Flyers Round-Robin Schedule

A mere week away from playoff hockey, lets take a look at the Flyers three upcoming opponents in the round-robin portion of the tournament.

The Flyers begin with their first game on August 2 when they’ll face off against the last team they played before stoppage in the Boston Bruins. Boston had beaten the Flyers to snap their longest win streak of the season of 9 games and at the same time dashed their hopes of a Metro division crown as the season abruptly ended just days later due to Covid-19.

During the regular season the Flyers faired quite well against their Eastern Conference rivals, going 2-1 with two entertaining shootout victories with one being away at Boston and the other being the infamous whiff by Brad Marchand during the shoot-out in Philly. All the pressure during the round-robin should be with Boston as they have everything to lose as they were the top seed and on the contrary the Flyers really have nothing to lose as they finished as the 4 seed before play stopped.

For the second game of round-robin play on August 6, the Flyers will face an old rival and defending Metro division champions, the Washington Capitals. The Caps finished the season a point ahead of the Flyers with 90 to win the division. I have no doubt the Flyers were on their way to passing these guys as the Caps seemed to be struggling defensively and the Flyers were on fire heading down the stretch.

During the regular season the Flyers completely dominated the Capitals in every game they played having gone a staggering 3-0-1 against them. 2019-20 was a complete 180 from a year ago when the Caps skated circles around the Flyers, a testament to the job Head Coach Alain Vigneault and GM Chuck Fletcher had done to magically change the mindset of the team.

As I mentioned earlier, the Flyers did dominate the Caps this season and if you needed any more proof just look at the goal differential as the Flyers outscored Washington by a whopping 16-7 and their only loss came via the shoot-out early in the season and even though the Flyers lost, I feel it was a game they should’ve won at least 3 times before the end of regulation.

Now for their final opponent in the Tampa Bay Lightning which will now be played on Saturday, August 8. Tampa Bay has given the Flyers fits for what seems as long as I can remember and even more so recently. The Flyers were shut out by the Lightning this season 1-0 and Tampa also gave the Flyers their last loss before the 9 game win streak by a score of 5-3.

The Flyers have had trouble containing Tampa Bay’s offensive fire power as Tampa are unique in that they are a top heavy team when it comes to offensive talent but they also feature strong depth down the roster along with a Vezina caliber goaltender. The Lightning are a legit Stanley Cup contender and I believe a tier above the Caps and potentially the Bruins this season so I’m not 100% confident the Flyers would be able to handle Tampa in a 7 game series.

Fortunately for Philly all they have to do is beat them once and hopefully not have to worry about stopping Kucherov, Stamkos, Point, and Hedman to name a few.

I’ll wrap up with this, the Flyers have gone a total of 5-3-1 against the scariest teams in the Eastern Conference and weren’t embarrassed in any particular game unless you’d like to count the boring 1-0 loss to Tampa. One things for sure, this Flyers team will not bow down to any of these teams.

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Header Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports