Emil Andrae set up Samu Tuomaala at the 33-second mark of overtime to lift the Philadelphia Flyers Rookies to a 3-2 win over the New York Rangers rookie at the PPL Center on Sunday. The teams split the two-game Rookie Series set after New York earned a 4-3 (1-0) shootout win on Friday evening.
For a recap of Game 1 club,
click here. The Saturday recap
is hereis here.
Notebook:
* Matvei Michov and Oliver Bonk, by preplanning, did not play in Saturday's game. Most other players appeared in both games.
* Carson Bjarnason played the first period on Saturday after going the distance on Friday. In Game 2, Bjarnason stopped all 14 shots he faced before turning the net over to training camp tryout goalie Sam Hillebrandt.
* Jett Luchanko's hockey smarts, playmaking vision and two-way awareness (despite being one of the youngest players leaguewide in the 2024 Draft class) jumped off the page over the course of the two games. He also fared very well on faceoffs. I still have question marks about how much goal scoring he's going to do -- I fully expect him to rack up a lot of assists -- but Flyers hockey ops people have told me that they think he has a great release and movement on his shots and expect that he will score at a healthy rate, too, as he matures.
* I thought that Andrae was the best all-around defenseman for either side over the course of the two games. Others, such as 2024 second-round pick Spencer Gill, had some standout moments of their own. Hunter McDonald had some ups (physical strength) and downs (bad retaliatory penalties) over the two games.
* Game 1, even apart from the dynamic Michkov strutting his stuff, was a very entertaining game. It certainly wasn't free of mistakes from either side (far from it) but there was a lot of action and skill on display. The second game was dull at times and the Flyers had a pretty poor first period despite taking a 1-0 lead to intermission.
* The Flyers Rookies got goals from two unexpected sourced -- defensive defenseman Matteo Mann and checking physical forward Sawyer Boulton -- in Saturday's game. The latter was a very nice-looking goal off a transitional rush.
* The most impressive Rangers player over the two games was Adam Edström. The Flyers prospects were unable to contain the hulking (6-foot-8) 23-year-old forward down low in their zone. Edström also showed good hands around the net, compiling two goals on Friday and one on Saturday.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»