Brayden Point
The Flyers final game of a three-game road trip comes against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Much like the first meeting against the Lightning, Tampa enters as the hottest team in the league, currently on a nine-game winning streak, just as they were when they paid a visit to Philadelphia on Jan. 11.
The Flyers next opponent was one of the bigger disappointments in the NHL a month ago, but since then, the Tampa Bay Lightning have risen to second place in the Atlantic Division and sixth in the league in points, due in large part to a current nine-game winning streak that they will bring to Philadelphia on Saturday night.
While it still seems likely that the Flyers will get deals done with Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny at some point before camp begins, just what kind of deals with they get?
With August upon us, the Flyers still have not re-signed restricted free agents Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny, two key pieces to their future. But the Flyers are not alone among teams still needing to sign key RFAs with just over a month until training camps open.
The Flyers kept things rolling with back-to-back wins over the Detroit Red Wings over the weekend to improve to 12-2-1 in their last 15 games. They get a tough task on Tuesday at home, facing the NHL-leading Tampa Bay Lightning.
In almost a carbon copy of the first meeting between the two teams in November, the Flyers somehow managed a frantic rally to get the game tied after trailing by three goals and earn a point. But, yet again, they coughed up the chance at the second point almost immediately, as Alex Killorn scored 18 seconds into overtime to give the Lightning a 6-5 win on Thursday night.
The Flyers gave the Tampa Bay Lightning a run for their money in November, erasing a 5-1 lead in under seven minutes to force overtime, before ultimately suffering the defeat. Tampa has some help back in netminder Andrei Vasilevskiy and is also fresh off the break.
Allowing three power-play goals, six goals to even the most potent offense in the Tampa Bay Lightning and making enough fundamental mistakes to create a deficit in the first place don’t look good. But the rally showed some character. It may not be a win but the Flyers need to channel this effort late in the game into better results from here.
The Flyers rallied with four unanswered goals in 6:04 to erase a 5-1 deficit, but fell to the Tampa Bay Lightning in overtime, 6-5, on Saturday afternoon at Wells Fargo Center.
The opponent in this final game of the homestand is the Tampa Bay Lightning, the team atop the Eastern Conference standings and they bring a wealth of scoring into Philadelphia. Game time is at 1 p.m.
