Bill Meltzer’s Flyers blog on Hockey Hot Stove is brought to you by Cover All Exteriors, LLC and New Balance of Mount Laurel. Find out why Cover All Exteriors is the No. 1 roofing and siding contractor in the Delaware Valley. New Balance Mount Laurel is the athletic shoe store of choice for the Flyers Alumni and various current Flyers.
The Philadelphia Flyers pay a visit to their own farm system stomping grounds on Thursday night. Rick Tocchet’s club will be in Hershey, PA, on Thursday evening to take on the Washington Capitals. In between Philly’s affiliation with the Maine Mariners and the creation of the Phantoms, the Hershey Bears served as the Flyers’ AHL affiliate from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.
Thursday’s match at the Giant Center is the Flyers’ third game of the 2025-26 preseason. On Sunday, the Flyers won a 3-2 (4-3) shootout decision over the New York Islanders in Elmont, NY. On Tuesday at Bell Centre, Philly dropped a 4-2 final to the Montreal Canadiens.
Line combinations
The Flyers will hold an 11:15 a.m. EDT practice in Voorhees on Thursday. That’s the only on-ice group on the schedule, rather than two (or three) different group sessions. The probable game group for the match in Hershey lined up this way on Wednesday:
Alex Bump – Noah Cates – Travis Konecny
Owen Tippett – Jett Luchanko – Nikita Grebenkin
Denver Barkey – Jack Nesbitt – Devin Kaplan
Nicolas Deslauriers – Jacob Gaucher – Rodrigo Abols
Cam York – Helge Grans
Adam Ginning – Egor Zamula
Dennis Gilbert – Noah Juulsen
Dan Vladar
Carson Bjarnason
Cates on camp to date
Flyers center Noah Cates met with the media after practice on Thursday. He discussed his working relationship with the new coaching staff. Additionally, he talked about building off last season. Cates became a full-time center in 2024-25, and spent nearly two-thirds of the season on a line with Tyson Foerster and Bobby Brink.
Quick update on Foerster: the third-year NHL is no longer in a no-contact jersey. He’s a full participant in all reps and will soon be ready to play in a preseason game or two.
Three Roster Cuts
Fifty-two players remain on the Flyers training camp roster. On Wednesday, the team announced three roster cuts (all from Group C). None were surprises:
D – Andre Mondoux (released from his ATO)
D – Luke Vlooswyk (reassigned to Red Deer in the WHL)
F – Matthew Gard (reassigned to Red Deer in the WHL)
Flyers Daily: Special Guest Ray Didinger
The great Ray Didinger is best known as a prolific football writer. However, he’s also very savvy about hockey (and other sports) in general and the Flyers in particular. On the current edition of Flyers Daily, Ray joins host Jason Myrtetus to talk hockey. Didinger also talks about his new theater production, Spinner, based on the life of NHL player Brian Spencer.
Side note: Ray and my father, Roger Meltzer, were college friends in the journalism department at Temple University in the mid-to-late 1960s. Russ Peltz, who later became a prominent boxing promoter and writer, was also a journalism student at Temple during the same period.
