For many of the Flyers, outdoor games bring back memories of family and freezing temperatures

Egor Zamula has skated outdoors in the cold before and he likes it.

The Flyers defenseman played on an outdoor rink in Regina, Saskatchewan, with the Calgary Hitmen of the Western Hockey League in the 2019 Prairie Classic. But the 21 degrees that day was balmy compared with what he experienced growing up in Russia.

When he was a kid in Chelyabinsk, boards would be put up in front of his apartment building and water would be laid down. It didn’t take long for it to be playable — the temperature was around 31 below zero.

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“I think it’s a good experience to play an outdoor game. ... Every day you are cold, you are drinking hot tea on the bench. It’s very fun, it’s freezing,” Zamula said about his childhood. “But I think if you want to win this game you need to play with no mistakes, a simple game.”

On Saturday, the 23-year-old won’t have the tea his mother and grandmother would make with honey, rosemary, and some fruit. But the Flyers will be outfitted with whatever else they need to stay warm when they’re not sitting on the heated benches at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. Rick Bronwell, the team’s equipment manager, has ordered everything for the players from ski masks to put under their helmets to hand warmers to put in their gloves. There will also be eye black available to reduce the glare, and since the Flyers are using the New York Jets locker room, the football team is bringing some cold weather gear.

Sam Ersson may need some of that based on how the Flyers limit other teams’ shots on goal. If the Swede is the starting goalie on Saturday against the New Jersey Devils (8 p.m. on ABC/ESPN+), he’ll be transported back to his days growing up in Falun.

“Outdoor rinks are what we had back home in my hometown,” Ersson said. “We had some issues with the arena where I grew up, so we had to shut it down because they had to renovate it. Then we just practiced on an outdoor rink when I was maybe 14, 15 years old. So it was awesome. A lot of fun memories and it’s definitely great.”

Ersson will have his parents in attendance on Saturday, as will center Scott Laughton, who will get a chance to skate with his family on Friday at the family skate. Laughton will be playing in his second outdoor game, having suited up for the Orange and Black in 2019 against the Pittsburgh Penguins at Lincoln Financial Field. He was supposed to play in 2017 but was sent down right before and then he had COVID-19 when the Flyers were at Lake Tahoe in 2021.

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“I didn’t play as much outdoor hockey as some of the guys from the small towns, we were usually in the rink,” said Laughton, who grew up in the Toronto suburb of Oakville, Ontario. “But a buddy of mine lived on a little bit of land and he had a pond in the back, so we’d always go on the pond. And you’d have to stay out there or else you were frozen. So, yeah, brings you back, but it’s a ton of fun and something that you cherish.”

Nick Seeler, Garnet Hathaway, and Marc Staal all grew up skating outdoors right by their houses.

Seeler spent hours working on his game in his buddy’s backyard, at Miller Park, or with his father, Dan, and sister Kelly, who won a national championship with Minnesota in 2012, on the lake they lived on in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Hathaway had a pond outside his house in Maine that he would skate on — going back to his days of wearing double runners. He too had a good friend who had a backyard rink. This one was two-thirds the size of a normal rink and had a Zamboni to keep it fresh. Hathaway said, “I think it just was part of me falling in love with the game and helping me just want to keep playing and enjoying it.”

Staal and his three brothers, all of whom also have played in the NHL, skated on a pond before their father, Henry, built a 50x100 foot rink in their front yard in Thunder Bay, Ontario. It helped solidify Staal’s love for the game, which includes four outdoor games with the New York Rangers.

“It’s a different sound when you’re skating outside on your skates and the feel of it, the fresh air,” Staal said. “It’s how I grew up playing. It’s how I made it to the NHL, is the amount of time I spent playing around on an outdoor rink. It’s pretty cool to do it now on a stage like this.”

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Defenseman Cam York said Staal was “ranting” about how much fun it is to play an NHL outdoor game. Skating outdoors is something York has done — but on rollerblades under the Californian sun. His buddy Jamie Drysdale got some texts from his Anaheim Ducks teammates when he was traded to Philly saying, “On the bright side, you get to play in an outdoor game.” Drysdale has spent some time skating under the stars — his father would build a rink in the backyard and he’d “go out and buzz around, have fun, do a bunch of stupid stuff on the ice.”

Sean Walker’s parents tried to put a rink in their backyard but it didn’t work out too well. So he’d head to the roller-rink-turned-ice-rink or the ice sheet built on a baseball diamond in Ontario. New captain Sean Couturier will be skating in his fifth — all with the Flyers — and played a lot of outdoor hockey in New Brunswick, even when school was closed because it was too cold.

Winger Joel Farabee never really skated outside growing up in Upstate New York. Neither did defenseman Travis Sanheim, who had a key to the indoor rink in Elkhorn, Manitoba, and had access almost every day. He and his brother, Taylor, would try to scrape off the dugout (a storage reservoir) and go one-on-one on the family farm.

But the guy who grew up the closest to Philly, winger Cam Atkinson, spent lots of time outdoors.

“Yeah, I actually grew up skating at Greenwich [Conn.] Skating Club, an outdoor rink. ... Power skating at 5:30 in the morning when it was snowing out and freezing cold. Had to put the feet and hand warmers in your gloves and skates,” said Atkinson, who roots for the New York Giants and has been to the old Giants Stadum to see both Big Blue and Gang Green play. “And New Canaan Winter Club is also an outdoor rink that is 10 minutes away from our house. So a lot of fun and some of my fondest memories are skating outdoors.”

But is he planning on going with hand warmers on Saturday?

“We’ll see,” he said with a laugh.