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Flyers depart for Vancouver: The week ahead |
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The Flyers held an earlier-than-usual (8:30 a.m. EDT) practice on Tuesday at the FTC in Voorhees. From there, the team was scheduled to head directly to the airport for a flight to Vancouver. The team will have a complete off-day in British Columbia on Wednesday to acclimate themselves to the three-hour time change.
On Thursday, the team will practice at Rogers Arena. After a morning skate on Friday, the team will open the regular season and a four-game road trip with a match (7:00 p.m. Pacific time, 10 p.m. eastern) against Rick Tocchet's Vancouver Canucks.
Side note: Defenseman Nick Seeler missed his fourth straight practice after taking a puck off his knee in last Tuesday's game in Boston. He finished that game and very briefly appeared in Friday's practice (but almost immediately headed back to the locker room). Officially, Seeler is day-to-day.
The game in Vancouver will mark the official start of one of the most grueling and challenging opening weeks of the regular season that I can ever recall. Even when the Flyers started the regular season against Chicago in Prague during the 2019-20 season, there was a reasonable amount of built-in recovery time (four-day schedule break).
At least the Flyers will go into the opener with a few days of acclimation and prep time. After the Vancouver game, the Flyers turn right around on back-to-back to visit the Calgary Flames (Mountain time) on Saturday at 8 p.m. local time (10 p.m. eastern). There's an off-day on Sunday (CBA required) and then a day of practice in Edmonton before taking on the defending Western Conference champion Oilers on Tuesday (same start time).
From Edmonton, the Flyers travel back to the Pacific time zone to play the Seattle Kraken on Thursday (7:00 p.m. local/ 10 p.m. eastern). Then comes the most difficult part of the first week from a logistics standpoint.
The Flyers will have a late-night flight through the wee hours of Friday and across three time zones to Philadelphia. On Saturday evening, the Flyers rematch with the Canucks (completing their regular season series about as early as you'll ever see) at the Wells Fargo Center regular season home opener.
During Ed Snider's lifetime. Flyers ownership would have raised holy hell with the NHL about playing the home opener directly off a coast-to-coast red-eye. Snider would have yelled and screamed right up the chain before the schedule was announced publicly, haranguing even Gary Bettman himself. In such matter, Snider rarely did not get his way by the time all was said and done.
We live, however, in a different time. With the schedule configured with as much compacting as possible to work in the long February regular season schedule break for the Four Nations tournament, teams have had to make more concessions for the scheduling date jigsaw puzzle. That said, however, I think this a battle that Snider would not have surrendered until the bitter end (and would somehow have ended up getting his way via something such as the Seattle game being worked instead into the California and Vegas trip from late December to early January).
The Canucks, in fact, will be in Philly ahead of the Flyers and more rested. After two homes to start the regular season, there's a three night break before games in Tampa, Sunrise and Philadelphia with a one-night break between each. The Canucks will be resting in their hotel in Philly while the Flyers are still three-quarters of the way across the U.S. in the air.
Yes, things even out eventually to varying degrees. But the home opener is one of the highest priority dates on any team's schedule and the Flyers are directly behind the eight ball on this one.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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