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Basics
Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (19-18-3) @ Philadelphia Flyers (16-14-8)
When: 7:00 PM ET
SBN Friends: Broad Street Hockey
Opponent focus
Just as we have seen it as an existing trend this season that will start to shift, the Penguins will play their 41st game of the season, signaling the midpoint of the 2017-17 campaign, yet this is only the second game to be played between the two rivals. It also will be Pittsburgh’s 10th game of the 40 played that will be against Metropolitan Division teams. Weird.
Expected Lines
Recently, the Flyers lines were as follows:
Claude Giroux - Sean Couturier - Travis Konecny
Michael Raffl - Valtteri Filppula - Jakub Voracek
Jordan Weal - Nolan Patrick - Wayne Simmonds
Jori Lehtera - Scott Laughton - Dale Weise
With their defense pairings being:
Ivan Provorov - Shayne Gostisbehere
Robert Hagg - Andrew MacDonald
Brandon Manning - Radko Gudas
The Flyers are a weird team. They lost 10 games in a row before snapping the streak and firing off 7 wins in 8 games, then losing 3 in a row, recently having broken THAT losing streak with a win against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Sure. Whatever makes sense.
The last time these two teams met was the kind of goofy (which describes this seasons Penguins very well) game that resulted in Matt Murray’s lower body injury and a Flyers lead before the Penguins came back to win 5-4 in OT.
Penguins Notes
The team may be getting some reinforcements on the back end that could be much needed:
Penguins have sent DeSmith, Pedan and Wilson to Wilkes-Barre. Simon called up. Takeaway: Letang, Schultz or both are due back Tuesday.
— Jason Mackey (@JMackeyPG) January 1, 2018
Penguins lines from Sunday night in Detroit:
Welcome to the lineup, @sprong97! pic.twitter.com/sHqYokbn75
— Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) December 31, 2017
Seeing that the Penguins and the Flyers are sitting only one point apart at the bottom of the Metropolitan Division with only 7 points separating 3rd place and last place, these divisional games are going to be massive.
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In other divisions, the divide between 3rd place and last place can be as many as TWENTY points. It’s tough right now to see the bounces the Penguins are getting and pucks not going in the net and see them near the bottom of the division, but with so many division games to play, there is ground to make up if they can capitalize on it.