By Kevin Fortier, Sports Talk Philly staff writer 
The hockey season is finally here. Wednesday night marked the official beginning of the 2016-2017 NHL season. The Flyers season begins Friday night in Los Angeles against the Kings in a late night west coast game.
The Flyers opening night roster is set, after some last minute scrambling due to player injuries and suspensions. The Flyers sent forward Roman Lyubimov down on paper and then bringing him back up, waived Jordan Weal, but not assigning him to the Phantoms until Wednesday and placed injured forward Scott Laughton and defenseman Michael Del Zotto on LTIR after maximizing salary cap efficiency. In addition, they managed the impact of suspensions of Brayden Schenn for last season’s playoff hit on T.J. Oshie and a six-game suspension handed out to blueliner Radko Gudas for a late hit in the Flyer’s final preseason game against Boston.
It was a challenging week for Flyers general manager Ron Hextall, shuffling players and optimizing salary cap implications, but he has the roster he wanted and avoided going over the salary cap.
The only real surprise among the forwards was the inclusion of first-round draft pick Travis Konecny. He will be skating on the second line playing on Sean Couturier’s left and Jake Voracek on his right.
Konecny led all Flyers in pre-season scoring with six points and seemed to energize Voracek, who had a down year last season. Voracek came into camp 10 pounds lighter and seems quicker because of it.
After Schenn serves his three-game suspension, the top line will be as it was at the end of last season, Schenn centered by Claude Giroux and Wayne Simmonds on the right side. In the interim, Michael Raffl will play left wing on the top line and will then presumably drop to the third line with Nick Cousins and Dale Weise.
For the first 3 games, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare will center the third line and will then likely slide down to the right side on the fourth line.
To the surprise of many, Chris VandeVelde will maintain his role as the fourth line left wing. Many thought he might be a casualty of the plethora of bottom 6 forwards in the system. Free-agent signing Boyd Gordon will center the line. To start the season, Matt Read will play on the right side.
Lyubimov is expected to start the season as the extra forward. The Russian forward came over from the KHL and had a strong preseason which led some to believe he would play left wing on the fourth line instead of VandeVelde.
Neither Hextall nor coach Dave Hakstol have hinted at what the fourth line will look like exactly after the return of Schenn shuffles the lines. Will Read or VandeVelde be the odd man out? Could Lyubimov step in if Read or VandeVelde don't perform well?
The blue line will be missing two key veterans. Del Zotto is on LTIR and will miss four-to-five weeks. Gudas is serving his six-game suspension. That means the Flyers will only have six healthy defensemen on the roster for the beginning of the season. Hextall will have to call up another defenseman, Sam Morin or T.J. Brennan are possibilities, in case an injury or illness requires time to be missed.
Friday will mark the first pro game for defensive sensation Ivan Provorov, something Flyers fans have been eagerly anticipating. Provorov played very well in the preseason and is expected to log some heavy minutes on the blue line. He will be paired with Mark Streit.
Shayne Gostisbehere will make his sophomore debut paired with Andrew MacDonald and Brandon Manning will play with Nick Schultz.
Flyers fans have been chomping at the bit to see their team. They waited all summer to see if the two exciting 2015 first-round draft picks would make the team out of camp. With their offseason dream come true, 10:30 p.m. on Friday night can't get here soon enough.
