In an interesting move by Flyers' coach John Stevens, he benched rookie defenseman Luca Sbisa in favor of Randy Jones, who is playing his first game today after missing the first 32 with a hip injury.

Sbisa has tapered off after a solid start, but many scribes on press row, including yours truly, were surprised that Sbisa was kicked to the scratch list rather than turnover-prone Andrew Alberts.

The coach will have to answer for this after the game.

A couple other notes:

Antero Niittymaki gets his fourth straight start in goal following yesterday's remarkable effort against Washington. Marty Biron is back in uniform, but he needs a day or two of practice before he gets back on the ice after dealing with a nasty strand of the flu bug.

Oh, and in honor of my colleague Ed Moran from the Philadelphia Daily News, who decided to write a column centered around my penchant nature to be a stat head in the press box, I offer for the first time today the Moran Mathematical Observation of the day:

In the six games (entering today) the line of Joffrey Lupul, Jeff Carter and Scott Hartnell have combined to post 29 points, or 4.8 per game.

And, in case Moran is reading this, here's the breakdown so he can use it for his story in the Daily News tomorrow:

Lupul 3 goals, 5 assists, 8 points
Carter 5 goals, 6 assists, 11 points
Hartnell 7 goals, 3 assists, 10 points