With a dress rehearsal Sunday night, the Flyers played their first game at the Wells Fargo Center in ten months.
The club’s 2021 training camp has been completed and decisions must now be made before the opening of the regular season on Wednesday.
Team White beat Team Orange 4-2 in an intrasquad match.
Goals were scored by Kevin Hayes (two), Nicolas Aube-Kubel, Nolan Patrick, Scott Laughton and James van Riemsdyk.
The Flyers, who had 41 players in camp, need to set up their 23-man roster and taxi group before the real thing starts when the Penguins come to town.
Alain Vigneault and the Flyers’ coaching staff watched the mockery from above in one of the team management suites along with general manager Chuck Fletcher and the front office. Phantoms head coach Scott Gordon was behind the bench for Team Orange, and Phantoms coach Kerry Huffman led Team White.
The last five minutes of the third period were played in 3-to-3 overtime style. Laughton scored the match winner during a breakaway, while Van Riemsdyk also scored one on a breakaway. Both beat Brian Elliott on their innings.
The night ended with a nine-round shootout. Michael Raffl passed on a slapper. The goalkeepers were good.
• Speaking of good. Good for Patrick.
He scored a goal for Team White to tie things up 2-2 in the second period. He was seen smiling, he looked comfortable. He has not been able to do so since April 2019. Sunday was his first game action with Flyers teammates in 649 days after missing the entire previous season, which was interrupted and restarted as he recovered from a migraine disorder.
After finding answers and progressing all season, Patrick was a full participant in this camp and one of the Flyers’ best players during its duration, Vigneault said Sunday morning.
At the beginning of the camp, Patrick said that he would approach things one day at a time and see how he felt at the end of the camp. If he plays in the opening game of Wednesday in the regular season, the Flyers could look right in the middle here.
Sean Couturier
Kevin Hayes
Nolan Patrick
Scott Laughton
There are a lot of likes with four centers that are hard to play. Laughton led the team into goals during the summer during the NHL’s 24-team playoff tournament.
“Our depth is probably one of the strongest I’ve seen since I was here,” Laughton, who made his Flyers debut in 2012-13, said Sunday morning. “I’m excited to get started.”
Lindblom was also a sight to behold on the ice. He played alongside Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny.
He said his goal is to play opening night, and he looks ready to go.
The 24-year-old winger was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma in December 2019. After completing his radiation treatments in July and being cleared of cancer, he returned for two games in the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs.
A full off-season was great for him. Great story, too.
• During a November game last season, Farabee was relegated to a lower line and barely played in the third period due to uncharacteristic turnover. The 20-year-old wing, who can be so good and smart with the bag on his stick, quickly gave up that night and the coaches told him afterwards.
In Year 2, Farabee wants to show more patience and grumpiness when the disc comes his way.
“I feel confident about my game on the ice,” Farabee said Tuesday. “I think I felt like I got rid of the puck a lot last year when I didn’t need it. So, just to hold on to it, maybe wait for a play to open up and stuff like that. . “
He showed it Sunday.
The line of Farabee, Hayes and Claude Giroux clicked from the start and yielded the first two goals of the match to give Team Orange a 2-0 lead.
Farabee and Giroux played a nice two-man match to get Hayes to post on the first goal. Farabee hummed the line later in the period with an easy pass that played along the back wall to Hayes, who defended his second.
Clever and not rushed reading by Farabee.
Good stuff from that line and expect to see it in the opener on Wednesday.
• Aube-Kubel put Team White on the board with a nasty shot and cut Team Orange’s deficit to 2-1 in the midfield.
You know what you get with Aube-Kubel: a relentless forward and opportunistic scorer.
• Jakub Voracek helps Patrick’s goal. He was a nightmare for 20-year-old defender Egor Zamula.
Voracek is a big guy who can protect the puck, and the skinny Zamula can’t get him off of it.
It will be interesting to see if the Flyers decide to keep Zamula in the taxi team. Not sure they will do that.
• Intrasquad crisis averted.
Ivan Provorov took a Lindblom shot to his foot or leg and went down in a heap.
He stayed in the game and did not even leave the bench to go to the locker room … anyone surprised?
Provorov has yet to miss a game in his NHL career, and he has played in all 315 of his first four seasons.
• With the transition from defender to left wing, Samuel Morin had a nice point chance in the third period and hit iron. He competed hard and did what he said, completing his checks. He even broke his stick on one of the hits.
• The talented prospect Morgan Frost had a few chances and showed a good second attempt. He looks like a clear candidate for the taxi group.
“I will continue to work hard and do what I can to get in line,” Frost said Sunday night. “I want to be on the Flyers, so that’s just the only thing I think about.”
The Flyers do not play Frost on the fourth line. Given the team’s depth on the position (at least now on paper), Frost could be a candidate to play left wing at some point, if necessary. He got representatives on the left during the camp.
• Raffl was whistled for a penalty in the third period.
Konecny seems to be playfully chirping his mate when Raffl sends him off and goes to the box office.
Midseason form for no. 11.
• Both Carter Hart and Elliott played the full game and were in shape. No problems there.
• Shayne Gostisbehere and Wade Allison were unfit to play for the second consecutive day. When the roster is announced, we will have a better idea of their status.
• Here were the front lines and defensive pair. Some of them will probably stay on Wednesday. The Flyers are off Monday and training Tuesday.
• The Flyers begin the regular season Wednesday night when they welcome the Penguins to the Wells Fargo Center (17:30 ET / NBCSN).
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