The Philadelphia Flyers are an American professional ice hockey club from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tonight, on Tuesday, November 29, 2016, the members of this club will put their bodies inside privately-owned motor vehicles and step on the gas pedal, following traffic laws and a government-funded road system on their way to a building in the southern section of the city. At this building, there is ice, and on that ice, they will use foot blades and hand sticks to compete in a sporting event against the Boston Bruins, an American professional ice hockey club from Boston, Massachusetts.
There will be a winner and a loser of the contest, as per rules of the National Hockey League, a professional sports organization based in New York, New York.
It should be a fun time. Or, maybe it won’t, because many, many professional sports teams from Philadelphia are bad at what they do. Below is a preview of tonight’s Philadelphia Flyers vs. Boston Bruins ice hockey game.
The Bruins are very shorthanded on the defensive side of the puck tonight, and … well … uh yeah, this is quite the opportunity for two points:
Six defensemen on the ice: Krug, McQuaid, Carlo, K. Miller, Morrow, C. Miller,
— Boston Bruins (@NHLBruins) November 29, 2016
While the Flyers have been one of the highest-scoring teams in hockey, balanced by a completely inability to keep the puck out of their own net, on their way to sheer hockey mediocrity. The Bruins are balanced in sort of the opposite way: they have some terrible offensive depth (despite scoring four goals on Sunday), which has resulted in them scoring just 2.36 goals per game thus far. But they’ve been led in net by Tuukka Rask, who has carried them along with a 0.940 save percentage this season.
Rask will be in net for Boston tonight, but hopefully the Flyers can take advantage of an already-thin defense that’s also missing Zdeno Chara and John-Michael Liles.
Steve Mason gets the start in goal tonight for the Flyers. Brandon Manning is out of the lineup again after the team announced that he’s day-to-day with a lower-body injury.
Tonight’s game is on NBCSN across the country, unless you are in the Boston area. The local broadcast there is on NESN. In Canada, the game can be seen on Sportsnet Ontario. 97.5 The Fanatic will carry the Flyers radio call. A live stream can be found here.
Philadelphia lineup
Forwards
- Michael Raffl – Claude Giroux – Wayne Simmonds
- Travis Konecny – Nick Cousins – Jakub Voracek
- Meat Read – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Dale Weise
- Chris VandeVelde – Brayden Schenn – Roman Lyubimov
Defense
- Ivan Provorov – Radko Gudas
- Andrew MacDonald – Shayne Gostisbehere
- Michael Del Zotto – Mark Streit
Goalies
- Steve Mason
- Anthony Stolarz
Scratches: Nick Schultz, Scott Laughton
Injured: Boyd Gordon, Michal Neuvirth, Sean Couturier, Brandon Manning
Boston lineup
Forwards
- Brad Marchand – Patrice Bergeron – David Pastrnak
- Matt Beleskey – David Krejci – David Backes
- Tim Schaller – Riley Nash – Austin Czarnik
- Ryan Spooner – Dominic Moore – James “Jimmy” Hayes
Defense
- Torey Krug – Adam McQuaid
- Joe Morrow – Brandon Carlo
- Kevin Miller – Colin Miller (no relation)
Goalies
- Tuukka Rask
- Anton Khudobin
