Philadelphia Flyers preseason: Brink, Petersen heroes for victorious Flyers

It took three preseason games, but the Philadelphia Flyers officially have their first win of 2023-24 under their belts.

Sure, it was a preseason game. But it certainly was an entertaining one.

The Boston Bruins weren’t lacking for high-end roster talent on this night, dressing all of David Pastrnak, Brad Marchand and Charlie McAvoy. But the Flyers hung right in there with them, jumping out to 1-0 and 2-1 leads before relinquishing their edge by the end of the second period.

A third-period tally by Bobby Brink (one goal, one assist) tied the game at three, and two huge stops by Cal Petersen late in regulation sent the game to overtime and ultimately a shootout, where the Flyers would prevail on tallies by Brink and Morgan Frost, sending the Flyers to a 4-3 victory.

1. NHLers impress while shaking off the rust

For NHL veterans, preseason isn’t about dominating or being perfect. It’s about shaking off the rust. But there’s also just a little bit of statement-making on display — especially if the player has a lot to prove entering the coming season.

The Flyers, of course, have quite a few of those veterans. They have guys coming off poor seasons. They have new acquisitions looking to make their marks. They have 2022-23 breakouts looking to prove last year wasn’t a fluke.

Friday night was full of those players succeeding in making some statement plays.

There was Joel Farabee — coming of a big summer of strength training — forcing a turnover in the neutral zone and sniping a wrister past Vezina winner Linus Ullmark to open the scoring. There was Travis Sanheim, activating constantly on offense and looking completely comfortable on the right side. There was Owen Tippett and Morgan Frost, flying around and dangling through the Boston defense. And then there was Ryan Poehling, who was just plain flying, making himself noticeable regularly with his plus speed and scoring his second goal of the preseason.

That’s not to say the vet group was perfect. The rust factor at this stage of the preseason is very real. Farabee gave back his goal with a turnover of his own in the neutral zone that led to David Pastrnak’s second tally of the evening; Tippett took a foolish tripping penalty and missed an opportunity to end the game in overtime via a penalty shot.

But those who want to see Farabee appear faster and stronger, for Sanheim to adopt a more aggressive on-ice mentality, for Tippett and Frost to build off the progress they both made in 2022-23, Friday night was full of good signs.

2. Foerster fine, but Brink had the game Tyson wanted

Tyson Foerster entered camp as the clear-cut favorite to earn the final available spot in the Philadelphia top-nine forward group. That’s what happens when you’re one of the team’s top prospects, and you score seven points in eight NHL games during your first audition with the big club.

But it’s not going to be handed to him. Foerster entered Friday still looking for that signature preseason performances that would confirm him as the likely winner of the competition.

And Foerster was fine on Friday. He worked hard in the corners and was strong on the puck. He showcased his improved straight-line speed through the neutral zone. He even helped set up Poehling’s PP goal with a nice cross-slot pass in the lead-up to the tally.

But in the end, it wasn’t Foerster who delivered the true “stand up and notice me” performance on this night. That honor went to the player who took Foerster’s cross-slot pass and sent it back across the ice to truly hand Poehling his slam-dunk goal: Bobby Brink.

Brink’s camp hadn’t been a great one. He was ineffective in the rookie games, and Flyers assistant coach Rocky Thompson even noted on Friday morning that early in camp, Brink was basically doing too much cherry-picking, forcing the coaches to re-emphasize to him the importance of his gaps and backchecking hard — which wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of the early impression he had made on them.

Brink was in need of a statement-making performance to truly put himself back into the NHL roster mix, and that’s exactly what he delivered on Friday, setting up Poehling, ripping the game-tying goal in the third with a bullet of a wrister, and then delivering a highlight-reel backhander in the shootout to help the Flyers win their first preseason game of 2023-24. Brink was all over the ice, but more importantly, he turned all that activity into tangible results.

Foerster, on the other hand, heads back to Philly still looking for that breakout game. His pace was much better on Friday than Monday, and his compete level won’t go unappreciated by the coaches. But he’s still struggling to get off his plus shot, even on the power play, with his teammates clearly looking to feed him. My guess is that Foerster still remains ahead of Brink in the camp battle for that 3RW slot, but Brink just may have put himself right back on Foerster’s heels.

3. Zamula makes a strong case

Foerster may still have work to do in terms of pushing his way onto the final Flyers roster. Egor Zamula, on the other hand, took a big step in earning his place.

Zamula entered camp with a leg up on the competition, simply because he can’t be sent to the minors this year without clearing waivers. It’s no guarantee he would be claimed, but the Flyers can’t love the idea of potentially losing him for nothing, given his upside as a potential top-four NHL defenseman. Still, it’s not like they’re just going to hand him a roster spot. Zamula is going to have to earn it.

He went a long ways towards doing just that on Friday. Zamula may not have scored, but he’s never going to be a big point producer even if he becomes an NHL regular. What Zamula did do was all the little things right — making accurate passes, using his stick effectively to force turnovers, stepping up aggressively in the neutral zone to halt moves up ice. Single-game advanced metrics aren’t the most telling, but in nearly 20 minutes of five-on-five ice time, the Flyers collected 70.97 percent of the shot attempts and 85.25 percent of the expected goals (per Natural Stat Trick) with Zamula on the ice. All of those little things that Zamula was doing certainly helped in that regard.

Zamula benefited from an effective Sanheim as his partner, and he became a bit less noticeable as the game progressed. Still, in his first preseason game of the slate, he showed more than enough to keep him solidly on the positive side of the roster bubble.

4. Petersen rebounds & re-enters competition

After the first two games of preseason, it appeared that Sam Ersson and Felix Sandström had taken the early lead in the battle for the Flyers’ open backup goalie job — less because of what they did, and more because veteran competition Cal Petersen had delivered such an underwhelming first impression.

Petersen didn’t have much help in front of him in the first period on Monday in Newark, and most of the five goals he allowed couldn’t be pinned on him. But Petersen just never looked comfortable, struggling with rebound control and squeezing pucks rather than letting them slip through him. So when Danton Heinen slipped another shot through Petersen in the second period on Friday, it appeared to be more of the same from the 28-year old.

By the end of regulation, no one was thinking about one somewhat weak goal. They were fixated on the two absolutely monster saves he had made late in the third period to send the game to OT — first a lunging blocker stop on Heinen, and then a patient glove save on Charlie McAvoy, who pushed way down into the high slot with the puck before letting a blistering shot rip.

Ersson, who received the first 30 minutes of the game, was perfectly fine, tracking the puck well and stopping everyone not named David Pastrnak, who beat him for two snipes. But on this night, it was Petersen (16 saves on 17 shots) who was the better of the two netminders.

A competition that appeared to be on the verge of becoming just a two-man battle is now back to a three-goalie free-for-all. Given Petersen credit for his strong rebound performance.

5. Seven roster cuts, more looming

Prior to puck drop, the Flyers trimmed their training camp roster just a bit more, assigning all of Zayde Wisdom, Alexis Gendron, Ethan Samson, Mason Millman, Will Zmolek, Adam Karashik and Nolan Maier to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.

There were no surprises in the cuts. Wisdom, Gendron and Sansom in particular are intriguing prospects, but despite Wisdom’s strong work in rookie camp — which earned him an audition in Wednesday’s game against the Islanders — none of the three had a real chance of winning an NHL job out of camp. Millman needs to earn a full-time AHL roster spot before he can even think about making the big club in the last year of his entry-level contract. Zmolek is on an NHL deal but is more organizational depth than anything else, and both Karashik and Maier are on AHL deals, not NHL contracts. They weren’t even serious candidates for the Flyers.

That leaves the Flyers with 44 players in camp — and really, it’s more like 42, since Jon-Randall Avon and Matteo Mann are injured.

Expect that number to be cut even further in the next couple days. Phantoms training camp begins on October 1 (Sunday), and presumably, players with essentially no chance of making the big club will be cut in time for Day 1. Players like Jordy Bellerive, Matt Brown, Adam Brooks, Brendan Furry, Jacob Gaucher, Cooper Marody and Louie Belpedio could also easily be gone from camp by Sunday morning.

Keep an eye on Tanner Laczynski and Olle Lycksell in that regard, too. Both entered camp on the NHL roster bubble, but on Friday, neither was in the NHL-heavy first non-game group, nor did either get a look in the game vs. the Bruins. It’s not a guarantee that they’ll be sent down this quickly — Laczynski needs to clear waivers first anyway — but they appear to be a cut behind the other bubble players at the moment.