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Joel Farabee

Capitals vs. Flyers livestream: How to watch Wednesday Night Hockey

By Sean LeahyJan 8, 2020, 6:30 PM EST

NBCSN’s coverage of the 2019-20 NHL season continues with the Wednesday Night Hockey matchup between the Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers. Coverage begins at 6:30 p.m. ET on NBCSN. You can watch the game online and on the NBC Sports app by clicking here.

Washington defeated the Senators 6-1 last night on home ice to pickup their third consecutive win and remain undefeated in the 2020 calendar year. Alex Ovechkin and T.J. Oshie each tallied two goals and rookie goaltender Ilya Samsonov stopped 26 of 27 shots he faced as the Caps erased an early 1-0 deficit to come away with the win. Ovechkin’s second goal, his 26th of the season, was the 684th of his career, tying him with Teemu Selanne for 11th place on the NHL’s all-time goals list.

The Caps have been pacing the entire league since the beginning of the season. Wednesday will mark the 86th day overall that Washington has led the Metro and will also mark the 67th day overall that the Caps have led the NHL this season.

Philly ended a six-game road trip (1-4-1) Tuesday night at However, things could be turning around in the city of brotherly love as the Flyers will be hosting six of their next seven games beginning Wednesday. Philly has won seven of their last eight games at home (7-1-0) and Wednesday’s game vs. Washington will be their first at the Wells Fargo Center since Dec. 23. The Flyers are 13-2-4 at home this season, while their two regulation losses are tied with Boston for the fewest in the league.

The Flyers ended a six-game road trip Tuesday night with a 5-4 (OT) loss to Carolina. Philly scored the first two goals of the game before giving up the next four. The Flyers rallied to tie the game as Travis Sanheim sent the game to the extra frame with his fifth goal of the season with under five mins to play. Canes defenseman Dougie Hamilton scored in OT to hand Philly their fifth loss of the road trip (1-4-1), but the Flyers earned a much-needed point in the standings as they head back home.

[COVERAGE BEGINS AT 6:30 P.M. ET ON NBCSN]

WHAT: Washington Capitals at Philadelphia Flyers
WHERE: Wells Fargo Center
WHEN: Wednesday, Jan. 8, 6:30 p.m. ET
TV: NBCSN
LIVE STREAM: You can watch the Capitals-Flyers stream on NBC Sports’ live stream page and the NBC Sports app.

PROJECTED LINEUPS

CAPITALS
Alex Ovechkin – Nick Backstrom – Tom Wilson
Jakub Vrana – Evgeny Kuznetsov – T.J. Oshie
Carl Hagelin – Lars Eller – Richard Panik
Brendan Leipsic – Nic Dowd – Garnet Hathaway

Michal Kempny – John Carlson
Dmitry Orlov – Nick Jensen
Jonas Siegenthaler – Radko Gudas

Starting goalie: Braden Holtby

FLYERS
Claude Giroux – Sean Couturier – Travis Konecny
James van Riemsdyk – Kevin Hayes – Nicolas Aube-Kubel
Tyler Pitlick – Michael Raffl – Jakub Voracek
Scott Laughton – Mikhail Vorobyev – Joel Farabee

Ivan Provorov – Matt Niskanen
Travis Sanheim – Philippe Myers
Robert Hagg – Shayne Gostisbehere

Starting goalie: Carter Hart

Kathryn Tappen will host Wednesday’s coverage on NHL Live alongside Patrick Sharp and Keith Jones and Bob McKenzie. Mike Emrick, Eddie Olczyk and Brian Boucher will call Flyers-Capitals game from Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

Flyers’ Farabee gets 3-game suspension for interference

Farabee Suspension
NHL
By Adam GretzDec 16, 2019, 6:11 PM EST
2 Comments

Philadelphia Flyers rookie forward Joel Farabee will miss the team’s next three games as he serves a suspension for interference. The NHL’s Department of Player Safety announced the ruling on Monday evening.

Farabee, 19, was ejected from the Flyers’ 7-3 loss to the Winnipeg Jets for a late hit injuring Mathieu Perreault.

Here is a look at the hit as well as the NHL’s explanation for the suspension:

Jets treating Perreault as if he has a concussion

The Jets have not officially diagnosed Perreault with a concussion, but coach Paul Maurice said on Monday they are going to proceed as if he does have one.

“You can pass your tests and still have concussion like symptoms. We’ll take any of those symptoms and just say ‘we’re running it through the protocol,'” said Maurice. “It’s all the same thing anyway. We’re going to get him on a bike and see how he feels. We’ll get him into more activity and see how he feels.

“Just because a guy doesn’t test out with a concussion, doesn’t necessarily change the way you treat him.”

Just before leveling Perreault, Farabee was cross-checked from behind in front of the Winnipeg net. After getting back to his feet he sought out Perreault and leveled him with a late hit long after the puck was gone. The DoPS mentions in its video that Perreault is not eligible to be hit on this play and has no reason to believe he will be.

The lateness of the hit, as well as the injury, all factored into Farabee’s suspension.

He will miss games against the Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres, and Ottawa Senators. He will be eligible to return to the lineup on Dec. 23 against the New York Rangers.

In 27 games this season the 2018 first-round pick (No. 14 overall) has three goals and eight assists.
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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.

Flyers’ Konecny injured in chaotic game vs. Senators

Getty
By Adam GretzDec 7, 2019, 4:48 PM EST
8 Comments

It was madness in Philadelphia on Saturday afternoon where the Flyers were able to stay hot with a 4-3 win in a brutal, chaotic game against the Ottawa Senators that featured a significant injury, fights, some trash talk, and a late cheap shot.

Let’s start with the big injury that saw Travis Konecny, the Flyers’ leading scorer, exit the game in the first period because that is where things seemed to really start devolving into chaos.

Konecny was injured when he was on the receiving end of a crushing open-ice hit from from Senators defenseman Mark Borowiecki.

 

It clearly wasn’t a hit to the head, but it was still a pretty violent collision and a significant impact. Konecny did not return after the hit, while the Flyers simply called it an “upper-body injury.”

The team said an additional update on his status will be provided on Monday. Konecny had scored his 11th goal of the season earlier in the game to give the Flyers an early 1-0 lead.

The Flyers were obviously not pleased with the fact their top producer was injured, and it resulted in a physical end to the first period that eventually saw Jakub Voracek fight Nick Paul with a minute remaining.

Those tensions carried over to the second period when Philadelphia’s Joel Farabee and Ottawa’s Jean-Gabriel Pageau separated themselves from a scrum along the boards and dropped the gloves for a fight of their own just 20 seconds into the period.

Thanks to a flukey Anthony Duclair goal in the second period, where he was able to capitalize on a bad Flyers turnover behind the net, the game was tied heading into the third period. The two teams then exchanged goals (including Duclair’s second of the game) and set the stage for Scott Laughton to score the eventual game-winner with five minutes to play in regulation. He celebrated by skating by the Senators’ bench and having some words for them.

Then, with the game in its closing seconds, Senators forward Brady Tkachuk took it upon himself to cross-check an unsuspecting Laughton in the neutral zone, drop his gloves, and then jump on top of him.

He was given a two-minute for cross-checking and a two-minute minor for roughing.

Given that the Senators were trailing by a goal and still had a chance to tie the game it is hard to call that play by Tkachuk anything other than selfish.

These two teams meet in again in two weeks in Ottawa.

Saturday’s win improves the Flyers to 12-3-4 in their past 19 games and keeps them in a top-three spot in the Metropolitan Division playoff race.

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Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.

Maple Leafs hoping ‘sour’ taste from rough loss leads to wake-up call

AP Images
By Sean LeahyDec 3, 2019, 11:22 PM EST
3 Comments

PHILADELPHIA — During a pregame media availability on Tuesday, Maple Leafs forward Andreas Johnsson described the adjustment period so far under new head coach Sheldon Keefe as “a little up and down.”

“We have good periods and then we have bad periods,” Johnsson said. “Whenever you play you’re going to have bad periods because the other team is good, too. [We want to make them shorter] when it doesn’t go your way.”

The Maple Leafs had a good opening period against the Flyers Tuesday night, peppering Carter Hart with 15 shots. But they couldn’t crack the netminder, and while they managed to even the score at one midway through the third period, thanks to a fortuitous bounce, the rest of that final period? Mark that down as one of those “bad periods” Johnsson was talking about.

Eighty-eight seconds after Travis Dermott’s tying goal, Claude Giroux scored to help the Flyers regain the lead. 

That’s when the wheels fell off.

As the Maple Leafs pushed for an equalizer, poor puck containment in the offensive zone led to a two-on-one break the other way with Travis Konecny leading the charge. As Konecny’s shot was making its way through Frederik Andersen’s five hole, the goaltender knew he was beat and threw his head back in frustration.

After Joel Farabee put in an empty-netter to make it 4-1, Andersen went back in net for the final two minutes and promptly surrendered two goals in 12 seconds as the Flyers were 6-1 victors.

“We still had a couple minutes left, but we let in that empty net goal and I mean, we can’t just fold like that,” said Auston Matthews. “It’s unacceptable to do that to our starting goalie, a guy that’s stolen games for us. He’s been a brick wall for us all year. That’s just unacceptable on our part. We can’t just fold, that’s unacceptable. We just let him out to dry, breakaway, two-on-ones, odd man rushes all in the last minute and suddenly the score is 6-1, so that’s on us. That just can��t happen.”

The Maple Leafs netminder wasn’t happy with his teammates’ performance in the final five minutes. As soon as the buzzer sounded, he made a bee-line for the tunnel.

“I don’t really worry about me. I worry more about the way we played for the logo on the jersey,” Andersen said afterward. “I think we’ve got to get more pride than that. Hopefully we can respond and show what kind of character we have.”

(Andersen also sounded off on the lackluster effort of his teammates two years following a loss to the Flyers. )

Keefe had some things to say to his players afterward as he went into the dressing room and spoke to the team following the game, something he hasn’t done since taking over for Mike Babcock two weeks ago.

“Normally I would not go in after a loss or a game like this but I felt like it was important to address that situation,” Keefe said. “We want to be a team of high character and that cares for one another and I thought we just left our goaltender completely out to dry there and stopped playing, so that’s not a good sign for our group, but hopefully it is the shakeup that we would need. 

“I think as I look back on the game as that third period is unfolding, I think we saw two different teams. One that has kind of figured out how to win and know what their recipe is and another on our side that’s trying to find its way. I think that’s the difference in the game.”

The Maple Leafs are still learning Keefe’s system and Keefe is still learning his players’ tendencies and the strengths and weaknesses of their games. There’s plenty to clean up defensively, and that’s the goal in the coming weeks. They’re now 4-2-0 since the coaching change and now isn’t the time to lose the early momentum gained from firing Babcock.

“I think over time I’m starting to learn that a little bit of where we’re at and we’ll continue to make strides, but we don’t have a whole lot of time here,” Keefe said. “We’re going to get right back at it with a very good team [Colorado] waiting for us in Toronto. 

“We’ve got to regroup here really quickly and hopefully the way this game finished will leave a sour enough taste in our mouth that we’ll be coming out [Wednesday] and show we’re a different group.”

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Sean Leahy is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @Sean_Leahy.