Bring on the Youth: A deeper look at younger players

With recent news from Flyers new coach John Tortorella that he will be playing "the kids". The Flyers fans and members of the media will finally get to see what the future may look like. The younger players made most of their opportunities and were able to come away with a 2-1win last night. And, carrying momentum from their pair of wins in those rookie games, it was the younger Flyers that did the heavy lifting in this one.

Sandstrom who spent most of his career playing with the Flyers affiliate team, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms got the start last night against the Bruins and surprised a lot of people. Playing half of the game and saving all 17 shots faced. Boston had 4 powerplays and a 5 on 3 and Sandstrom shut the door on all chances. Quality shots from the Bruins were shut down and with a little help from the play of Morgan Frost, Sandstrom made a strong case for the backup role to Carter Hart. Reports say Hart has a minor injury, if lingers, we could see Sandstrom get some starts in the big league. We may not need to worry when he is in between pipes.

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The Flyers�in an admittedly pretty satisfying turn of events�got their scoring from the Cates brothers. Noah Cates opened up the scoring for the game with a goal on the 5-on-3 power play. Great puck movement and looking quite good doing it, regardless of how bad the fans want them to shoot. He really got going from the second period onward as well, driving offense more distinctly and showing a nice bit of chemistry Tyson Foerster, particularly on the power play. The game winning goal came, then, from Jackson Cates after a nice bit of work from a couple of defensemen�Ronnie Attard was able to get the puck up-ice and into the offensive zone nicely and the Flyers were able to get a bit of a cycle going, getting the puck up to Egor Zamula for a shot from the point, and then Cates was in just the right spot in the slot to deflect that shot in.

Ronnie Attard with a good zone entry and Torts has to like the work along the boards to keep the puck moving, and Cates gets rewarded with the tip. pic.twitter.com/t0p3tMbLo8� Ryan Gilbert (@RGilbertSOP) September 25, 2022

Foerster lead with great chances in the preseason opener. Cam York continued to shine and looks more and more like an NHL top tier defenseman. We saw the return of Wade Allison who showed his tough side while sticking up for a teammate. As Hayden Hodgson did as well- both players dropped the gloves in this one. That being said, Flyers have a couple of tough guys on the starting roster and seeing the youth bring this tough guy mentality, shows the Flyers won't be backing down from anyone.

Hayden Hodgson drops the gloves! pic.twitter.com/CdIB3ewNQ2� Ryan Gilbert (@RGilbertSOP) September 25, 2022

So it was the youth movement again leading the charge, and while we do want to add a couple of qualifiers to this�it was the first preseason game and we want to avoid making any massive sweeping assertions based on that, and also by pure volume in the ratio of young players to veterans in this game, the younger players had a better chance of standing out�the doesn't negate the good work that these players did. There was a lot to like from these performances, and strong first impressions for a lot of players who are fighting to make the team out of camp.

We'll see how things shake out as we get deeper into the preseason, but this was about as strong of a first look as we could have asked for from a healthy percentage of the Flyers' prospect group.