At the time, Bob Clarke’s decision to send 24-year-old defenseman Dennis Seidenberg to Phoenix for the aging Petr Nedved was a questionable move. All the Flyers have left from their trade with the Coyotes on January 20, 2006 is minor leaguer Joonas Lehtivuori. Seidenberg, at the moment, is helping the Bruins try to win their first Stanley Cup since 1970. So just how did the aftermath of this deal transpire? “Nedved has always been a good scorer and a real good player and we think he’ll solve some of our problems up front,” Clarke told the Associated Press after the trade back in …
Flight Plan 04.03.2011
Sometime in June, anybody who cares about hockey played in North America will look back on the 2010-2011 season and try to analyze numbers and streaks and teams and players and everything. All of them will search to find turning points and why a struggling team got it together or why a team that had been good all year fell apart or why a team that was good all year turned it up a notch in the playoffs and won it all. Right now, anything anybody says is purely speculation. In June however, everything everybody says will be based on …
Flight Plan week of 03.27.2011
Two out of three ain’t bad… If you win that is. Unfortunately for the Philadelphia Flyers, they lost two of their three games this past week as they continue to struggle with consistency issues within games and positionally. The Flyers, as a team, played one of their better games in the second half of the season against the Washington Capitals, however the performances by both starting goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky and relief goaltender Brian Boucher were lackluster to say the least. Still, the Orange and Black were able to skate off the ice with one of the two available points to …
Flight Plan 03.06.2011
Every team in the NHL will go through lulls in their season where they won’t win games. They can play their best hockey of the season and still not get the bounces. For the Philadelphia Flyers, that isn’t the case. They’re playing terrible hockey. They’re not working harder than the other team. They’re not shutting teams down when they need to. They’re not scoring key goals. They’re not clicking on the power play. They can’t break out of the zone. They don’t get better, but worse as the game progresses. They just can’t keep their focus and right now they …
Flight Plan 02.27.2011 (Delayed)
There are just 20, count ‘em, 20 games left in the regular season schedule for the Philadelphia Flyers. It looks like they’ve hit somewhat of a slump as they are just 6-3-1 in their last 10, including a Saturday night loss to the Eastern Conference worst Ottawa Senators by a score of 4-1, and struggling to beat the second-worst club, the New York Islanders. None of this spells success, but since the Flyers still hold a pretty good lead over the next best teams in the East (five points and one game in hand over both the Boston Bruins and …
Flyers Lose While Brind’Amour Is Honored
On a night where Rod Brind’Amour had his jersey retired by the Carolina Hurricanes, the Flyers lost 3-2 on an Erik Cole goal coming with just over three minutes left in regulation. A Blair Betts short-handed goal along with a Braydon Coburn goal in the third were the only tallies on the night for Philly. Sergei Bobrovsky saved 26 of the 29 shots he saw on the evening. The loss kept the Flyers from sweeping their four-game season series with the Hurricanes. Perhaps flush with Brind’Amour’s spirit and coming out motivated and charged in front of their home crowd, the Hurricanes …
Flight Plan week of 02.13.2011 One Day Removed
The Philadelphia Flyers finally get a win after a long layoff, beating the Carolina Hurricanes after four days off and how do they follow it up after another little layoff? A second shutout loss in just 12 days at the hands of the Los Angeles Kings. Granted, this team has shown it plays better when they have a bunch of games packed into the schedule, but they should probably realize that teams looking up at the standings, and there are a lot of them, are going to be coming every game from about two weeks ago on out. The Flyers …
Flyers Win Low Scoring Game, Beat Canes 2-1
Goals by Jeff Carter and Danny Briere led the Flyers to their third straight win. After forty scoreless minutes, both of the Flyers goals along with Tuomo Ruutu’s goal for the Hurricanes came in the final period of regulation. The win pushes the Flyers to 36-13-5 on the season. The game started out just like the Flyers had planned. With Brett Carson going to the box for high-sticking Mike Richards 1:16 into the game, the Flyers powerplay had a chance to score on the league’s 23rd ranked penalty kill. The opportunity went to waste as a lone Kimmo Timonen shot …
RICE & MICE: Achilles tendon rupture
In Greek mythology, the legend of Achilles says he was dipped into the river Styx by his mother, Thetis, in order to make him invulnerable. However, she had to hold onto his heel in order to dip him in the water, thus missing a spot. The only way Achilles could be killed was by injury to his heel. The Achilles tendon is the strongest and thickest tendon in the body and can withstand large forces, yet it’s one of the most frequently ruptured tendons. Rupturing an Achilles tendon is a very serious injury that takes months to rehabilitate. Athletes who …
Flight Plan week of 02.06.2011
Consistent. If you’re a Philadelphia Flyers fan, over the past four years, you have never seen that word associated with the team you love. “Up and down” or “streaky” or “just plain bad” at times “unbelievably good” at times, but never were any of the teams over the past four years “consistent”. This team is the definition of consistent. They don’t win too many games in a row, they don’t lose too many games in a row, but they consistently show up and consistently get their points and that’s why they have the most wins of any team in the …