Flyers start grueling road trip in Tampa facing Lightning

The Philadelphia Flyers are facing the Tampa Bay Lightning again but this time they are a much improved opponent.

It was just four days ago when the Philadelphia Flyers were able to host the Tampa Bay Lightning and in their own building, scrape to a 4-3 shootout win thanks to Bobby Brink scoring a brace. And now they go visit the same team at their home with a much more likely ending than leaving Tampa with two points.

The Game

When: 7:00 p.m. ET
Where: Amalie Arena
How to watch: NBCSP, ESPN+

Storylines to watch

This Lightning team different than the last time

When the Flyers faced the Lightning last Thursday, they were up against a neutered version of the Stanley Cup hopefuls. They were without their offensive leader in Nikita Kucherov, and without Andrei Vasilevskiy standing on his head behind the team. While it was still a very good team and Philadelphia just wiggled through to earn the two points, now they are facing a much improved Lightning team just by adding those two key players.

Will the Flyers outshoot Tampa 29-20 again? No. Will some young player go absolutely off with some easy defensive coverage and dismantle some past champions, like Brink did? Probably not. Hell, the Flyers were able to walk away with the majority of the 5-on-5 shot attempts and expected goals last Thursday. While it’s not impossible to happen again, we would be surprised.

Looking at the call-ups, again

Right after the trade deadline came and went, the Flyers recalled forwards Olle Lycksell and Rodrigo Abols, and defenseman Emil Andrae, to fill in the holes left by the departing players. Now, they are kind of in a little bit of a limbo period.

Andrae most likely isn’t going anywhere, but with the remainder of the season he needs to show that he is deserving to be etched into the 2025-26 blue line almost immediately and have the Flyers coaching staff not think twice about doing it. On the bottom pair, he won’t be able to do a lot, but with already some concern about a lack of physicality on the backend with Andrae, Cam York, and Jamie Drysdale all involved, it wouldn’t take many poor performances to have the front office think differently or about a separate Phantoms blueliner.

Olle Lycksell is going to turn 26 years old this summer and is set to become a Group 6 unrestricted free agent. Most likely, he will head into the open market with hopes for an actual NHL job somewhere — or head back home to Sweden — but he could certainly utilize these final games, especially one tonight, to show that he deserves another contract. Or, at least some consideration to hang around if the Flyers aren’t adding too many forwards this summer. And even when it comes to Abols, he will also be a free agent this summer. Same stuff goes for him but to a more dire degree.

Will we see any strong performances from either of these three to really step up and possibly help the front office feel like they either need to re-sign some forwards or be comfortable keeping a young blueliner in the NHL full-time next season?

Can the power play convert for the first time this month?

This feels like an impossible question, but we just had to point out something. The Flyers have not scored a power play goal this month. It is March 17. Through the last two months, they have a total of five goals scored on the man advantage. Five goals on 46(!) opportunities for a whopping 10.9 percent success rate. Even worse than any of these miserable seasons we have had.

We’re going to say a big “NO” to this question, but we just had to point and laugh at just how miserable this experience is. Just deny the penalty.

Projected lineups

Philadelphia Flyers

Tyson Foerster — Noah Cates — Travis Konecny
Owen Tippett — Sean Couturier — Matvei Michkov
Olle Lycksell — Ryan Poehling — Bobby Brink
Nic Deslauriers — Rodrigo Abols — Jakob Pelletier

Cam York — Travis Sanheim
Nick Seeler — Jamie Drysdale
Emil Andrae — Egor Zamula

Ivan Fedotov
(Sam Ersson)

Tampa Bay Lightning

Brandon Hagel — Anthony Cirelli — Nikita Kucherov
Jake Guentzel — Brayden Point — Yanni Gourde
Oliver Bjorkstrand — Nick Paul — Gage Goncalves
Zemgus Girgensons — Luke Glendening

Victor Hedman — JJ Moser
Ryan McDonagh — Erik Cernak
Emil Lilleberg — Nick Perbix
Darryn Raddysh

Andrei Vasilevskiy
(Jonas Johansson)