Sadly, the Olympic hockey tournament has come to a conclusion. As everyone knows, Team Canada beat the Americans last night in overtime to win the gold medal. Local pariah, Sidney Crosby, scored the winning goal against tournament MVP, Ryan Miller. It was a great run for Team USA and a great experience for fans of hockey being played at its highest level.
The Flyers will take the ice tomorrow night at 7 in Tampa. They’ll be without useless goon, Riley Cote, as he’s been waived. Cote has only registered 1 goal in his last 153 games, which means the only thing the Flyers will lose is a player who can’t win meaningless fights.
The Flyers are currently in playoff position, sitting in the 6th spot in the Eastern Conference. The sixth through eleventh spots are separated by only 5 points, so a spirited effort will be required in order to keep the Flyers in the playoff mix. The NHL trading deadline is in two days; we’ll be curious to see whether the Flyers feel they need to make any moves for the final push.
Because you only look at this website while you’re at your desk job, by the time you see this post tomorrow (today to you) you’ll already know that the USA put a whoopin’ on Team Canada last night (err, tonight–whatever). Point is, the prospect of a gold medal on home ice for the Canadian people would be about as wonderful to them as when France shut out Brazil to win the World Cup in Paris in 1998. An uninspired performance last week against Switzerland aside, the gold medal favorite, Canada, will face its first real test from an American team that is as good a bet as anyone to grab an Olympic medal.
Tonight’s game is a rematch of the 2002 gold medal game won by Canada in Salt Lake City in 2002. The ’02 Canadian team featured only one Flyer, Simon Gagne, while the American team had 2 Flyers, John LeClair and Jeremy Roenick. Both Flyers playing in tonight’s game will skate for Team Canada and they are Chris Pronger and Mike Richards.
Pictured above is Team USA’s starting goalie, Ryan Miller of the Buffalo Sabres. Because one of the best goaltenders in the history of hockey will be about 190 feet away in the person of Martin Brodeur, a significant chunk of the U.S. hopes will rest on Miller’s shoulders. The Canadian roster features an abundance of scoring talent; Rick Nash, Sidney Crosby, Jarome Iginla, Joe Thornton and Dany Heatley headline the Canadian forwards so Miller and his defensemen had better be sharp. For whatever it’s worth, I think they will be and I’m predicting a 3-2 American victory.
Not content with comparing the Flyers to Hitler (as evidenced in the below article), the Canadian people have thrown another jab at the Philadelphia Flyers. Tsn.ca is reporting that Team Canada Executive Director, Steve Yzerman, has told Jeff Carter to pack his bags and head back to Philly. Carter had been invited to Vancouver as an alternate and was slated to fill the roster spot voided by injured center, Ryan Getzlaf. Apparently Getzlaf’s injured ankle is on the mend as demonstrated by his 4-point performance against the Edmonton Oilers.
The NHL Winter Classic will be played tomorrow at Fenway Park in Boston between your Flyers and their Bruins. Given the Flyers woes, this could be the most exciting game they play in the first half of 2010. The first Classic featured 900,000 people in Orchard Park, New York watching the Sabres and Penguins go to a shootout. That game ended on a goal by S. Crosby which resembled Brett Favre’s cowtowing to Michael Strahan’s sack record (yeah, the goal was scripted so back off, Pens fans). Last year’s game featured Wrigley Field, the Red Wings, the Blackhawks and plump kielbasas.
Ignorant donkeys who don’t get hockey because they grew up in suburban Atlanta may not be watching tomorrow, but we certainly will be. Assuming the ice doesn’t turn into a pond (questionable weather is in the forecast), it should be a lot of fun. And if you’ll entertain this silly prognostication for a moment: Fenway Park will be the scene of the baseball teams from both towns playing for the World Series in October. So there’s a little foreshadowing in the works. Let’s hope the Flyers can get the Phillies off on the right foot with a win.
The Flyers are 3-11 in their last 14 games. At the risk of sounding ridiculous, part of that disgraceful record has to do with the fact they’ve played a brutal schedule. 7 of those losses came to teams that are either first or second in their divisions and 3 of the losses came to 3rd-place teams. In short, they haven’t exactly been playing a lot of patsies (though 2 of their 3 wins were against the Islanders).
None of this excuses a pathetic performance from a team that many thought would contend for the Cup this season. During this 14-game skid, the Flyers have been outscord 26-49. Neither the off-season addition of Ray Emery nor Chris Pronger has proven to make them any better than they were last year. And the Flyers nominally-powerful scorers have done little this year; the highest-ranked scorer on the Flyers is Mike Richards. His 26 points are good for 49th-place in the NHL.
Last night’s 6-1 drubbing at the hands of the Penguins was a good indication of how far removed from the League’s elite teams the Flyers are. And that game put the issue of the Flyers personnel into stark contrast with one of the NHL’s best rosters. Offensively, the Flyers don’t have anyone as good as Sidney Crosby or Evgeni Malkin. Defensively they don’t have anyone as good as Sergei Gonchar. And their goaltender (whoever that may be) isn’t as good as Marc-Andre Fleury. With the better part of the season remaining, the Flyers need to start looking at making some moves on their bench, not just behind it.
The road to the Stanley Cup goes through Pittsburgh. Whether you like that statement doesn’t matter; the Penguins are the defending champions and there’s no reason to think they won’t do it again, other than the high hopes of Eastern Conference aspirants like the Capitals, Rangers, Bruins and Flyers. Tonight at the Wachovia Center will be the first installment of the Flyers’ season-long test to see whether they can unseat the Pens.
Barry Melrose and E.J. Hradek have a pretty good piece today about the impact that Chris Pronger will have on the Flyers hopes. There’s no two ways about it: the addition of Pronger in the off-season was made largely because of the need to shut down Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin. To boot, Pronger becomes the point man on the power play and (along with Matt Carle) will make the man-advantage a whole lot more productive for the Orange and Black.
Through the first 3 games the Flyers hold the statistical edge on the Penguins in just about every department. They’ve scored more goals, allowed fewer, have a better power play %, a better penalty kill percentage and are 3-0 while the Pens are 2-1. Of course, 3-games into a season doesn’t tell much of a story other than being representative of the Flyers doing their homework for their first big test. And that’ll be tonight at 7 pm at the Wachovia Center.
UPDATE: In case you haven’t heard, the Flyers are giving remaining tickets to tonight’s game away for $25 if you have a Phillies ticket. If the Phils are successful this afternoon, that spillover crowd could make the arena even louder and more raucous than usual.
In great news for everyone from Boston to Philly (except Yankees fans, who can go to hell) tsn.ca is reporting that the NHL’s annual New Year’s Day hockey game, the Winter Classic, will be played between your Philadelphia Flyers and the Boston Bruins. And to make matters sweeter, it’ll go down at Fenway Park.
The inaugural WC was played between the Buffalo Sabres and Pittsburgh Penguins and went to a shootout won by Sidney Crosby. There were 70,000+ in attendance and it was snowing. The NHL couldn’t have asked for a better first game. Last year, the historic rivalry between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks opened another chapter on New Year’s Day at Wrigley Field.
The Winter Classic is pretty awesome and as far as venues go, Fenway Park is about as great as it gets. The tricky part in planning for the game is making sure it’s cold enough, which is probably why Boston makes more sense than Philly. The inclusion of the Flyers in this year’s game only adds to the upturn in Philly sports in the past year.
In case you hadn’t heard, Philly favorite Sidney Crosby hoisted the Stanley Cup last night after leading his team to 4 wins in the final 5 games of the Cup Finals. To convey what must be an immense feeling of disappointment and hopelessness on the part of the Red Wings, I chose this picture of Robert Esche sulking after losing in a 7th game to Tampa Bay in 2004.
Not uncoincidentally, I chose the picture because tsn.ca is reporting today that Robert Esche may become Ray Emery’s other half of the Flyers’ goaltending roster next season. Reached for comment at his summer home on Baffin Bay, Flyers GM Paul Holmgren told me they felt like they needed another goaltender who’d spent the last year in Russia. Something like “you can never have enough goalies from the KHL,” if my memory serves me correctly.
People in Philly don’t quite have enough first-hand experience with Emery to realize what a poor signing he is. My suggestion is to think about how you felt when Robert Esche was here, apply the appropriate level of rage to the prospect of an Esche signing again and then translate this to your expectations for Emery. Oh, and then send a letter of thanks to Paul Holmgren for ruining your summer.
Well, the Flyers and Sixers aren’t doing anything this weekend either. Thanks to both teams’ absolutely pathetic exiting styles, the only game in town is Phils-Mets down at the Park. Come to think of it, for a weekend where nothing’s going on, we couldn’t really ask for a better lineup of ballgames.
I’m calling the rainout now but theoretically Chan Ho Park goes against Mike Pelfrey tonight at 7:05 at the Parking Lot at South Philadelphia. Tomorrow’s a matinee: 3:40, Oliver Perez vs. Jamie Moyer and Sunday’s wrap-up is at 1:35, John Maine vs. Joe Blanton.
Anaheim and Detroit (insert obligatory reference to Michigan’s economic woes) will be on at the bars tonight once the Phils are rained out. You may also get the Atlanta-Miami basketball game tonight at 8:00 but that would be as interesting as reading a transcript of banana slugs mating in German. Come to think of it, if there’s evidence that the NBA can be any more boring and clownish than it already is, this series proved that in Game 5; seriously, what kind of bush league shit is that?.
So while your girlfriend cries all weekend about brunch getting rained out on Sunday, you can enjoy Phils-Mets, Game 1 of Ovechkin-Crosby/Malkin Saturday and Game 7 of the sweet ass Boston-Chicago overtime fest. My only wish for this series is that both teams use more timeouts–watching the last few minutes of that series’ games is like being in bed with Jessica Alba and having Alex Trebek standing next to the bed asking you trivia questions.
Sadly, the Olympic hockey tournament has come to a conclusion. As everyone knows, Team Canada beat the Americans last night in overtime to win the gold medal. Local pariah, Sidney Crosby, scored the winning goal against tournament MVP, Ryan Miller. It was a great run for Team USA and a great experience for fans of hockey being played at its highest level.
Not content with comparing the Flyers to Hitler (as evidenced in the below article), the Canadian people have thrown another jab at the Philadelphia Flyers. 
