Who would have thought a week that featured three games against mediocre Southeast Division opponents could provide such entertaining hockey (no sarcasm) and debate? An unusual scene in Tampa Bay, resulting in the equivalent of a puck-possession staring contest, has caused such a stir that the general managers needed to talk about it at their meetings, multiple short-handed penalty-shot goals were awarded AND converted, Braydon Coburn fought a former Philly scrapper in addition to scoring a goal, and the Flyers almost (I know I’m stretching it here) blew a two-goal lead in the final ten seconds of a game. Let’s start with …
Atlantic Watch: 11/2-11/8
The Flyers may have absolutely clobbered the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night, and the Flyers may have only been a shootout goal or two away from going 3-0-0 this week, but these three games weren’t the best Flyers team we’ve seen all season. Before their Saturday night massacre against the worst team in the league, the Flyers may have played 125 minutes as well as participate in a shootout in their first two games, but they really only showed up for a total of about 20 minutes. Inability to play a full 60 minutes was a problem last year’s Flyers …
Alive at 45?
While us penguins continue to wilt in the usual Northeastern Summer heat, pining for the days when a cool iceberg awaits our collectively scorched behinds, thoughts about the upcoming (and too far off) season still seep their way into our Sun-addled brains. This is the third in a five-part series which intends to examine the ways the Flyers front office, though publicly professing to want to win the Cup by any means necessary, just ends up conducting business as usual year in and year out. The facts are simple and impressive. In 3,424 total regular-season games, the Orange and Black have played to …
A Reasoner to Believe
That’s what it read at the top of the special insert, tucked within the tabloid-sized issue of The Heights, in mid-April of 1998. A plea for the Eagles’ best player to return for his senior season in the wake of a national championship game appearance, it depicted Marty Reasoner, clad in the Boston College home whites, waiting out a stoppage in play. It could have been from any game that season, but it was most likely taken in the 3 1/2 week period between the Hockey East quarterfinal round in early March and the NCAA Tournament Final, in Boston, on the …
Flight Plan 02.20.2011
The Philadelphia Flyers won two of the three games they had last week and in only one of the games was the score separated by more than a goal after the final buzzer. If you weren’t sure that it was almost that time of year, you are now. The games will get tighter, they will mean more, two point games can now be viewed as four point games, and some team may even get in to the playoffs on a shootout win in the last game of the season. The great thing about hockey, particularly the NHL, is that somehow …