Philadelphia Flyers defensemen Travis Sanheim and Nick Seeler dubiously missed practice on Friday afternoon, though associate coach Brad Shaw later revealed that the two were out for maintenance days.

All other Flyers players were accounted for, including third goalie Ivan Fedotov and recent healthy scratch Egor Zamula.

Head coach John Tortorella was also missing from practice for a personal obligation, so Shaw ran the show.

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It was a lighter practice than usual in the sense that the team did not run too many drills, aside from a few transition and rush-based ones early on.

The focus later shifted to the active-duty service members from the Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force, who skated with the Flyers players ahead of the team’s Military Appreciation Night on Monday night in partnership with the USO (United Service Organizations).

Garnet Hathaway dishing some pucks around to the military members pic.twitter.com/mZ48olr7Vh

— Jon Bailey (@ByJonBailey) November 1, 2024

Rugged fourth-line forward Garnet Hathaway, who frequently makes charitable contributions towards first responders via his Hath’s Heroes initiatives, was setting up the active-duty service members with passes and helping them shoot on the practice nets.

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Fellow forward Scott Laughton presented the group with a special jersey, while veteran defenseman Erik Johnson appeared to address them with a speech of some sorts.

Sam Ersson taking photos with some of the military now. He was the last guy to leave the ice, letting some of them take some shots on him shootout style. pic.twitter.com/jxgW6sgN9U

— Jon Bailey (@ByJonBailey) November 1, 2024

Starting goalie Sam Ersson stayed out on the ice well after practice, allowing the active-duty service members to take shots on him skating in from the blueline in a shootout style format. After that ended, the Flyers goalie stayed out to take some photos with individuals before heading to the locker room and wrapping up for the day.

Flyers prepared for Bruins on Saturday

“Well, I think we made a concerted effort to basically check better, have better sticks, have better body position, stay in the battle longer,” Shaw said of the Flyers’ vastly improved defensive efforts in the last handful of games. “Be a little bit more competitive. Work together. Don’t get so spread out, you know? We need better support, not just to win the battle, but then to be effective.”

Those efforts culminated in a 2-0 shutout win against the Boston Bruins on Tuesday night and continued with a 2-1 win against the St. Louis Blues on Thursday night.

Now, Shaw believes, it is about remaining consistent, especially with a rematch on tap with a Bruins team due for some positive regression to the mean.

“That win for us there, we went up against a team that got their boots handed to them, and they came out a little bit harder than Boston did,” Shaw said of the Blues. “We’re going to face a Boston team that just got their boots handed to them, and there’s a lot, it seems, of turmoil there.

“At a certain point, Boston is going to figure it out, and we just have to make sure that’s not tomorrow. We have to check at the level that we had there on Tuesday and be as frustrating as we were, and try and keep things going our way as often as we can.”

The Flyers will host the Bruins at the Wells Fargo Center at 1 p.m. on Saturday afternoon.