The Flyers enter Saturday night as one of the four remaining unbeaten teams in the NHL.
They've played only two games, but the 2-0-0 record should be refreshing for fans following sluggish starts in recent years past.
After all, the Flyers have just three 2-0-0 starts over last 20 years — 2019-20, 2011-12 and 2009-10.
They have an opportunity tonight to improve to 3-0-0 when they face the Canucks (1-2-0) in Game 1 of a three-game road trip.
Let's get into the essentials:
• When: 10 p.m. ET with Flyers Pregame Live at 9:30 p.m. ET
• Where: Rogers Arena
• Broadcast: NBC Sports Philadelphia
• Live stream: NBCSportsPhiladelphia.com and the NBC Sports MyTeams app
• Alain Vigneault is in his 17th season as an NHL head coach. One of his teams has started 3-0-0 — the 2015-16 Rangers, who finished with 101 points.
NHL
The Flyers will try to make it two of his teams to win their first three games.
A key to Vigneault's north-south, hard-on-the-attack system is staying fresh. That means divvying up minutes and being precise in doing so to sustain that style.
Claude Giroux played 17:31 in the season opener and 16:59 in the first game at the Wells Fargo Center. The 31-year-old captain played fewer than 17:31 minutes only twice all of last season.
If the Flyers want to be tougher to play against, rolling out four lines consistently is imperative. There's no denying how often the Flyers struggled to play a full 60 minutes last season. This team needs to change that in 2019-20.
If you are able to keep your shifts at 30, 35 seconds, usually you’ve got a pretty good pace to that game. I’ll point you to one moment in the first period, I thought for the first 10, 11 minutes, we were playing well, we were going north-south and then all of the sudden we had two guys that got caught out there extending a shift and we sort of lost momentum there for a little bit.
If you can keep those shifts down to 30, 35 seconds, you’ve got a good pace to your game and you should be able to do a lot of good things out there. I think that’s what we’ve done so far.
- Vigneault after Wednesday's 4-0 win over the Devils
• Travis Konecny has five points through two games this season.
Last season, he had five points through 13 games. If the 22-year-old winger finds consistency in 2019-20, he will shatter his career high of 49 points.
• Carter Hart has stopped 53 of 56 shots in the Flyers' two victories.
Last season, Hart made 41 saves on 42 shots in a 2-1 win over the Canucks. The 21-year-old has two career games of 41 saves, his personal high.
• The Canucks are coming off an 8-2 win over the Kings.
J.T. Miller, who played under Vigneault in New York for parts of five seasons, has five points through three games. The 26-year-old forward owns seven career goals against the Flyers, his most against any opponent.
Projected lineup
Forwards
Claude Giroux-Kevin Hayes-Jakub Voracek
Oskar Lindblom-Sean Couturier-Travis Konecny
James van Riemsdyk-Scott Laughton-Carsen Twarynski
Connor Bunnaman-Michael Raffl-Tyler Pitlick
Defensemen
Ivan Provorov-Justin Braun
Travis Sanheim-Matt Niskanen
Robert Hagg-Shayne Gostisbehere
Goalies
Carter Hart
Brian Elliott
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