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Flyers over Rangers 3-2 OT

The Flyers beat the Rangers for the second time this year in overtime 3-2. This was a game the Flyers really needed. Even if they would not have won, the effort was there. Hitting, hard work along the boards and energy, it was there. Giving the C to Hatcher seems to be working so far.

Scoring for the Flyers were Mike Richards and Joni Pitkanen. Pitkanen picked up two goals including the game winner in OT. The best line for the Flyers was the Richards-Savage-Brashear line. As of late Brashear is starting to impress me with his hockey skill, he is really starting to adjust to the new NHL. I still don’t think he is worth his pay against the cap. If his play continues like it is now I could see the Flyers resigning him after this year, just at a lower salary.
Michal Handzus won 71% of his faceoffs. As much as many hockey bloggers discount the Faceoff stats, one of those faceoffs did lead directly to the first goal scored by the Flyers.

Both goalies, Esche and Lundqvist played extremely well.

Stars for the game were Richards, Lundqvist and Pitkanen.

Kim Johnsson after seeing a specialist has been diagnosed with having post concussion symptoms. There is no time table for his return, but it is definitely not as bad as Primeau.
Peter Forsberg after seeing a groin specialist at Duke University has been diagnosed with having a groin strain. He should be able to start skating this weekend.

   

TSN Power Rankings January 30

Ever since returning from their great road trip, the Flyers have struggled (2-4-2), due in part to Peter Forsberg's on-again, off-again groin injury. The good news is that D Joni Pitkanen is back, helping to ease the load on a heavily-taxed defence.
Key Injuries: D Eric Desjardins (shoulder), C Keith Primeau (concussion), C Peter Forsberg (groin).

TSN Power Rankings January 30

Losing 2 out of 4 since the last ranking to teams ranked 15 and 23. Up to 7 from 9, how does that happen?
Kim Johnsson is another key injury.

   

ESPN Week 17

The Flyers don't have Peter Forsberg and they got blown out by the Lightning, yet they are still able to hold their own. Derian Hatcher is now captain of the team as Philly realizes Keith Primeau might not come back this season. When did Hatcher say he was last a team captain? For his Midget team?

ESPN PowerRankings Week 17

NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!
Derian Hatcher was last a team captain for the Dallas Stars, remember 1999, he won the Cup? The first American captain to do so. For proof I offer up the Derian Hatcher action figure.

Do ya see the C on his jersey?
The question wasn’t when Hatcher was last a team captain. The question was when was he first a team captain. Yes midgets, that is what he said.

Down to 5 from 3.

   

Flyers in NewYork against Rangers Jan30

The Flyers head to New York tonight to play the Rangers. Season series tied at 1-1 between the two teams. The Flyers are coming off a 6-0 loss against the Lightning on Saturday. The Rangers are coming off a 7-1 win against the Penguins on Saturday.

Injuries for the Flyers include Eric Desjardins, Peter Forsberg, Kim Johnsson, Keith Primeau and Branko Radivojevic.
Injures for the Rangers include Blair Betts.

This is a big game with the Rangers only 3 points behind the Flyers in the division. First game for the Flyers after naming Derian Hatcher captain, we will have to see how the Flyers respond.

A couple injury notes.
Branko Radivojevic who is out with a high ankle sprain will have surgery Tuesday to remove polyps from his nasal passage.
Peter Forsberg will visit Duke University orthopedist Willam Garrett to have his groin injury examined. Garrett is an expert in groin/abdominal injuries.
Kim Johnsson will be examined by a neuro-opthamologist. He left last game with some dizziness, this from a hit earlier in the month.

   

Top 10 Agitators

Tom Layberger comes up with his list of Top 10 Agitators.

Former Flyer Ken Linseman came in at #3.
The "Rat" made sure to get in the first and last shots while distracting his opponent up and down the ice. Linseman's antics often resulted in only the retaliatory infraction being called, further incensing his targets -- who often spent the rest of the game preoccupied with trying to get even.

Bob Clarke came in at #7.
After getting under the skin of an opposing player and drawing a penalty, Clarke usually assisted on the ensuing power-play goal. If an opponent took exception to Clarke's tactics and sought to even the score, he was usually greeted by a band of Broad Street Bullies. So, it was usually a lose-lose situation for the guys in the opposite jersey.

   

Derian Hatcher Named Team Captain

With the uncertainty of Keith Primeau’s health, the Flyers have named defenseman Derian Hatcher the 14th captain in franchise history. Hatcher, who was signed as a free agent by the club this summer, will wear the “C” until (if) Primeau returns from his concussion.

Keith Primeau - “Clarkie and Hitch pulled me into Clarkie’s office, and said that the team is kind of a lost ship at sea right now and kind of floundering and we need some direction. As good as the guys have been to find ways to win hockey games, right now we’re at a tough patch and we need that direction.
Without knowing what my status is and my availability, we need direction now. I agreed, and temporarily they are going to pass the captaincy to Derian Hatcher and make Sami Kapanen and Simon Gagne permanent assistants, and I’m okay with that.”

So Hatcher is now the Captain, at least temporarily. This is a good move for the Flyers with the recent lack of effort from the team, something had to be done. Hatcher was Captain for the Dallas Stars under Ken Hitchcock. He is the only American Captain to win the Stanley Cup.
Simon Gagne was offered the C earlier in the season but declined it. Maybe Gagne is a little like Desjardins, a guy with hockey skill but doesn’t have what it takes to be a Captain. I’m not trying to criticize either of them, some guys have it and some don’t. Desjardins was named Captain after Eric Lindros was stripped of the C in the 99-00 season. Eric gave up the C within the year with it going to Keith Priemeau.

   

Lightning shutout Flyers 6-0

The Flyers were pummeled yesterday afternoon losing 6-0 in Philly to the Tampa Bay Lightning. I guess the team meeting didn’t help much.

Fredrik Modin of the Lightning had a hat trick. Two games in a row now the Flyers have given up a hat trick. Former Flyer Sean Burke earned the shutout for the Lightning. He didn’t have to be spectacular, but with the Flyers play spectacular wasn’t needed.
The Flyers top line took 6 penalties. They also gave up 3 power play goals on 9 kills, one in each period. This against the Lightning who’s power play is 29th in the league. Flyers were also 0-4 on the powerplay unable to get a PP shot on goal until a minute left in the game.

Any good news for the Flyers from this game? Not really. The majority of the goals Nittymaki gave up were deflections or odd man rushes. The team in front of him was more responsible for the goals then he was. No energy, no drive, looked like they just didn’t care. Kim Johnsson left in the second period, he was feeling a bit dizzy. Chris Therien was a healthy scratch.

“I think we’re in a tough state right now. We have some adversity. Every mistake is in our net. We are not able to score on the chances that we get. We took too many penalties especially in the offensive zone. I don’t think it's one thing. We were a team going very well for an extended period of time. In the last 10 days we have not played near as well as we are capable of. We didn’t match the level of intensity on a consistent basis. We had some players that played very well tonight but we didn’t match the level of intensity.” –Ken Hitchcock

Looking at the larger picture, the Flyers are just playing like crap. It has been longer than 10 days. Since the January 5 win over the Rangers, the 4 wins the Flyers have are against teams at the bottom of the conferences. Penguins 12 wins in 52 games, Capitals 17 wins in 49 games, Blackhawks 17 wins in 50 games. Every other game they have played they lost, against teams either in or close to being in the playoffs.
Instead of having another meeting to talk about what’s wrong I propose a different method. Take a page out of Herb Brooks coaching manual, run em.
Today at practice line them up along the goal line and just run them the entire practice, sprints, lines, herbies whatever you call them. Sore groins, elbows or shoulders, doest matter. Maybe that would wake up the team, a team desperately missing their captain. The gang of seven is apparently not doing a good job.

Stars of the game were Modin, Burke, St. Louis.

The last time the Flyers allowed hat tricks in two consecutive games was October 1999 Peter Bondra and Brian Savage. The Lightning have beaten the Flyers in seven consecutive regular season games. April 4, 2003 was the last regular season win the Flyers had against the Lightning. The last home loss this bad was against the Devils 7-1 on January 18, 2001. Seven games left before the Olympic break for the Flyers, it can’t get here soon enough.

Last week I gave NBC a thumbs up with their coverage of the game, the goalie cams were quite cool. This week I have to give them a thumbs down. No goalie cams this week, but that really wasn’t a big deal. What was a big deal was the horseracing. Between the second and third period instead of having highlights, commentary, etc there was horse racing. I don’t want to watch F-ing horseracing! It has absolutely nothing to do with hockey. This just strokes my pet peeves of TV broadcasts of hockey, mainly commercials. There is no reason to have commercial timeouts during the period. If they have enough time to show a F-ing horserace there is plenty of time to show all the commercials they want between periods. Players know when the timeouts are going to occur, happens around the same time every period. Ice the puck? Not a big deal, have a TV timeout coming up. Another little pet peeve is how close NBC (OLN does the same) cuts the game. If you have a Dvr/Tivo and are going to record the game to watch later make sure you also record whatever comes after the game, because if you don’t, 90% of the time you will miss the last few minutes of the game.

   

Injury Update Jan 28

Peter Forsberg left the Jan 25 game with a tear in his left groin. He is expected to miss 7 to 10 days from that date. There has been talk that Forsberg should skip the Olympics to rest his body from all the injuries this year.

Eric Desjardins has been out since December 7 with a right shoulder subluxation. He is slated to return sometime in February, probably after the Olympic break.

Branko Radivojevic is expected to be out 3 to 6 weeks with a high ankle sprain. He slid hard into the boards late in the Jan 25 game against Montreal. He was on the taxi sqad for Slovakia for the Olympics.

Keith Primeau has been out since October 30 with a concussion. He is still experiencing post concussion symptoms. The only recent news is that he is still improving, whatever that means.

Joni Pitkanen had been out since December 5 with a sports hernia. He played two periods in the Jan 21 game against the Penguins. He left the game with tightness in his groin. He will be returning to the lineup today against the Lightning.

Kim Johnsson has missed 3 games with soft tissue damage after a series of hits to his head. He did not have a concussion. He will be returning to the lineup today against the Lightning and will be wearing a half shield.

   

Lightning in Philly Jan 28

The Lightning come to Philadelphia to play the Flyers in another Saturday afternoon nationally broadcasted game. The Lightning lead the season series 2-0 last beating the Flyers 4-2 on November 22 in Philadelphia.
The Flyers are coming off a 5-3 loss to the Canadiens on Wednesday. The Lightning are coming off a 1-0 OT win over the Devils on Thursday.

Injuries for the Flyers include Eric Desjardins, Peter Forsberg, Keith Primeau and Branko Radivojevic.
Injuries for the Lightening include Martin Cibak, he is listed day- to-day.

Antero Niittymaki will get the start in goal today. He has also been named starting goaltender for Finland in the Olympics.

With both Kim Johnsson and Joni Pitkanen returning today, Alexandre Picard was sent back to the Phantoms and Chris Therien is expected to be a healthy scratch. Potential defensive lines are Pitkanen-Hatcher, Jones-Rathje, Johnsson-Meyer.
Ben Eager was called up from the Phantoms to replace injured Radivojevic. Potentional forward lines are Nedved-Gagne-Knuble, Handzus-Brashear-Kapanen, Carter-Umberger-Eager, Richards-Savage-Stevenson.

   

Canadiens beat Flyers 5-2

The Flyers were beat by the Montreal Canadiens 5-3 in Philadelphia Wednesday night.
Simon Gagne scored his 34th goal of the year, a new high for him. Freddy Meyer and R.J. Umberger (power play – R.J. standing for Rick Junior) scored the other two goals.
The Flyers controlled a lot of the first period. The Flyers weren’t really dominating, the Canadiens just looked bad, Huet in goal looked shaky. Looking at the fact the Canadiens losing 17 of their last 19 road games I thought to myself this would be a good high scoring win for the Flyers.

But after the Flyers took a 2-0 lead the Canadiens woke up and played a good game. Apparently the Flyers decided to take the rest of the night off. You’re not going to win many games giving up 5 goals on 15 shots. Robert Esche didn’t look the sharpest, but the loss was hardly his fault. Too many turnovers, too many odd man rushes.

Got to give credit to Jan Bulis scoring 4 goals on 4 shots, impressive, his first career hat trick. Interesting though that Bulis wasn’t scheduled to play in the game at all.
Peter Forsberg left in the second period with another groin injury. Branko Radovojevic left in the 3rd period after sliding into the boards hard with a lower body injury.

Jan Bulis, Craig Rivet and R.J. Umberger were the three stars.

The last player to score 4 goals against the Flyers was Mario Lemieux in a 9-3 win by Pittsburgh on March 20, 1993. The last Canadien to score 4 goals in a game is current Flyer Brian Savage

   

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