Game Preview: Pittsburgh Penguins @ Philadelphia Flyers 12/1/25

Who: Pittsburgh Penguins (12-7-5, 29 points, 5th place Metropolitan Division) @ Philadelphia Flyers (14-7-3, 31 points, 4th place Metropolitan Division)

When: 7:00 p.m. eastern

How to Watch: Broadcast locally Sportsnet Pittsburgh and NBC Sports Philadelphia, nationally on NHL Network

Pens’ Path Ahead: The tough three-game road trip continues with a second stop in Tampa on Thursday and concludes on Sunday in Dallas.

Opponent Track: The Flyers are hot, winning their last three games and five of their last six. Philadelphia defeated New Jersey 5-3 on the road in their last game out on Saturday night.

Season Series: Philadelphia won the first game 3-2 in a shootout on October 28th. Bobby Brink was the difference maker that night; scoring a goal, adding an assist and the shootout deciding goal. PIT/PHI still plays two more times this year, both in Pittsburgh on January 15th and March 7th.

Hidden Stat: Tonight is one of only two Metropolitan Division matchups for the Pens in the month of December. The second and final one isn’t until the last game of the month on December 30th (vs Carolina).

Getting to know the Flyers

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Tyson Foerster – Noah Cates – Travis Konecny

Trevor Zegras – Christan Dvorak – Owen Tippett

Matvei Michkov – Sean Couturier – Bobby Brink

Nikita Grebenkin – Rodrigo Abols – Garnet Hathaway

DEFENSEMEN

Cam York / Travis Sanheim

Emil Andrae /Jamie Drysdale

Nick Seeler / Egor Zamula

Goalies: Dan Vladar and Samuel Ersson

Potential scratches: Nicolas Deslauriers, Noah Juulsen

Injured Reserve: Rasmus Ristolainen

• Vladar is, 5-1-1 with a 2.54 GAA and .913 save percentage in his last seven games, including winning the last four. Vladar was in action last game in the win over Jersey, stopping 29 of 32 shots that he saw.

• As we’ll mention below, the current third line might be as scary or more as any.

• Noel Acciari will be sad if he remains on IR for this game after his run in with Trevor Zegras. Then again, ‘run away’ is a more apt description for Zegras. People don’t forget, it’ll be interesting to see if anything flares up around Zegras, Parker Wotherspoon or anyone else as the long-lost Penguin/Flyer spice gets re-introduced to the mix.

Season statsvia hockeydb

• The Flyers have a couple of success stories in the first quarter of the season. Dan Vladar has to be at the top of the list considering league average non-empty net goaltending is at .897% this season and Vladar averaged .892% over the last three seasons in Calgary over 77 games.

• Trevor Zegras has to be near the top of the list too after two down seasons in Anaheim. The acquisition price wasn’t sky high (45th overall in the last draft, a fourth rounder next year as well as certified JAG Ryan Poehling), did others miss on Zegras? Maybe, but this upturn wasn’t guaranteed, and he’s still a piece that doesn’t have much team control left, a big qualifying offer and some questions about center/wing fit that wouldn’t work everywhere. So far, it’s looked like a great move for the Flyers.

• Christian Dvorak was another great add, on a one-year free agent contract. Dvorak only has one 34+ point season since his debut in 2016-17 (and even that one was only 38), if he keeps it up he’ll be on his way to smashing his previous highs in goals, assists and points.

• Bobby Brink is one of those annoying players who always manages to step up against the Penguins only to be fairly non-descript against everyone else. As mentioned above, Brink had two points vs PIT in October, he has only recorded eight points in all other 23 games this season. Brink has eight points (2G+6A) in nine games vs PIT overall in his young career (.89 points/game) compared to 72 points in 161 games against the rest of the NHL (.45 points/game).

Key matchup: Penguin offense vs. Flyer defense

Perhaps surprisingly, the Flyers have been a quality defensive team by the advanced metrics in 2025-26. They’re very good at the shot attempt based stats of Corsi and Fenwick, and have received quality goaltending and penalty killing to provide their team a boost. On the flip side, the Pens have been good at creating expected goals, less good at converting them to actual goals. Yet they remain stellar on the power play. That strength-on-strength matchup of the Pittsburgh power play going up against the Philadelphia penalty kill will be a key one tonight.

And now for the Pens

Projected lines 

FORWARDS

Kevin Hayes – Sidney Crosby – Bryan Rust

Tommy Novak – Evgeni Malkin – Anthony Mantha

Ville Koivunen – Ben Kindel – ?

Joona Koppanen – Blake Lizotte – Connor Dewar

DEFENSEMEN

Parker Wotherspoon / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Shea / Kris Letang

Ryan Graves / Matt Dumba

Goalies: Arturs Silovs and Tristan Jarry

Potential Scratches: Connor Clifton, Harrison Brunicke (AHL rehab assignment)

IR: Filip Hallander, Justin Brazeau, Rickard Rakell, Caleb Jones, Noel Acciari

• The Pens returned Tristan Broz and Danton Heinen, signally changes will be coming to the projected lines. Will it be Rakell and/or Brazeau coming off IR and into the lineup? A morning call up of Rutger McGroarty? Shaking up all the lines could be in the cards after the 7-2 loss to Toronto on Saturday.

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Muse looking for turnaround against Flyers

Dan Muse had some interesting words on Silovs getting pulled for two games in a row and how to turn the page from getting blown out by Toronto on Saturday night to the quick turn of a very crucial divisional game so soon after.

This is the second consecutive game you’ve pulled Arturs early. What’s fair in critiquing him? Is there something specifically not working for him right now, or do you just lump up his performance with the team’s performances in these two games?

Again, I think some of the chances we’re giving up, though – like, you can prevent those. You don’t need to put him in those spots. Yes, I understand the last two games there, I’ve made that decision to make a change. But he’s been really good this year, and so, you got to go back to that. We’re going to keep working with him, and we also have to be better in front of him. A lot of those are preventable. There’s going to be breakdowns in the game. But a lot of what you saw there today, a lot of that is preventable. We can be tighter. We can make it harder. It was too easy for them on a couple of those looks that they had early on.

You finished November with more losses than wins after a really strong October. In October, you were much healthier, but did you see any reason or characteristic why the second month wasn’t as strong as the first month?

I think it’s consistency. You go through this month, some of those losses… I think we’ve been pretty honest with ourselves as a group. I think we’ll look at it and say, okay, there was some there, especially early in the month, where we got to get the points, but the process was good. And then there was others that it wasn’t good at all. There’s been some games this month, too, that we came out with a point or two where I didn’t feel like it was there. But the consistency is the big part. And I’ve said it before, it’s so tight right now, every point matters. And so, at the end, we got to make sure that we’re working to get those points. But in order to do that, we have to play better defensively than we did tonight, and we have to build to where our game is sustainable. It’s a sustainable game, night in, night out, we know what we’re going to be bringing within those things that we can control. So, we’re in this schedule right now, though, where the games are coming here. And so, we’ll look at it, we’ll meet, we’ll work to get better, and it’s going to be a quick turnaround here before Philly.