Know Your Enemy
Here are the Flyers numbers from behindthenet:
Sorted by QUALCOMP. Prospal is at the top because he spent most of the year in Tampa. Looking at his role in Philly, he should appear down around Briere/Hartnell.
Knuble is out with a torn hamstring (sounds uncomfortable), and Gagne is out with his year-long concussion. The injury reports say both are day-to-day. I'm guessing it's unlikely that we'll see either, and if we do thay will not be near 100%.
Looking at their last couple of games, it's hard to say for sure how the Flyers lineup will be arranged in this series. Knuble's loss made a large hole at EV and top unit PP which shuffled up the lines. In their game 7 we saw:
Umberger / Carter / Upshall
Kapanen / Richards / Hartnell
Prospal / Briere / Lupul
Thoreson / Dowd / Downie
Timonen/Coburn
Hatcher/Jones
Smith/Kukkonen
Expect Modry to be in for Kukkonen. Downie shouldn't be a factor (read: risk of injury due to cheap shot). He only played 6.5 minutes in game 7.
Going back to Flyers/Caps game 4, Knuble (his last home game) was on Carter's RW and that line was Stevens' preferred against Ovechkin. They used Timonen/Coburn against Ovechkin all series. In Caps home games, it looks like Boudreau tried to get Ovechkin away from Carter/Knuble. After Knuble went down, Boudreau gladly went with Ovechkin against the Carter line shown above.
I think we can expect to see Timonen/Coburn on vs. the Habs #1. If the lines stay the same as above, Stevens will probably prefer Carter vs. the top line, Richards vs. the nominal #2 and Briere vs. Smolinski. At least he went that way in game 7 vs. Caps.
From Montreal's perspective... I have no clue who the defense pairs will match up against. Stevens seems to prefer balance across lines (although the Briere line will be, by definition, a softie). That makes it hard to pick a match for Komi/Markov. Let's just say the top 2 pairs will get almost all the EV icetime against the top 3 lines. Up front Carbo will probably prefer #1 vs. Carter, #2 vs. Richards and the Smoke line against Briere.
Without Knuble, the top PP will probably be Briere, Prospal, Lupul, Timonen and Richards. It's a PP nearly as good as the Habs'. On the upside, Philly's EV play is even worse than Mtl's.
In round 1 the bookies said Montreal 75% likely to win over Boston. This time they're only around 64%. Javageek says 59%, though I'm not sure if that figure takes home ice into account. Considering the loss of their #1 RW, I'd say the Flyers' stock has risen considerably since the start of the playoffs.
~
In round 2, it's Habs, Pens, Wings, Sharks.
Sorted by QUALCOMP. Prospal is at the top because he spent most of the year in Tampa. Looking at his role in Philly, he should appear down around Briere/Hartnell.
Knuble is out with a torn hamstring (sounds uncomfortable), and Gagne is out with his year-long concussion. The injury reports say both are day-to-day. I'm guessing it's unlikely that we'll see either, and if we do thay will not be near 100%.
Looking at their last couple of games, it's hard to say for sure how the Flyers lineup will be arranged in this series. Knuble's loss made a large hole at EV and top unit PP which shuffled up the lines. In their game 7 we saw:
Umberger / Carter / Upshall
Kapanen / Richards / Hartnell
Prospal / Briere / Lupul
Thoreson / Dowd / Downie
Timonen/Coburn
Hatcher/Jones
Smith/Kukkonen
Expect Modry to be in for Kukkonen. Downie shouldn't be a factor (read: risk of injury due to cheap shot). He only played 6.5 minutes in game 7.
Going back to Flyers/Caps game 4, Knuble (his last home game) was on Carter's RW and that line was Stevens' preferred against Ovechkin. They used Timonen/Coburn against Ovechkin all series. In Caps home games, it looks like Boudreau tried to get Ovechkin away from Carter/Knuble. After Knuble went down, Boudreau gladly went with Ovechkin against the Carter line shown above.
I think we can expect to see Timonen/Coburn on vs. the Habs #1. If the lines stay the same as above, Stevens will probably prefer Carter vs. the top line, Richards vs. the nominal #2 and Briere vs. Smolinski. At least he went that way in game 7 vs. Caps.
From Montreal's perspective... I have no clue who the defense pairs will match up against. Stevens seems to prefer balance across lines (although the Briere line will be, by definition, a softie). That makes it hard to pick a match for Komi/Markov. Let's just say the top 2 pairs will get almost all the EV icetime against the top 3 lines. Up front Carbo will probably prefer #1 vs. Carter, #2 vs. Richards and the Smoke line against Briere.
Without Knuble, the top PP will probably be Briere, Prospal, Lupul, Timonen and Richards. It's a PP nearly as good as the Habs'. On the upside, Philly's EV play is even worse than Mtl's.
In round 1 the bookies said Montreal 75% likely to win over Boston. This time they're only around 64%. Javageek says 59%, though I'm not sure if that figure takes home ice into account. Considering the loss of their #1 RW, I'd say the Flyers' stock has risen considerably since the start of the playoffs.
~
In round 2, it's Habs, Pens, Wings, Sharks.
posted by Jeff J at 12:22 p.m.
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