After suffering a 5-0 letdown to the division's last-place team, the Flyers face the Metropolitan's best.
In need of a bounce-back effort, the Flyers (29-18-7) visit the Capitals (36-13-5) Saturday night.
Let's get into the essentials:
• When: 7 p.m. ET with Flyers Pregame Live at 6:30 p.m. ET
• Where: Capital One Arena
• Broadcast: NBC Sports Philadelphia
• Live stream: NBCSportsPhiladelphia.com and the NBC Sports MyTeams app
• Matt Niskanen paused and had to think for a moment about returning to Capital One Arena to play Washington.
The 32-year-old defenseman will play in D.C. for the first time against his old team since being traded to the Flyers during June.
“It’s certainly going to be … something," Niskanen said Friday after practice. "A lot of good memories there, enjoyed my time there, had a ton of fun, won a ton of games. It’ll be weird being on the other side.”
NHL
Niskanen, who played five seasons and 70 postseason games for the Capitals, won the 2018 Stanley Cup in Washington, the city's first major championship since 1992. In the previous three seasons, the Capitals had won two Presidents' Trophies and put up 100-plus points each year but suffered three second-round exits during the playoffs.
The success after the failure is what made his time so special with Washington.
I think mostly, I was really proud of the guys that were there, the team. A lot of us, some more than others, they took a lot of heat for being really good but then quote ‘choking.’ To finally get through that, I was just so happy for everybody. Ended up being the best spring ever.
That was the outside noise, but there was inside pressure that we put on ourselves, we thought we were capable of going further. It wasn’t happening for us as soon as we would have liked and finally broke through.
• Alex Ovechkin is two goals away from 700 on is career. Only seven players have ever accomplished that feat.
Wayne Gretzky — 894
Gordie Howe — 801
Jaromir Jagr — 766
Brett Hull — 741
Marcel Dionne — 731
Phil Esposito — 717
Mike Gartner — 708
The 34-year-old Ovechkin is on a tear right now with 14 goals in his last seven games.
• The Flyers have earned three points in two matchups with the Capitals after going 0-4-0 against Washington last season.
• The Flyers enter Saturday four points out of third place in the Metropolitan Division, a tiebreaker out of the Eastern Conference's second wild-card spot and with a 49.5 percent chance to make the playoffs, according to Hockey-Reference.com.
• Lineup updates:
Projected lineup
Forwards
Claude Giroux-Sean Couturier-Jakub Voracek
Scott Laughton-Kevin Hayes-Travis Konecny
James van Riemsdyk-Morgan Frost-Tyler Pitlick
Michael Raffl-Connor Bunnaman-Nicolas Aube-Kubel
Defensemen
Ivan Provorov-Matt Niskanen
Travis Sanheim-Philippe Myers
Robert Hagg-Justin Braun
Goalies
Brian Elliott
Alex Lyon
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