To say this was a rough week for the Flyers would be an understatement. They managed to pull out one victory this week, but it came at the cost of losing Chris Pronger to a nasty eye injury. Embarrassing losses to the Washington Capitals and St. Louis Blues provided a rough taste of reality for the Flyers, a team that had yet to experience much adversity since their hectic roster shuffle in the offseason. Despite all the negative aspects of this week for Philly, the Flyers are still second in the Atlantic Division and fourth in the Eastern Conference with 11 …
Flight Plan Week of 10.23.2011
The Philadelphia Flyers started out of the gate as one of the hottest teams in the National Hockey League, winning four of their first five games and getting points in all five of them. Since then, they have suffered two embarrassing (though in different ways) back-to-back losses on home ice at the hands of the Washington Capitals and the St. Louis Blues. To lose to the Capitals by a score of 5-2 when they’re one of the hotter teams in the NHL at the beginning of the season, and just about every bounce goes the way of the opposition, well …
Atlantic Watch: 10/12-10/18
Three more games for the Flyers this week resulted in five more points in the standings. Losing their first game of the year in overtime to the Kings, the Flyers are no longer perfect on the season. However, since they won their other games in the week, the Flyers still haven’t lost in regulation this season. Sure, it’s upsetting to lose a game like Saturday’s to Los Angeles, a team featuring former Philly teammates Mike Richards and Simon Gagne, but it’s important to earn points early in the year. It’s also important to see many of the young players stepping …
Kick It Into Gear!
The Lulz feature was originally inspired by the lolcats site but features hockey pictures with funny, quirky, ironic or just plain mean captions. This feature should run weekly on Mondays, just to try to make your Monday a little brighter.
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 …
Just a reminder to keep those fires burning…
…or, A Child’s Garden of Stanley Cup disappointments. 1976 1980 1985 1987 1997 2010 2011
Happy Chelios Revenge Day!
Hard to believe it was 22 years ago today that Ron Hextall really lost it for the first time in his career. Unlike his slash across the back of Kent Nilsson’s legs in Game 4 of the ’87 Finals against Edmonton that was a spur-of-the-moment brain cramp, Hextall’s attack on Montreal Canadiens defenseman Chris Chelios in the waning moments of Game 6 in the 1989 Wales Conference Finals was payback for a specific incident earlier in the series. In Game 1 at Montreal, in the second period, Chelios unloads onto Flyers forward Brian Propp: Even though we’ve been desensitized to …
RICE & MICE: Stick to hockey, Mr. Recchi
Almost 3 weeks later and I still can’t watch the replay of Boston Bruins’ captain Zdeno Chara’s check on Montreal Canadiens’ forward Max Pacioretty without holding my breath. It was a violent hit and one that will stay fresh in my memory for a while. Pacioretty lost consciousness on impact and in the few seconds that he lay motionless on the ice after impact, I’m sure a few thousand fans (at least) were hoping that they didn’t just see a man die on the ice. Medical personnel were efficient and careful as they immobilized his neck and secured him to the backboard …
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 …
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 …