Flyers Make Highly-Anticipated Lineup Change

For parts of their last two games, the Philadelphia Flyers and head coach Rick Tocchet broke up their most effective forward line, much to the chagrin of increasingly impatient fans still supporting the struggling 4-10-4 club. Fortunately, that decision, at least for now, has been reversed.

Attempting to jumpstart the Flyers' offense in an eventual 4-2 loss to the Minnesota Wild earlier in the week, Tocchet and Co. moved Tyson Foerster to the second line with Noah Cates and Matvei Michkov.

Rookie Porter Martone, who's built an impressive rapport with Michkov in his first full pro season, was moved to the third line, with versatile first-year pro Cole Knuble shifting to center between he and Owen Tippett.

In Thursday night's dreadful 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers, Tocchet kept Foerster, Cates, and Michkov together, but the results were ultimately morbid.

According to Natural Stat Trick, the trio generated just four unblocked shot attempts at 5-on-5 against the Rangers, while allowing four against, in 8:34 of ice time. In other words, nothing was happening at either end of the ice.

As for Martone, Knuble, and Tippett, unblocked shot attempts were 8-7 in the Rangers' favor in 8:19 of ice time, but they finished with a team-worst 44.53% expected goals share.

The other three lines were all at 54.88% or higher on the night.

After one full game of that, Tocchet is going back to what has worked, either in this season or the last.

Updated Flyers lineup

Per the Philadelphia Inquirer's Jackie Spiegel, who is covering the team in Calgary to start the four-game road trip, Martone and Michkov have been reunited, among a few other line changes.

These are the updated lines:

Tyson Foerster - Christian Dvorak - Travis Konecny

Porter Martone - Noah Cates - Matvei Michkov

Trevor Zegras - Cole Knuble - Owen Tippett

Denver Barkey - Sean Couturier - Noel Acciari

Travis Sanheim - Jamie Drysdale

Cam York - Oliver Bonk

Nick Seeler - Simon Benoit

Rasmus Ristolainen remains on injured reserve as he recovers from an aggravation to his upper-body injury, though he's joined the Flyers for this road trip.

Michael Bunting and David Jiricek are the projected healthy scratches, as has been the case for several games now.

For a Flyers team starved for offense, though, these are fine changes.

Owen Tippett, with just two points in 12 games this season, is now paired up with leading scorer Trevor Zegras, who has 14 points in 18 games this season.

And, importantly, Michkov and Martone, who have a combined 13 goals this year, are back flanking Noah Cates. They are second and third on the Flyers in scoring this season, with 13 and eight points, respectively.

This trio has also been the Flyers' most effective proprietor of offense; according to MoneyPuck, Martone, Michkov, and Cates have scored 3.7 goals per 60 minutes played this season, which ranks 16th in the NHL amongst forward lines with at least 75 minutes played together.

Defense has been the issue, as they've allowed the same amount, 3.7 goals, per 60 minutes at the other end of the ice. That's bad enough for seventh-worst in the NHL under the same parameters.

For the Flyers as a whole, though, things have been far from perfect all season long, and the Martone-Michkov connection has been one of the few bright spots for the wallowing basement-dwellers.