Game Preview #19: New Jersey Devils vs the Philadelphia Flyers

The Matchup: The New Jersey Devils (8-6-4) vs the Philadelphia Flyers (8-7-4)

SB Nation Blog: Broad Street Hockey

The Time: 7 PM ET

The Broadcast: TV - MSG+

Radio: Devils Hockey Network

Coming into Tonight:

Both teams will be heading into tonight’s game hot off a poor performance. The Devils managed an embarrassing loss against former head coach John Hynes’ Nashville Predators Friday night. We had some surges late in the game that lead to two goals from Johnsson and Tatar in the final ten minutes of play, but Nashville also scored two goals in the third period including one empty netter, dropping us to a 4-2 loss. A win against our former coach would have been satisfying, but hey, I’ll take a win tonight instead.

The Flyers took a walloping from the Carolina Hurricanes Friday night. They fell 6-3 after one of the worst performances from Carter Hart I have seen in a while. The defense was absolutely to blame as well of course, as the Flyers defense is one of the few that makes our breakdowns look good. Carolina put up an absolutely beautiful tic tac toe goal that there was nothing Hart could have done, and another goal where Hart was scrambling while every defenseman looked like they were reenacting a Harlem shake video by doing any random thing they could think of besides playing defense. Ristolainen was in the net behind Hart shoving a Canes player without even a clue of where the puck was. However, at least three of the other goals were caused by poor play from Hart himself. His positioning was off and he was missing clean shots he absolutely should have had. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Martin Jones in net across the ice tonight. Jones would be coming into tonight with a .927 SV% and 4.4 goals saved above expected.

On the bench, the Flyers are still missing some key players in Ryan Ellis and Kevin Hayes, who both reaggravated injuries and are out week to week, as well as Derek Brassard, Patrick Brown, and Samuel Morin. They recalled Morgan Frost from Lehigh Valley to fill the gaps.

Flyers Lines

Giroux - Couturier - Konecny
Lindblom - Laughton - Van Riemsdyk
Farabee - Frost - Atkinson
Bunnaman - Thompson - MacEwen

Provorov - Ristolainen
Sanheim - Seeler
Yandle - Braun

Jones

Devils Lines

Per Amanda Stein at the Devils practice yesterday:

Zacha - Hischier - Vesey
Johnsson - Mercer - Bratt
Kuokkanen - Sharangovitch - Tatar
Geertsen - McLeod - Bastian

Graves - Hamilton
Siegenthaler - Subban
Smith - Severson

Blackwood/Bernier

Your Take

What do you think about these lineup changes? How do you feel about Bastian’s return? Leave your thoughts and predictions for tonight’s game in the comments, and thanks for reading!