Philly Sports Jabronis
Report From Philadelphia Flyers
The Philadelphia Flyers, in conjunction with the National Hockey League, today unveiled their schedule for the 2016-17 season. The Flyers will open their 50th anniversary season on Friday, October 14 at Los Angeles, which starts a three-game road trip that includes stops in Arizona and Chicago. The Flyers will open the home portion of their schedule on Thursday, October 20 when they host the Anaheim Ducks. The 2016-17 regular season will conclude with a back-to-back set of home games on Saturday, April 8 vs. Columbus and Sunday, April 9 vs. Carolina.
This is the fourth season that the NHL has used its current alignment of four divisions, with two each in the Eastern and Western Conference. The two Eastern Conference divisions contain eight teams each and the two in the Western Conference each have seven teams.
The Flyers play all of their divisional opponents at least four times – twice at home and twice on the road. The schedule format includes an additional game against two of their in-division counterparts for a total of five. This year, the Flyers’ five-game opponents are the New Jersey Devils and the Carolina Hurricanes. They will visit the Devils a total of three times and will host the Hurricanes three times. The Flyers will play a total of 30 games against opponents in their division.
The Flyers will play the eight Atlantic Division teams three times each for a total of 24 games against that division. The Flyers will play two road games and one home game against Boston, Buffalo, Montreal and Toronto. They will play two home games and one road game against Detroit, Florida, Ottawa and Tampa Bay. The breakdown of home and road games against each Atlantic Division team is the reverse of what it was in the 2015-16 season, and is the same as the initial season of the format in 2014-15.
The Flyers will again play a home-and-home series with every Western Conference team, assuring that fans will have the opportunity to see every NHL club at the Wells Fargo Center at least once this season. The Flyers will play a total of 28 games against the Western Conference, which is split into the Central Division and the Pacific Division.
The Flyers will enjoy a home-heavy first few months of the season. After the three-game road trip to start the year, they will play 18 of their next 27 games at home through December 10. Once that trip is complete, the Flyers do not play more than two consecutive road games through that date, and do not leave the Eastern time zone until December 4 when they visit Nashville.
Conversely, the Flyers will travel quite a bit down the season’s home stretch. After a season-long five-game homestand from Feb. 2-11 is complete, the team will be on the road for 13 of 19 games from Feb. 15 through March 26. First up is a three-game Western Canada trip from February 15-19, and then the team will embark on two four-game road trips in the month of March. Once the second is complete, the Flyers will end the season with five of their last seven games at home.
The Flyers will play between 10 and 15 games each full month of the season. The month of March will be their busiest both in terms of overall games (15) and road games (9), while November sees the Flyers play nine of their 14 games at home for their heaviest home-ice month. For the second consecutive year, the Flyers will play just three games during their annual post-Christmas road trip, visiting St. Louis, San Jose and Anaheim on that run.
Early features of the home schedule include a visit from the Pittsburgh Penguins on October 29 and the annual Black Friday game, which will take place this year against the New York Rangers at 1pm on Friday, November 25. The 2017 portion of the schedule features 23 contests against divisional opponents, including the final six of the season and eight of the final nine. One of those 23 games will be the NHL Coors Light Stadium Series matchup against Pittsburgh, to be played Saturday, February 25 at Heinz Field.
To view the full 2016-17 schedule, click here.
National and local TV broadcast information, as well as the local radio broadcast schedule, will all be released later this summer.
