News

By Ryan Shute

The Philadelphia Flyers Junior Hockey Team will be hosting the Jersey Hitmen in their regular season home finale on Wednesday 2/8 at the Virtua Center Flyers Skate Zone in Voorhees. Puck drop for this mid-week matinee will be at 1:50PM.

The Flyers are starting to put together a magnificent run in the latter stages of the season, winning 4 out of their last 5 games collecting 8 of a possible 10 points, creating a belief in the room that they can beat any team in the USPHL Premier Division.

The Flyers headed to the Rinx this past Saturday to take on the PAL Junior Islanders, a team that held a 2 point lead in the standings over the Flyers for the 8th seed, a coveted position that gives a team home ice for a postseason play-in game. The Flyers got a huge 5-1 victory, tying the two clubs in the standings at 32 points apiece.

The Flyers had three players with multi-point games against PAL (Tyler Jahn G and A, Tom Terranova G and A, and Tristan Ramage 2A), propelling the high score.

In the net, let it not be forgotten that goaltender Adam Mercer was excellent and knocked away 29 of PAL’s 30 shots to compliment the goal support in front of him.

Along with being tied with PAL, the Flyers also hold one game in hand on them making it more than capable of obtaining that 8th spot to host the 9th seed. But the Flyers could even finish as high as 7th and host the 10th seed, as the Flyers only trail the Springfield Pics by 4 points with both clubs having 6 games left to play on their respective regular season schedules.

Wednesday’s match-up becomes very intriguing coming down the stretch with the playoffs right around the corner. The Flyers should be full of confidence as they defeated the Hitmen in their previous battle up in Jersey when Tristan Ramage scored the game winner in overtime with just 21 seconds left, to give the Flyers the 2-1 victory and a weekend series split.

From the Jersey side of things, the Hitmen can improve form their current position in 3rd. However they trail the #1 Islanders Hockey Club by 7 points with 6 games left and IHC holds one game in hand. While 1st place appears to be a tough task, Jersey only trails the Junior Bruins by 2 points for the 2nd seed with the two clubs going head to head this weekend in a two game set at Ice Vault Arena.

The hockey universe should get a highly competitive game on Wednesday afternoon, so I highly encourage adults to take a half day at work, pull the kids out of school early, and come out to the Virtua Center Flyers Skate Zone and witness the action in person. If you can’t make it out to the rink, be sure tune in on your devices to Hockey TV.

Players to Watch:

Flyers: I am looking out for Tyler Jahn. Jahn has been a key to the Flyers recent success registering 4 points in his last 5 games and adding an element of point production coming from the Flyers blue liners.

Hitmen: Watch closely for forward Daniel Winslow. The Quinnipiac commit has registered 14 goals on the season, putting 4 of those pucks passed Flyers goaltenders.