Game #69 Preview: Flyers @ Red Wings 3/17/09

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For the first time in three years, it's time to play at the JLA. And it's on Versus, the second in a stretch of four out of five Flyers games that will be on national TV. Amen to that.


Why The Flyers Will Win:

• Sure the Flyers haven't won in their last seventeen trips to Detroit. But the eighteenth time's the charm, right?
• Martin Biron has been real solid in March, and is playing with a lot of confidence having finally locked up the starting gig. Look for him to be big tonight.
• The Red Wings have a lot of question marks in goal, and a propensity for getting blown out of the water. In their last three losses, they've given up eight, eight, and six goals. If the Flyers can get a first cut in, the Red Wings have proven to be a pretty hemophiliac team, completely unable to stop the bleeding.
• The Flyers are 4-0-1 this year in games on Versus, including wins in the last four.
• The Flyers are one of the few teams that can match Detroit's offensive depth. Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Simon Gagne, Scott Hartnell, Joffrey Lupul, Mike Knuble, Claude Giroux, Daniel Briere and even Arron Asham make for quite the stacked front lines.
• Pretzels are only $1 all night long at the Joe. While this will boost morale, it will mean the locals will be too busy chewing to loudly support their boys in red.
• It's Ryan Parent's birthday, and he doesn't like losing on his birthday.

Why the Red Wings Will Win:

• The Flyers haven't won in their last seventeen trips to Detroit. No reason the eighteenth would be any different.
• Daniel Briere has been a mess in this latest incarnation. He's been slow and not even coming close to making goals happen. Until something changes he's going to keep being a huge hindrance to the team.
• Randy Jones is out for a week, and though he has his haters, he is clearly way better than Danny Syvret, who has been called up to take his place (no Guenin?).
• In case you haven't heard, the Red Wings are really, really good. They lead the league in points, and were the first team to clinch a playoff berth.

Prediction: Red Wings win 4-1. They're good.

Flyers Geography / In Defense of Randy Jones

Back in November, the Flyers were named by the Finnish Embassador to the United States as "the most Finnish team in the National Hockey League", due to the league high presence of four Finnish Players (Antero Niittymaki, Kimmo Timonen, Lasse Kukkonen, and Ossi Vaananen), as well as Finnish-American team President Peter Luukko. Add some past Flyers like Illkka Sinisalo and Sami Kapanen, and you've got yourself quite the Little Helsinki on Broad Street.

The Finns knew the Flyers were especially deserving of this award, as they did not allow any player who is not Finnish, Canadian, or American player into their lineup. The Flyers expressed their gratitude for this honor by putting Vaananen and Kukkonen on waivers.

The Flyers currently only have players from three countries, sharing the title of least international team with the Calgary Flames, who incidentally also only have Canadians, Americans, and Finns. Not a Swede, Czech, Slovak, or Russian to be found for miles.

This isn't to say that the Flyers don't have some demographic uniqueness. Randy Jones is from Quispamsis, New Brunswick. And despite the fact that there are 736,000 Canadians from New Brunswick, Randy Jones is the only New Brunswicker to currently be in the NHL. Out of the 476 Canadians currently in the NHL, Randy is the only one from a population that, proportionally, should have ten. Even Prince Edward Island, with a population of only 140,000, has more NHLers than New Brunswick (2).

I'm definitely not a Randy Jones hater. He got the highest vote total in the dump the chump poll, sure, but he's a pretty solid, physical defenseman who led the team in +/- last year, and is fifth in the team this year at +12, behind only Richards, Gagne, Carter, and Timonen, even though Randy has played only 32 games this season. None too shabby.

He's clearly overcome some major obstacles making it out of the hockey black hole that is New Brunswick. Props, Mr. Jones, Props.

(I wrote all this not counting Andreas Nodl, because we all know he doesn't matter).

With 100% of Precincts Reporting...

Democracy is as Philadelphian as driving to Delaware to buy cheaper booze. Flyers fans Philadelphian and non-Philadelphian made their voices heard in our entirely scientific poll, and voted in a strong plurality to dispose of Randy Jones. Although it is possible that sixteen or so of Jones' votes were cast by the Bergeron family.

And yet, despite the overwhelming mandate of the masses, Paul Holmgren sent away Scottie Upshall, who only got one vote, a vote which I know came after his trade had been announced.

So should Paul Holmgren get a pass? Sam Cardichi and Flyers Goal Scored By... seem to think so. I'm not so sure. Daniel Carcillo hasn't been terrible by any means, but he hasn't been great. Upshall wasn't putting up huge numbers either. They've been about the same. In the long run, Carcillo for Upshall will probably be a pretty even trade.

Except that the deal wasn't just Carcillo for Upshall. It was Carcillo for Upshall and a second round pick. And picks, except for the occasional James Van Riemsdyk, are worth holding on to. I don't think anybody can honestly say at this point that the deal has worked out well for the Flyers yet. If Carcillo catches fire down the stretch and into the playoffs, then it's time to be giving the deal a thumbs up. But not until then.

We still love ya, Homer. You took the Flyers from 30th to the conference finals in one season, which was totally unprecedented and unexpected. And it's just hard to stay mad at a guy whose hair manages to stay at such sharp right angles.

Game #62 Review: Flyers 4 @ Bruins 2 3/3/09

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2

Huge.

Huge.

Huge.

Big big game. Right to it.

• This was a real reassuring game for a team with a whole lot of drama surrounding it. The drama won't necessarily end in these last fifteen or so hours before the deadline, but this game might take away some of the urgency Holmgren is probably feeling.
• I'm one to play favorites, but I really haven't had one Flyer stand out for me since Sami Kapanen left. I'm not looking for like a Carter or Richards who everyone knows is awesome, but somebody whose name isn't on a lot of jerseys. And damn, Scottie Upshall sure was that guy tonight. He's not big but absolutely leveled people out there, and he's not known for being a great goal scorer, but he had a real nice goal tonight, and if you remember he got a game-tying goal in Game 7 against Washington and the series winning goal vs Montreal in Game 5. He gets stuck on the third line mostly, but if he was on one of the top two lines he'd most certainly have ~25 goals a season.
• The NESN announcers made some reference to Scottie Upshall complaining that the media is obsessed with his good looks and should focus more on his hockey abilities. Did I miss his anointing as the Anna Kournikova of the NHL? Someone more informed on puck bunny culture needs to catch me up here.
• If they trade Scottie Upshall tomorrow after my above slurping, I won't be amused.
• Simon Gagne had a huge game too, with two goals. Overshadowed now by the younger guns, but Gagne is a real reliable veteran presence that will be huge come playoff time, guaranteed.
• Kimmo Timonen makes such a huge difference. It still makes me slam my head into walls thinking about how that Penguins series would have gone had he been healthy for all of it...
• Here's how it had gone the previous four games. Great Niittymaki game, great Biron game, bad Niittymaki game, bad Biron game. And now, on the eve of a trade deadline game, a great game from Niittymaki. It might just be luck of the draw for Niittymaki, sort of a "she loves me, she loves me not" situation where his name happened to come up on the last petal. Biron's name has been swirling around more than anybody's most recently, and he's awfully pricy to be a backup. Niitty getting the start tonight and capitalizing on it might be the straw that puts Biron on a plane tomorrow night.
• Randy Jones might have been the only player with a real bad game tonight. I haven't been as hard on him as a lot of people have, but this was bad. He has to be pretty distracted by the trade rumors, and his morale is probably low from seeing the results of the poll here (53% of the vote as of now...ouch).
• But right after I write that, I see that Jones was a team leading +3 on the night. I'm full of crap, clearly.
• Daniel Briere, the biggest name potentially on the trade block, had a pretty decent game given that it was only his second back. That Giroux-Briere-Upshall line is a thing of beauty, and should definitely see more time together.

Predicted 4-3, got 4-2. Not bad. The most Flyersy Western Conference team, the Calgary Flames, come to town on Thursday. Should be a good show.

Knuble, Richards, Timonen, and Stevens post-game reactions here for ya

Game #39 Preview: Flyers @ Kings 1/3/09

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Flyers take the freeway down to the House of Kobe for the second of back-to-back games in Southern California, this time against the less-than-regal Los Angeles Kings, who currently rest at fourteenth in the West.

Why The Flyers Will Win:

• The Flyers are playing with a lot of confidence now, even if they're not playing their best technically. And Los Angeles is not good enough to beat a confident team.
• I have a hunch that newly minted forward Luca Sbisa is gonna score like five goals tonight. Against Anaheim he was bouncing around like a ping pong ball, and managed to put himself in the net, if not the puck. By the second game he should have the hang of it.
• Now that La Barbera got traded, I can name exactly TWO Kings players, Stamkos and Handzus. I like 'Zus a lot, but no way he's enough for them to win this.

Why The Kings Will Win:

• The Flyers won last night, but they played anything but solid hockey. The offense-only game last night was a lot of fun to watch, but it's not a style that's gonna lead to any long term success. If the Flyers don't clean up their defense some (lookin' at you, Randy Jones)Jones), they could be in trouble.

Goin' to Rangers @ Caps tonight in DC. Here's hoping they both lose.