Bill Meltzer’s Flyers blog on Hockey Hot Stove is brought to you by Phans of Philly, by Lights On Electric, by New Balance of Mount Laurel, and by Cover All Exteriors.
Rick Tocchet’s Philadelphia Flyers (0-1-0) will try for their first win of the season on Saturday night. The team is in Raleigh, North Carolina. The opponent: Rod Brind’Amour’s Carolina Hurricanes. Here’s the 411 to get you set for the opener.
Time and broadcast: 7:00 p.m. EDT on NBCSP
Listen online: FlyersRadio 24/7
PhiladelphiaFlyers.com keys to the game for Philadelphia: click here after 11 a.m. ET
Flyers Projected Starting Lineup
Travis Konecny – Sean Couturier – Matvei Michkov
Christian Dvorak– Trevor Zegras – Owen TIppett
Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Nikita Grebenkin – Jett Luchanko – Garnet Hathaway
Nick Seeler – Travis Sanheim
Egor Zamula – Jamie Drysdale
Adam Ginning – Noah Juulsen
Samuel Ersson
[Dan Vladar]
Scratches: Rodrigo Abols (healthy), Nicolas Deslauriers (healthy), Dennis Gilbert (healthy).
Phantoms Open Regular Season
The Lehigh Valley Phantoms begin their 12th season in Allentown on Saturday. John Snowden’s team hosts the Belleville Senators on opening night at the PPL Center. Attending fans receive rally towels and there will a pre-game light show.
Rookie defenseman Oliver Bonk and third-year defenseman Ethan Samson are out with injuries. Both remain on the Flyers’ INR (Injured Non Roster) list. The Phantoms open the season with a 27-man roster:
Goalies
35 Aleksei Kolosov
64 Carson Bjarnason
Defensemen
3 Helge Grans
4 Ty Murchison
6 Emil Andrae
7 Ben Meehan
14 Emile Chouinard
19 Hunter McDonald
24 Carter Berger
57 Artem Guryev
Forwards
12 Devin Kaplan
13 Massimo Rizzo
17 Garrett Wilson
20 Cooper Marody
21 Alex Bump
22 Tucker Robertson
23 Karsen Dorwart
25 Lane Pederson
27 Samu Tuomaala
36 Sawyer Boulton
43 Oscar Eklind
52 Denver Barkey
56 Jacob Gaucher
72 Alexis Gendron
74 Zayde Wisdom
90 Anthony Richard
91 Carl Grundstrom
Six players to watch:
- Denver Barkey: Speedy, high-energy winger makes his professional regular season debut.
- Alex Bump: Came to NHL camp ahead of Nikita Grebenkin on the depth chart. Bump was, in fact, a favorite to earn an opening-night NHL roster spot. He had a frustrating camp. Grebenkin beat him out in merit. Now Bump has to channel disappointment into motivation.
- Emil Andrae: The undersized third-year defenseman has shown flashes of potential at the NHL. Snowden needs Andrae (the power play quarterback), Helge Grans and Hunter McDonald to absorb a lot of minutes on already banged-up blueline.
- Aleksei Kolosov: The Belarusian goalie has had more downs that ups in his North American career so far. This is a make-or-break year if he’s to have a sustained career. He’s shown improved work ethic and coachability so far.
- Alexis Gendron: He’s small but he can skate and he can score. Gendron also had a strong training camp.
- Lane Pederson: The two-way center was an NHL roster dark horse entering camp. Rodrigo Abols beat out Jacob Gaucher, Pederson and rookie Karsen Dorwart for a spot. Gaucher played OK but Abols played better. Pederson and Dorwart suffered injuries in camp and missed crucial evaluation time. Both are now healthy and ready to play.
Prospect Pipeline podcast
Brian Smith and I recorded the first 2025-26 in-season edition of the Prospect Pipeline podcast after Monday’s Flyers practice in Voorhees. The prospects mentioned in this podcast, along with various other players in the system, have all played a few games since then. However, the big-picture discussions of the players’ upsides are the main focus.
Bill, you know I’m a big fan of your work- but…
Flyers are 0-1-0, not 1-0-0. AND You have TK as LW1 and RW2 in the projected lineup.
We’ll let it slide since it’s only game 2, but pick up your game, bro! It’s the regular season already! lol. 🙂
That’s what happens when you copy and paste the last game lineup, forget to make one of the changes. Ditto turning 0-0-0 into 0-1-0-0 and deleting the wrong zero! Thx for the catches. They’re fixed. (Maybe I should start putting in an intentional error to see if anyone spots it. LOL)
Cheers to your lightning quick corrections! Ha!
This is the Flyers forward lineup I would like to see for the next several games. I think this could work well, and it gives our young players a chance to develop.
Let’s Go Flyers
That was horsecrap.
Sanheim’s “contact” wasn’t why Anderson was in the position he was when Brink got the puck. It was his own momentum of going left to right. It’s not street hockey. They’re on ice.
As a former goalie, typically, I lean toward interference, but not here. I think the situation room blew it.
It was the correct call. Sanheim wasn’t pushed and the rule book states that even if the goalie initiated the incidental contact in the blue paint, it’s no goal.
As long as they apply the rule consistently.
I thought that the contact had to be relevant to the goalie’s ability to make the save. Now I know. Again, consistency is key. My guess is that it hasn’t been.