losses.

Meanwhile, the Bruins have played just one other preseason game then their opening loss to our favorite hockey club — a gutsy 3-2 overtime victory over the New York Rangers, where they dressed basically an AHL roster. Will they take this game as (not) seriously as that win, and have only depth guys and Charlie Coyle playing? Well, unfortunately not. It has been reported that Boston will be playing a veteran-heavy lineup this afternoon — so, that’s just great.

As for the Flyers, the potential roster for today’s game has been released, but no official lines, so we are just going to be guessing here what the line combinations might be. Don’t yell at us if we are wrong.

Projected Flyers lineup:

James van Reimsdyk — Kevin Hayes — Owen Tippett
Noah Cates — Morgan Frost — Tyson Foerster
Olle Lycksell — Jackson Cates — Hayden Hodgson
Max Willman — Tanner Laczynski — Zack MacEwen

Travis Sanheim — Rasmus Ristolainen
Cam York — Ronnie Attard
Egor Zamula — Nick Seeler

Felix Sandstrom
Troy Grosenick

While Boston is going with some NHL regulars to get a warm-up appearance in before they open their regular season, the Flyers are going with a mix of talent. There certainly are some people that could push this team beyond the 1.33 goals per game rate that they are at right now, but there are a lot of roster hopefuls. No one’s spot on the final lineup is really secure except the top forward line and top defensive pairing, and then York, Frost, and Cates — and even then, we are just hoping that that young trio will be on the important ice throughout the season.