Flyers Out, Phantoms In

  The Philadelphia Flyers have again missed out on the EHE Stanley Cup playoffs.  A season wrapup, what their future holds,and interviews all will be coming soon in a future article.  During this article we will be taking a look at the Philadelphia FLyer's AHL affiliate, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms.

  For the second stright season the Lehigh Valley Phantoms took home the MacGregor Kilpatrick trophy as the AHLs top team during the regular season.  Following the 76 game regular season schedule the team racked up a league high 116 points on the year after going 54-14-8.  The team was amongst the highest scoring teams in the league lighting the lamp 239 times.  It was their goals against 155, that set them apart from the rest of the league.  The next closest team was the St.Johns IceCaps, who gave up 172 goals against this season.

  Last year the Phantoms had a disappointing end to their year, although they won the MacGregor Kilpatrick award, the team was steamrolled and ousted by the Hershey Bears.  Although the series did go 5 games, after losing the first 2 on home ice, it seemed as though the Phantoms were never really in the series at all.  This year the Phantoms will look to bounce back and have much better results this time around. 

    The Phantoms will face the Bridgeport Sound Tigers in the first round.  Bridgeport finished the season with a record of 33-30-13, and early in the season seemed to have the Phantoms number as they had beat the Lehigh Valley Phantoms in 2 of the teams 3 meetings, and outscored the Phnatoms 11-7.  The LVP and BSP would meet 3 times around the middle of the season, and the LVP ran off with 3 straight shutout victories, outscoring the Sound Tigers 13-0 in those games.  Their season matchup would round out with 2 final meetings as the season wound down.  The LVP were victorious picking up the final 2 wins giving them a season series edge of 6-2 and outscoring the Tigers 27-14 during their contests. 

   Following  the 2015-16 season the LVP rosters seen many changes as several of the teams top players went to the EHE.  Including both of their goaltenders Matt Murray and Anders Nilsson, top scorers Brett Connolly, Nick Shore, Valeri Nichushkin.  This season had all new tenders mining the crease in the LVP net.  Radek Faksa, who played just 1 regular season game in 2015-16 led the team in scoring in 2016-2017.  Nick Cousins put up 19 points in his first full season was now the teams #1 center.  He finished the year with 61 points in 67 games.

  Despite all the changes heading into the season, management and the team still had hope of another shot at the playoffs.  During the season the team made several moves in an attempt to shore up its roster as the likes of Braken Kearns, Landon Ferraro, Andrej Nastrasil were some of the names brought in to help.

Now with the team already down 1-0 in the series, the team needs to muster up a win on home ice in the playoffs, something that has been a rather tough thing for this group of Phantoms to come by.  Will the Lehigh Valley Phantoms find their game and get better results?  or are they another team who just can not get it done come playoff time?