After a 3-2 loss at the hands of the Florida Panthers last night, the Flyers finish their Florida back-to-back tonight vs. the Tampa Bay Lightning. Tampa is in the second half of a back-to-back as well, having defeated Montreal last night by a 3-1 score.
Tampa comes into this game as the best team in the entire league with a record of 27-7-2, lead by the league’s leader in points and goals, Nikita Kucherov. They’re also backstopped by one of the best goalies in the NHL this season in Andrei Vasilevskiy. Truthfully, it’s hard to find any semblance of a weakness in this Tampa Bay team. Their defense features Victor Hedman and Mikhail Sergachev, and oh by the way, they still have Steven Stamkos.
The Lightning are 9-1-0 in their last 10 games and are sporting a remarkable 16-2-1 home record to begin the season. With all of this being said, the Flyers are totally winning tonight, right?
Team Metrics Breakdown
Flyers raw CF% rank: 18th
Lightning raw CF% rank: 8th
Flyers xGF% rank: 16th
Lightning xGF% rank: 5th
Needless to say, the Lightning are pretty far up in the metrics as well. Hell even Dan Girardi is having a solid season when looking at his raw CF%, it’s close to 50! (His CF% last season was 44%) The Flyers are going to need to come out firing if they have any chance of pulling out a win vs. Tampa.
Flyers struggle in St. Pete
Since the 2010-2011 season, the Flyers have just two wins on Tampa’s home ice. A 2011 shootout win that is so long ago that dry island was still a thing, and then a 3-1 win during the 2015-2016 season. Generally over the past few years, the Flyers have struggled to beat Tampa, even more so when on their home ice.
PHI point leaders
- Jakub Voracek – 44 points
- Claude Giroux – 43 points
- Sean Couturier – 33 points
TBL point leaders
- Nikita Kucherov – 52 points
- Steven Stamkos – 47 points
- Brayden Point – 33 points
And the models say…
oh….oh my
That is just downright depressing, but let’s be real, is this even surprising? The Flyers have their work cut out for them for sure tonight.
Flyers Projected Lineup
Forwards
Giroux – Couturier – Voracek
Weal – Filppula – Simmonds
Raffl – Laughton – Konecny
Leier – Patrick – Weise
Defense
Provorov – Gostisbehere
Hagg – MacDonald
Sanheim – Gudas
Goalie
Neuvirth
(Elliott)
All stats courtesy of NHL.com and Corsica.hockey
