With the Flyers’ season coming to a close soon, most of Philadelphia is looking to this offseason and wondering who will don the orange and black next season – and perhaps more importantly, who won’t. That Holmgren will use one compliance or “amnesty” buyout on Danny Briere’s $6.5 million cap hit is all but a foregone conclusion at this point, but the second big name being thrown about for a potential trip out of town is Ilya Bryzgalov.
Friday funnies brought to you straight from hockey’s own players, media personnel, and broadcast botches. We’ll be mucking it up every week right here, examining puck ups, puns, tweets, and more! So, what’s funny this week in hockey is that the Philadelphia Flyers really stink and that their goaltending, aside from the first couple of months from Ilya Bryzgalov has been pretty meh. Anyway, there was this kid, once upon a time, that they picked up. He was an unsigned youngster and he got thrown into the fire and had a pretty good year up until the playoffs. His name was Sergei …
With the league’s 30 General Managers meeting to discuss ways to tweak the NHL product, the issue of goal scoring totals has once again reared its head. Since the resumption of play from the cancelled 2004-05 season, scoring has slipped from 6.05 goals per game to 5.25 goals per game. Whether or not that is really a problem that needs fixing is an argument for another column, but the fixes being discussed are rather relevant to goalies. What is the solution? Well, according to some – including Mike Babcock — the answer is a simple ultimatum: bigger nets, or smaller …
Tuesday night’s game at Madison Square Garden was quite possibly the single most glaring example of one of Bryzgalov’s greatest shortcomings: he is not particularly good at the poke check. Playing the poke check correctly is the epitome of a very fine line for any goaltender. A successful poke requires quick and decisive action: there is no time to spare in deciding to go for the poke, but at the same time it can’t be done too early – or “telegraphed” – lest the forward read it and simply walk around it. Against the Rangers, Bryzgalov’s poke attempts were telegraphed, …
After the first week of the season, Ilya Bryzgalov’s first report card had him pegged as playing well despite not getting results. His play since then has only continued to impress – if not improve altogether – and in lieu of the Flyers matching a season-high two game win streak with Bryzgalov’s back-to-back victories against Carolina and Tampa Bay, the results are starting to come. At one point a week ago, Ilya was holding onto the ignominious position of most losses among NHL goaltenders despite possessing a rather strong 2.40 GAA and .920 SV%. Since then? He’s gotten a couple …
With the NHL’s 2013 Season finally underway, Crashing the Crease will evaluate the Flyers’ goaltending performances every Thursday in order to answer the inevitable dilemma in Flyerdom: what is going on in net? Week one has seen Ilya Bryzgalov play all three games of the Flyers’ 0-3 start, and the questions are already flying about just what is wrong with this team. For many, as is so often the story in Philadelphia, the finger pointing begins and ends with the goaltender. But is that fair? The easy answer would be to look at Bryzgalov’s stat line from the 3-1, 5-2, …
Between 2000 and 2010, the Flyers have been notorious for losing control of the so-called “goaltending carousel” and sending it spinning out of control in an endless search for a sure hand between the pipes. However, during that period the Orange and Black have gotten admirable goaltending that, in retrospect, may have gone under-appreciated at the time. Over the next few weeks, Crashing the Crease will take a look at these unsung heroes. The second mainstay in the Philadelphia crease between 2000 and 2010 — and the second goalie featured in the Unsung Heroes retrospective — is none other than …
Between 2000 and 2010, the Flyers have been notorious for losing control of the so-called “goaltending carousel” and sending it spinning out of control in an endless search for a sure hand between the pipes. However, during that period the Orange and Black have gotten admirable goaltending that, in retrospect, may have gone under-appreciated at the time. Over the next few weeks, Crashing the Crease will take a look at these unsung heroes. First up: Roman Cechmanek. Often lambasted for being a product of system or locker room cancer, the fact of the matter is that when he was the …
Yesterday, Kevin Christmann discussed the possibility of an amnesty buyout clause being introduced in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that would allow teams to buy out one contract without any cap hit penalties. He, and many others, have suggested the possibility of using that buyout on Ilya Bryzgalov, ridding the Flyers of what is undoubtedly a bad contract no matter how one may look at it. While the merits of choosing to use this buyout on Bryzgalov are up for debate, one thing is fairly clear: if Paul Holmgren were to exercise this buyout on the Flyers’ starting goaltender, he …
This week, we’re going to spend a little time talking about a subject near and dear to my heart: the struggling goaltender and the fear of failure after an unsuccessful stretch of games. I’ll use myself as the example and build from there. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve gone from feeling very fluid and natural in net to slow, overly reactive and ultimately ineffective. It’s resulted in some pretty ugly games, none of which I want to remember. On Tuesday, I finally had a game I would consider to be “okay,” in that we won and I stopped …