The Philadelphia Flyers visit the New York Rangers on Thursday night in the first of four meetings between the Metropolitan Division rivals, with the puck set for 7:00 p.m. EST at Madison Square Garden. The game will air on NBCSP.
That alone makes this a useful marker in the season: Philadelphia comes in at 4-9-4, while New York is 8-7-1, and the teams are already starting to separate in the division. The Rangers also have the stronger special teams profile on paper, which matters because these early head-to-head games can shape how the rest of the season series feels long before the final meeting arrives.
The Flyers are trying to carry something forward from Tuesday’s 4-2 home loss to the Minnesota Wild. Tyson Foerster scored his third goal of the season in that game, Denver Barkey scored his first goal of the season on the power play, and Dan Vladar took the loss in goal. Philadelphia’s power play has looked better over the last 10 games, clicking at 21.2 percent, but the full-season number still sits at 16.7 percent, which ranks 26th.
That is the part that makes this matchup harder than the recent uptick suggests. The Rangers bring the NHL’s No. 1 penalty kill into the game at 90.4 percent, and they have enough structure everywhere else to make mistakes costly. Their own power play is ranked 22nd at 18.6 percent, but the bigger edge right now is how well they defend shorthanded chances, which is exactly where Philadelphia has been trying to gain ground.
New York is also coming in with a steady run from Dylan Garand, who has appeared in each of the Rangers’ last 11 games and stopped 32 of 33 shots in Tuesday’s 3-1 win over the St. Louis Blues. Adam Fox scored his second goal of the season in that victory and leads the Rangers with 19 points in 16 games, while Oliver Bjorkstrand added his sixth goal, Eeli Tolvanen scored into an empty net and added an assist, and J.T. Miller had two assists. If the Flyers can turn their recent power-play progress into actual production against that kind of penalty kill, Thursday becomes more than the first game of a four-game set. If they cannot, the Rangers will have already set the tone for the season series before the calendar has really settled in.
