Flyers announce preseason schedule; Rocky Thompson lands a new job
Matvei Michkov and the Flyers will play seven preseason games ahead of the season, and will open their home slate at the Wells Fargo Center on Sept. 27 against Boston.
With temperatures nearing triple digits in Philadelphia and summer only having just begun, Flyers hockey seems a long way away, even with the NHL draft and free agency commencing over the next week. In reality, though, it is only a couple of months until the Orange and Black return to the ice, as the Flyers open training camp in September.
On Tuesday, the Flyers released their seven-game preseason schedule, so fans now know when they will get their first opportunity to see new acquisition Trevor Zegras in a Flyers sweater. That will come Sept. 21 on Long Island against the New York Islanders.
The Flyers will play road games against the Montreal Canadiens (Sept. 23) and Washington Capitals (Sept. 25), before a home-and-home with Boston. The Flyers will host the Bruins on Sept. 27 at the Wells Fargo Center and then play at TD Garden two nights later.
Finally, the Flyers will finish up with home dates against a pair of Metropolitan Division rivals, the Islanders and New Jersey Devils, on Oct. 2 and Oct. 4, respectively.
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For those who can’t wait until September for hockey or just want to get out of the heat, the Flyers will hold a development camp with their top prospects and many of their new draft picks next week at the team’s training center in Voorhees. That usually is free and open to the public. The camp schedule is expected to be announced later this week.
The Flyers’ full regular-season schedule — and the slates for the other 31 teams — will be unveiled July 16.
Rocky Thompson lands on his feet
Former Flyers assistant Rocky Thompson wasn’t the most popular man in Philly, given the team’s anemic power play over the last three seasons. But it turns out that the 47-year-old Thompson still has some admirers.
On Monday, the Bridgeport Islanders hired Thompson as head coach. Thompson becomes the 10th coach in the American Hockey League team’s history and will be tasked with developing the Islanders’ next crop of NHL players. He previously was an AHL coach with the Chicago Wolves from 2017 to 2020 and led them to the Calder Cup finals in 2019.
Thompson, who was hired by John Tortorella ahead of the 2022-23 season, was fired by the Flyers, alongside fellow assistants Darryl Williams and Angelo Ricci, on April 23. The Flyers’ power play clicked at a league-worst 14.1% across Thompson’s three-year tenure.
The Flyers recently hired Jaroslav “Yogi” Svejkovský, formerly an assistant with Rick Tocchet in Vancouver, to run the team’s power play.