Photo: Flyerdelphia/Nicole Giordano
This Saturday’s showdown between the Flyers and the Penguins will be much more exciting than the average home game for many Philadelphians. Not only will there be meaningful hockey being played for the first time since the team’s 4-1 series defeat to the New Jersey Devils in the Conference Semifinals last spring, but the game will already feel crucial as it comes against a tough divisional opponent. In a shortened season, with every individual game carrying much more weight, there can be no doubt of the heightened importance of this early matchup.
One of the major storylines heading into the game centers on the challenge goalie Ilya Bryzgalov faces in keeping Pittsburgh’s potent offensive players in check. After posting disappointing numbers in the prior two seasons, center Evgeni Malkin exploded for 50 goals and a league-best 109 points. After dealing with concussion trouble the last two seasons, Sidney Crosby is by all accounts healthy and poised to make a comeback. With reinforcements from the likes of LW James Neal, C Jordan Staal, and LW Chris Kunitz, the Penguins will be hard to stop if they can get in a rhythm.
Of course, the Flyers are a team with plenty of offensive potential. Center Claude Giroux
continued to push his play into the upper-echelon of players with his 28-goal, 93-point ’11-’12 campaign. Rookie Matt Read led all rookies with 24 goals, Wayne Simmonds scored 28 times, and Scott Hartnell managed a career-best 37 goals. Pittsburgh goalie Marc-Andre Fluery saw just what this team was capable of, surrendering 26 goals in just six games in the Penguins’ 4-2 series loss in
last year’s playoffs against the Flyers, so he will be under just as much scrutiny as Bryzgalov. Both goalies will need to post strong performances for their teams to go anywhere this season.
It will be interesting to see how both teams arrange their lines for this game. Following
the departure of RW Jaromir Jagr, who played alongside Giroux and Scott Hartnell on the first line, there has been much talk of who will claim his spot. After receiving a four-year, $17 million contract in June 2012, it was expected up until only a few days ago that Jakub Voracek would play on the
first line. In recent days, however, 21-year-old Brayden Schenn has been seeing the most practice time at right wing with the first line, and some speculate that he will indeed claim the spot that was all but assumed to be Voracek’s for a while. This likely says more about Shenn improving than Voracek not being good enough, however, as many people around the team expect Voracek to have a strong season, and at only 23 years old, such a season would not be a huge surprise. Other than this, the Flyers top two lines are fairly concrete.
Pittsburgh, on the other hand, has been working to get the right combination of their best
players figured out. Crosby figures to play the second line with Kunitz and Pascal Dupris rather than joining Malkin on the first line. The Penguins figure that Malkin and Neal will be on the first line, but who will join them is unclear as of now. Names mentioned include Tanner Glass, Tyler Kennedy, Kris Letang, and Matt Cooke. The team has been insistent on keeping Malkin off the
point during power plays, where he had trouble at times last season, in favor of Neal. This is not necessarily a bad thing, however, as the duo of Neal and Malkin combined for 90 goals and 190 points while playing on the first line together last season, mostly in Crosby’s absence.
This should be an interesting game, and will certainly be one the fans are very much into throughout. Flyers fans were angered by the dirty play of the Penguins in last year’s playoffs, as well as the fact that the Penguins are still one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup, as they were last season, even after having been soundly defeated by the Flyers. Regardless team affiliation, there will be plenty of excitement for hockey fans this Saturday at the Wells Fargo Center.
