Two minutes for cross-checking

The million-dollar question is: why can’t the Flyers play like they did last night when I am at the game to see it? It’s nice to sit on my couch and cheer while the Flyers play great hockey, but it would be so much more wonderful to be in the stands, cheering with 19,000+ other fans. One of my coworkers this morning told me we should try an experiment: send me to an away game, see if they win. I reminded him I did go to an away game; the Flyers lost. So that experiment failed. That got me thinking about who was with me at these games.

1 loss: with D.
1 loss: with N.
2 losses: with K.
2 losses: by myself.
3 losses: with J. only.

That’s the nine losses. The time that I got to see them win – the home opener – was with J., but also with the technician from my lab. Either the key is to go to the game with two other people, or to go to the game with my coworker.

Jury is still out on testing the theory on Saturday, but odds are good I will be watching the Stars/Flyers game on the tube.

So, last night’s game. The first period was fast. There were no penalties which, because I was so engrossed in the play, I did not realize until the period was about two minutes from ending. The puck was bouncing all over the place, the game was turnover city, back and forth, without many really excellent chances at goal. There was a heartbreaker when a shot by Umberger slipped through to sit behind Cam Ward in the blue paint, begging to be pushed the rest of the way in, but before Mike Knuble could get to it, it was cleared away. From my couch vantage point, it first looked like Knuble just missed, and I was mad, but upon closer inspection on the replay I realized that the Carolina defenseman got there a split second before Knubs did and cleared the puck and Knuble didn’t have any chance. Aw. Overall I would say that the game was being played pretty evenly in the first, which ended at 0-0.

The second period was a little more exciting, with some awesome saves at both ends – game-stealers. There were at last some penalties, but still were sprinkled through the period, 5 minors between the teams. The only scoring came from the Flyers, which was, of course, quite nice. Derian Hatcher was back in the lineup after missing 13 games – just like with Gagne out, it was starting to feel like he wasn’t even part of the team anymore – and he was way out of position (which he ruefully acknowledged to Steve Coates at the end of the period), up by the net. He got knocked down as the puck came toward him, and I booed. But he got up, and the puck was kept in the zone and he stabbed at a rebound three times before he finally squeaked it into the net, in tiny inches between Ward’s foot and the post, on the fourth stab. He got knocked down again, but it was a goal!! 1-0 Flyers.

The second goal was pretty, but came off a broken chance. Mike Richards shot at Ward, who made the save, but the puck snuck behind him again. Mike Knuble was there, and he poked at the puck. I thought he was trying to pass to Kimmo Timonen, who was coming up around the other side of the net. Apparently, though, Knuble was trying to poke the puck into the net. Instead, it went to Timonen, who wisely did not shoot immediately, and instead waited until Ward was down, a defender had glided out of the path, and tucked it in up over the goaltender for goal #2. Really, it looked to me like Knuble was shoving the puck to Timonen. Guess I gave him more credit than he was due, huh? Whatever his intentions, the Flyers still got a second goal, and it was 2-0 and I was pleased. The second period ended with that score.

Quickly in the third, Knuble put one up and it was 3-0. I was on the phone with K. and commented that last year’s Flyers would have panicked to find themselves winning 3-0 and would end up blowing the lead as the game wore down, possibly going to overtime, but definitely losing. This year’s Flyers kept the game in hand. Sure, they gave up a PP goal to Carolina, but that was the only goal the ‘Canes scored all night. They had 41 shots to try to score more than 1, but the Flyers played pretty good team defense and only very few of those shots were high-probability and Biron was suddenly channeling whatever it was he was channeling early in the season – definitely on last night. I’m sitting here recalling his robbery of Eric Staal. Biron was out of position, having made a save, and Staal was on the other side of the crease, with an essentially open net there for his scoring pleasure. He tipped it up, but Biron’s hand happened to be in the way. Biron closed the glove, and sat down hard, with the puck safely tucked inside. Seriously, how the hell? The Flyers’ broadcast team called it the All-State Good Hands Save of the Game, but Coatsey termed it the “good hand” save, because it was just the one appendage doing the saving. Very nice, very nice indeed.

The Hurricanes pulled Ward at the end of the game, and there was a close-but-no-cigar shot that wasn’t really a shot [Richards was just trying to clear the Flyers’ zone, and it slid on down the ice, down, down, only to hit the outside of the goalpost and zing away. Alas! Hartnell would have made it, huh? (Like that hasn’t been said a hundred thousand times already.)], but the game ended with a great 3-1 result.

Really, boys. Why is it you can pick it up and pack it away against the “great” teams, but suck it up and mail it in for the less-great ones, at home? It will be nice if you break this ugly pattern of win-loss-win-loss-win-usw. this Saturday. The Stars are not the Capitals, not a team to overlook. I was looking at the league standings this morning, after reading that the Flyers, with last night’s win, overtake the Hurricanes for second place in the Eastern Conference (WOO!), and look:



The Philadelphia Flyers, as of this morning, hold on to the third spot in the NHL. I took a screen shot so that I can remember this moment, just in case. (Pessimism!) Note the team hard on the Flyers’ heels: those Stars. Other sweet notes from this picture of the standings: the Pens are 25th. And the Sabres are 21. Nice.

I only uploaded one picture off my phone from Monday’s game. It is of Scottie Upshall. I wanted him to score a goal last night, but I did not get my wish. Maybe on Saturday.



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Night before last, I was with K. watching the end of the Flames/Wings game (5-3 Wings, didn’t really care at all who won, but since I usually feel pressed to choose one side or the other while I am watching a game, the edge would go to the Wings because of the Knights/Flames AHL connection) and then stayed on the couch to watch the Vs. post-game business, at the end of which they did a “live look-in” to the Maple Leafs/Canadiens game being shown on Canadian television. The Leafs were down 3-2 with only a couple minutes left to go. At first we thought they were just showing us a replay of the frenetic last couple minutes, and were thinking “Oh yeah, Leafs did it!” but we quickly realized it was live and that the miracle tying goal was not a foregone conclusion. Suddenly it was tense and exciting to watch. My official stance is that I don’t like the Leafs. It’s an open secret, though, that I like them all right. I dislike the Habs, though. A lot. So I was fiercely rooting for that miracle last-second goal. And Mats Sundin did it. And then Vs. ended the broadcast and we sat there feeling cheated. I mean, there were actual seconds where we stared at the TV, dumbstruck. Come on! You can’t do that to us! AWWW! Anyway it turned out the Leafs lost in a shootout. Bah!

Last night, the Senators lost again, this time to the Islanders. I like it when the Senators show themselves to be fallible, vulnerable to loss, not invincible – your choice of adjectives. If only it were some team that does not share the Atlantic Division showing them their holes, though. The Isles are three points behind the Flyers (who are only two points over the Rangers). The Devils, who beat the Stars last night 4-2, are in fourth with 26 points. The Penguins have a little more distance to cover to catch up, with 22 points. Every point the Flyers can grab is going to really matter, with things so close in the division. And with no divisional games until December 11, when they play Pittsburgh, I’m also going to have to cross my fingers that the Rags, the Isles, and the Debbies don’t grab points.

It’s a Western Conference party for the Flyers over the next week, with the Stars on Saturday at home, then out to Minnesota for a tilt against the Wild, followed by a trip to Denver.

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The other night, the Chicago Wolves won a game (with Kari Lehtonen in net – I didn’t realize he’d been sent down, certainly it can only be for conditioning or whatever) and so have two points on the Phantoms now in the standings with one game fewer played. The Phantoms don’t play again until Friday, when they start a three-in-three away series (Hamilton, Lake Erie, Toronto). The Marlies are 6-4 in their last ten; the defending Calder Cup champs are 4-4-0-2; the Monsters are 3-5-0-2. I expect the Phantoms to come away with at least two of the three. Let’s see if 1) I have jinxed them or 2) they can play up to my expectations.

The Iowa Stars won the other night (Tuesday, when two other West Division games were taking place as well) 3-2 over Houston. The Stars are 10-10-1-0, good enough for fifth in the division. I’m beginning to think the Stars are going to do what they did last year – be just good enough to hang on to the middle of the division and slide into the playoffs as the season concludes. Which is OK. Of course, better would be pulling everything together and making a run for better positioning over the remaining three-quarters of the season, but maybe we have to be realistic. The West is tough, with Chicago, the IceHogs*, and, suddenly and shockingly, the Rampage to contend with.

*I hate to even have to type this stupid name.

Hartnell gets two games for the hit last night. Same as Randy Jones got? I want to see the rationalization. Looking forward to it.

By the way, I'm still waiting for Sutton's suspension for cheap-shotting Kukkonen a couple weeks ago.

I endured a nightmare of a drive up to South Philly last night, because no one seems to know how to drive when it’s raining out. I had to crawl from north Wilmington to the Delaware state line, then had to crawl from the border to the interchange with the Blue Route. I was amazed at the traffic, and later at the sheer stupidity of people in the parking lot of the Wachovia Center, who were so worried about getting a drop of rain on their heads that they would have sold their first-borns in order to get a spot as close to the arena as possible (thereby nearly ramming me, other cars, and pedestrians when they thought they saw a miracle opening in a row that was long since filled). It was dark, it was wet, I was fuming from the drive, but once I got into the arena, and found my awesome seat, all that negative energy turned to positive excitement. In spite of the traffic gods’ best efforts, I was there in plenty of time to see the warm-up.

Guess what? I forgot my camera. Ridiculous. No excuse for such stupidity.

It’s just as well. I wish last night could be forgettable, but I am so irate that I know I will never forget it. All that positive energy, watching the warm-up, being excited to see the Flyers so up-close, was turned into a slithering morass of frustration and actual anger.

30 seconds into the game, a Bruin decided to rocket the puck at the glass. There was no one there. I have no idea what he was intending to do – wrap the puck around? Then why hit it as hard as he could normal to the glass? Whatever his intention, the puck hit the glass near the top corner and the glass shattered. It’s that tempered glass which meant it did not go flying in deadly shards, but rather turned white and then crumbled into a million little jewels as rink crew came to clear it away. This was all about ten feet to my left. While it was pretty bad that the glass broke like that, causing some injury to a woman sitting right in front of it, I think a worse injury would have come if the puck had sailed over the glass and into the crowd instead. It was a missile. So the game was delayed ten or so minutes while they brought out a temporary piece of what appeared to be Plexiglas (not the real glass that they brought out during intermission to replace it), and they restarted things at center ice.

“Fight” between Ben Eager and Jeremy Reich. A hug-fest which Eager lost, going to the ice first. It really did nothing to spur the Flyers, and the crowd’s early disinterest was not sparked back toward interest.

First Boston goal: Richards committed a brutally bad turnover directly next to the Flyers’ net, put the puck right onto a Bruin’s stick, pass, goal. Biron – who knows where his head was. It was an ugly turnover, and I got to see it happen live and in person, thirty feet away.

Second Boston goal: Jones seemed to move out of the way so that Biron could see the shot, and then decided to put his stick in anyway. The puck deflected. Biron still whiffed the save, and I wanted to punch him. 2-0 Bruins, and the game was not even ten minutes old. The Flyers had barely sniffed the offensive zone.

In fact, they barely sniffed the offensive zone all night. The Bruins looked as though they were on the power play all night long. They controlled almost every aspect of the game. Tuukka Rask got lucky on a number of shots, but the Flyers really didn’t test him much, with only 23 SOG and it really was an easy one for the rookie. I had hopes that the Flyers would calm down, get a grip, find themselves on the ice and keep the puck from bouncing all over creation during the second, but the opposite happened. Two goals before the second was even half over, and both of them Boston’s. After Boston’s third goal, Biron was pulled – again. While I will concede that stopping goal #2 after its deflection was an unlikely prospect (though a great goalie would have), Biron has no excuse whatsoever on this third goal. Did his arms even move? Did he even move? The Flyers had to wait until another stoppage in order to swap goaltenders, and the seconds that passed in between were cringe-inducing. Almost the first thing Niitty did was allow a goal. My jaw was hanging open in disbelief.

The Flyers got on the board when Mike Knuble scored a pretty nice goal around 10 minutes in. 4-1, quite a deficit, but I texted J. to say “the comeback starts!” I didn’t believe it, but then Mike Richards scored a delicious and VERY AWESOME goal to make it 4-2. For a minute, there was a flicker of belief. Then, down the other end, there was some action around the Flyers’ net, and suddenly all the Bruins on the ice had their arms up in the air and the red light was flashing. WHAT THE? How the hell did that even happen? Was it a joke? GAH!! 5-2. I was pretty sure the game was over at that point. I honestly debated taking off, considering the weather, the traffic I might avoid by leaving early, etc. But when I pay $100+ to see the Flyers, I intend to see them through, even though I may leave feeling as though I have been duped, spit on, and kicked in the stomach.

The general mood of the arena was ugly, and we all enjoyed it thoroughly when Ben Eager toppled Zdeno Chara with a clean shoulder-to-shoulder hit. Look, I know Chara’s physical stats – 6’9” and all that – but he was right in front of me a few times last night and I cannot believe how enormous he is. How he even manages to move with those clumsy-looking sequoia trunks for legs and arms as long as airplane wings, I just can’t figure out. And then Eager took him down and all the bloodthirsty Flyers fans roared approval. If I recall correctly, this happened near where the glass had been broken earlier. (I may be making that up, but I am pretty sure it happened somewhere along the wall on my side of the arena.) Of course some Bruins took offense at the hit, which I’m sure is being viewed by them and by their fans as being as dirty as dirty can be, and I’m pretty sure that the Bruins got away with having too many men on the ice as Aaron Ward jumped Eager and pinned him down. It wasn’t even a fight – it looked to me like a one-sided attack, though Eager did put his glove in someone’s face – yet somehow ended up being concurrent minors, with Eager in the box for elbowing – huh? And Ward in for roughing. Excuse me, but jumping a player, knocking him down, sitting on him, and trying to beat him up seems more excessive to me than “roughing” but it was par for the referees’ course last night. They turned a blind eye to more than that, I will tell you, at least if it was happening to someone wearing black. But even they could not ignore a blatant cross-check by Marc Savard, and the Flyers managed to get a power play, on which Richards scored.

That wasn’t even the worst thing. A few minutes later, a play occurred that I did not see, because it did happen in front of the glass that had been broken, and I think I was looking farther out on the ice, because all I knew was that a hit happened – the thud was tremendous. I only got a glimpse, because everyone around me stood up. Scott Hartnell had hit Andrew Alberts, and Alberts was not getting up. According to the folks around me, he was not really moving, either.

You have got to be kidding me.

I watched a replay this morning. Hartnell was going to make a play against Alberts, who was playing a pass from Lupul off his body. Alberts dropped to his knees to deal with the puck as Hartnell was coming to make a check, and Hartnell skidded into him. Naturally, his head got rammed into the boards, but that’s going to happen when you go down as someone who is on his feet bears down on you, even while that someone is turning and trying to hold up. Alberts eventually got up, to a chorus of boos. I don’t know what they were booing. I am not cool with booing someone who is hurt, but I will admit I was sitting there wondering if Alberts was embellishing the play to get as much out of it as possible, including another serious rent in the Flyers’ already-hideous image, and it seemed not to be implausible that a Bruin might dissemble that way, after all the things I have read and the way they were playing (seems OK for them to hit our guys in the numbers, whereas a Flyer will be castigated for the same action). But I did not boo, and I’d like to give the Bruins the benefit of the doubt. I sat there shaking my head. Actually, I think all of me was just about shaking. I could not believe anything that I was seeing. It was that outrageously bad.

Hartnell was ejected from the game with a 5-minute boarding major (served by Denis Tolpeko) and a game misconduct. I am sure this is not over, and he will be dressed down by the idiot in charge of discipline and probably given at least ten games because Alberts put himself into as vulnerable position as possible while Hartnell was coming at him, and Hartnell did not manage to stop on a dime to avoid it. (tsn.ca headlines: FLYERS STRIKE AGAIN and FLYERS GET DIRTY AGAIN IN LOSS TO BRUINS. Fair. Balanced. Also, when can I stop seeing Hartnell being called “Jeff” in the press, especially the Philadelphia press? It’s very sad when your own town’s papers can’t get a name right.) But at least the Flyers killed the five minutes and the Bruins looked pathetic on that long PP.

And to put some icing on this tasty cake, Kimmo Timonen went out with a non-specific “lower-body injury” and you know what that means. A month later he might be ready to come back.

Scottie Upshall scored a nice goal in the third period to bring the Flyers within 2, but I didn’t hold out too much hope. It would have taken a miracle for the Flyers to score another couple in order to tie it, and that miracle did not happen. The 6th Bruins goal was nothing more than an empty-netter; Niittymaki came up with some awesome saves in the conclusion of the game that were actually quite impressive, a complete turnaround from the BS goaltending that happened prior to that point.

I stalked out, taking the Briere bobblehead that I haven’t even looked at yet. It was the reason I chose to go to that game, and it ends up being hardly any consolation for what I had to endure. My money back might help, but then where do I go to get my time and frustration back, as well? I guess I will have to go back and think about how I dealt with last year’s performances; last night was a lot like last year.

The Flyers play Carolina again tomorrow, back in Carolina. If the trend of winning/losing/winning/losing continues, and the trend of beating BIG teams and losing to less-than-big teams continues, the Flyers ought to come out and crush the Hurricanes. For my part, I say let Niittymaki start. I love Biron, but Biron has not shown me much lately. Let him get his head back on straight.

Some other news I read today: Gagne might be out another month. Sometimes, lately, I forget that he is even on the team, it seems like it’s been so long since he played. Hatcher might be back tomorrow. And if Hartnell is suspended, who’s going to take his place? Downie’s suspension is up after tomorrow, I think. (Have I counted correctly?) Wouldn’t it be … funny … if the guy taking the place of a cheap-shotter was the original cheap-shotter of the year, fresh off his cheap-shot suspension?

I took a few pictures with my phone. I’ll post them when I get them uploaded. I now have work to do, and I don’t want to think about this game any more. If the Flyers were to lose a close-fought, tight game that they played well, it would be one thing; an acceptable thing. I would be bummed that I had to see them lose again, but a “good” loss is far less bitter pill to take than what I had to take last night. Lately, when I get to see the Flyers in person, not only do they lose, they really, really, really lose. Badly, and in an ugly way. I hate it. I was considering going to the Stars/Flyers game this weekend, so that I could see the handful of my favorite Iowa Stars who are spending time with the big club (Joel got called back up), but I think I will throw $100 away somewhere else, on something with a far smaller probability of disappointing me. I have seen 10 Flyers games now. I have seen them win once, and sometimes I wonder if I dreamt that opening-night win. Odds are (given my record and the current win/lose trend) that I would get to see another loss.

Quick synopses:

1) Flyers vs. Hurricanes, Wednesday November 21. The good guys won 6-3. They started out kind of sluggish, then gained momentum and simply steamrolled to an awesome win over one of the NHL’s best teams. Danny Briere reminded us why he is being paid what he is being paid, by scoring three goals and snagging two assists for five points on the night. (I had on my BRIERE 48 t-shirt, too!) And Scott Hartnell scored his second of the year, alas, another empty-netter.

2) Phantoms vs. Admirals, same night. Um. 7-3 loss? Boys? What happened?? “The Norfolk Admirals scored two goals in the opening minute en route to a five-goal first period”!? ACK!

3) Iowa Stars vs. Flaming Q’s last Wednesday: 3-1 loss. The Flames started out slow and now seem to have made the Stars their primary whipping boys. Well, last year the Flames did a good job of manhandling teams too, and the Stars still beat them in the playoffs. November is November. There’s a lot of hockey left.

4) Flyers vs. Crapitals, Friday November 23. An afternoon game. Some other dudes in orange and black, not the guys who played Wednesday, because they were flat and hideous most of the game and let Donald freaking Brashear score a goal (naturally, his first since last March – in the 2006-2007 season, they let him score his first goal since he played for the Flyers, many months had passed – why do they do this? WHY?). Flyers lost 4-3 in OT, coming from a 3-0 deficit to tie and force the extra inning. After pulling that out of nowhere, I was disgusted at the result. If not for Donald freaking Brashear’s goal … fools.

5) Phantoms vs. Bears, same Friday. This game was played in the Wachovia Center, on the same ice where the Flyers had lost only a few hours earlier. There were Capitals fans in abundance (if you didn’t know, the Hershey Bears are the Caps’ farm team) and Hershey fans everywhere, screaming their stupid B-E-A-R-S BEARS BEARS BEARS. There were two Bears fans in front of us, a teenage boy and, presumably, his father. The older man was chatty with everyone around him. He saw K.’s Devils hat and commented, “Aren’t you taking your life into your own hands with that?” Hello, dude – you’re in here cheering for the Bears, maybe you ought to worry about your own well-being. I said, “Yeah, I don’t know why I talk to him.” I was feeling genial at that point, but the guy irritated the hell out of me the rest of the game. Ray Borque’s son is playing for the Bears, and I made some comment to the effect that it was hard for me to believe that I am old enough to be watching the son of someone I saw play when I was not that young myself. K. and I tried to guess how old Borque was when he retired several years ago. The guy turned around and said, “He was at least forty.” Hey, dude? Pay attention to the game and not our conversation. Not long after that, one of the Phantoms got stuck in the penalty box on a five-minute high-sticking major, and I booed the call. The guy turned around and ran his finger over his brow, indicating that the Bears player had been hurt, which justified the major penalty – I just made a face and shook my head, a nonverbal “So the %@$^ what?” I don’t care if it was the right call. It was against my team and I’m going to boo it anyway. Later, we were complaining loudly about the quality of the officiating – quite poor, as evidenced by the outrageous number of 5-on-3s that were happening, I really think there might have been only a couple minutes of full-strength hockey played in the first period – and he turned around again and told us that this particular referee was never very good. “You’ll have that in the AHL,” he told us, sounding all sage.

I gave him a hard stare, which said:

I went to 20-odd games in 2004-2005. I watched the Phantoms win the Calder Cup. I even watched Hershey in June 2006, going to Milwaukee to see some more hockey. I saw more than 20 Iowa Stars games in two seasons, despite living more than 100 miles from Des Moines. I am now a Season Ticket Holder. I think -- I THINK -- I’m pretty well familiar with what you will have in the AHL.

I don’t think he got it. K. made “turn around” motions with his hand, but the dude once or twice more afterward turned around to make some mention of something or other to K., while I simply refused to look at him. It’s not so much that he decided he needed to interact with us; it’s the condescending tone he took with me. I am not friendly in general. I don’t enjoy strangers talking to me on the train, on the bus, in line at a grocery store, or at hockey games, but I will usually respond politely. However, I really don’t enjoy them implying that I don’t know anything about hockey. No, I’m not an expert, and I still have a lot to learn, but, gee.

Didn’t help that the Phantoms sucked and allowed Hershey to win, 2-1. The Hershey Bears are not a very good team this year, in spite of being on a win streak, and there is no excuse for the Phantoms losing. It is one of those classic games where the opponents didn’t really win the game; it was the Phantoms’ to lose, and they did (the first back-to-back losses of the season). A bit like their big brothers earlier in the day. The Caps are not a very good team this year. But the Flyers let them have the W.

Not an enjoyable way to leave the Phantoms for two weeks. Next home game isn’t until the 7th. Gee.

6) Stars vs. Griffins, also that Friday: 3-2 win in a shootout. Eked out that win, eh?

7) Flyers vs. Senators, Saturday November 24. After Biron’s start against the Capitals, I was sure Niittymaki would be in net on Saturday, and I was right. I wondered why they played them in that order. Perhaps the thinking was that they weren’t expecting to win against the Sens anyway, so why not give Niitty a shot? If he didn’t play up to snuff, it’s all the same. This was probably not the consideration, but … I was completely worn out after the last few days and watched only the first period live, at the end of which the Flyers were down 2-1. It was a great game back and forth, though. It was 8 p.m. when I was getting into bed, and J. texted me, asking how the Flyguys were doing. I replied that I was not watching anymore, too tired, would watch the rest in the morning. When I got up, there was a message from her that the Flyers had won 4-3! DOH!!! The surprise was ruined! I watched the second period, where all the action happened. The Flyers tied the game, then Ottawa took the lead again 3-2. Then two awesome goals happened – one by Mike Richards and one by Danny Briere from Hartnell that made me so happy that I got up and danced a little bit. I had some other stuff to do Sunday so I didn’t watch the third period. I might get around to it. I’m pretty excited about the Flyers winning over the Senators (even though Alfredsson wasn’t playing, I don’t consider it a gimme – Spezza and Heatley were dangerous enough without him). They took 41 shots – was this the first game where they outshot their opponents? I am too lazy to look.

I am going to ask for a Richards jersey for Christmas.

Good job by Niitty, too. I am pleased and relieved he bagged the win, against arguably the best team in the NHL.

Flyers: why so confusing? Why is it you can beat the best, but turn around and lose to the Crapitals? Oh well.

8) Phantoms vs. Bears, same Saturday: away in Hershey, the Phantoms trounced the Bears 6-0. HELLO? Why couldn’t they do that in front of me? After 20 games, the Phantoms have 31 points. Chicago Wolves have 31 points as well after 18 games. The top of the AHL is getting crowded. Let’s pull away from the pack, Phantoms. The next game isn’t until Friday, away at Hamilton. Don’t get rusty in the meantime. The current Calder Cup champions won’t cut you any slack.

9) Stars vs. Griffins again, also Saturday: 4-1 loss. Lundqvist was recalled by Dallas and Todd Fedoruk was claimed off re-entry waivers by Minnesota. Does Joel’s recall mean he will be playing in Philly on Saturday, December 1? Can I afford to go to that game, too, having just gone to one – tonight’s game? I will assess the situation.

Tonight’s game is Flyers vs. Bruins, and I will be in attendance. Sitting in section 114, row 2, I will be in the thick of the action. It’s too bad Joni Pitkanen is no longer here for me to distract during warm-ups with some sign or another. I’m sure this game will be heated, since it is the first time Philly and Boston have met on the ice since the Randy Jones Incident. He should probably wear a sweatshirt over his jersey, to cover up the bull’s-eye target he will have on his back. Biron will probably start. I’m pretty excited about the game – I’m tired, it’s Monday, and the weather is vile, but I get to see the Flyers play tonight, live and in person. And pick up a Danny Briere bobblehead. WOOHOO!

Reminder of games tonight:

1) Phantoms vs. Admirals, at Norfolk. Division leaders vs. division bottom-feeders. Have fun, Admirals. (By saying that, you know that I will be eating my words tomorrow, along with tasty turkey and potatoes and pecan pie.)

2) Iowa Stars vs. Quad City Flames. Middle-of-the-packers battling to see who gets fifth place in the West. Please show up for the game, Stars; it's embarrassing to read that you've lost 6-0.

3) Flyers vs. Hurricanes. Please show up for the game, Flyers. It's embarrassing to see you lose 6-2. K.'s coming over to watch the game with me. At least it's not against the Devils, so I don't have to put up with him gloating all over the place again in case the Flyguys suck up the place. He'd better not try to wear that Devils hat and/or scarf into my residence again, though. The House of Crusher is a Devils-free zone!!

Today I bought (from the box office) a ticket to Monday's Flyers game, vs. Boston. It's a Briere bobblehead night (which is why I decided to go). I couldn't talk anyone into going with me. My ticket is in section 114, row 2 (i.e. awesome). Your loss, people! Screw youse!* I don't need anyone else in order to have a good time at a hockey game.

Just kidding. It would be better with a companion, but whatever. The game is all that really matters. And the bobblehead to add to my collection.

*Whenever we go out to eat after a Phantoms game, it's inevitably somewhere in South Philly. And I can't help but get such a kick out of the way they talk there. It's like a foreign accent. I'm not saying it's bad, necessarily. It's just waaaaay different. I mean, they say "youse." Seems to be the South Philly version of "y'all." Whoa. I may have used it incorrectly in my post (did I spell it right? Yous, perhaps?), but I am a non-native, and I apologize if this is the case.

On that note, apparently my own accent is not particularly noticeable unless I have been talking at length with someone "back home." Then I become hardly recognizable (reportedly). No one has gone so far to say that I sound like a hayseed, though. (I would take offense.)

On another note, why is "noticeable" spelled with the final "e" from "notice" still present, but "recognizable" loses that final "e" from "recognize"? English. What a language.

I’m missing a report on Thursday’s Flyers/Rags game, Friday’s Phantoms/Senators game, Saturday’s Flyers/Devils “game”, and notes about the Iowa Stars’ weekend goals-against fest. I’ll get to it.

Thursday, Flyers vs. Rangers: a game against the close-following Blueshirts, where the Flyers did not play exceptional hockey and allowed the Rangers to score three times. They were ridiculous goals, too. But it didn’t start out badly. The Flyers scored first – from unlikely sources, Jim Dowd (second goal of the season) with assists from Riley Cote and … Denis Tolpeko, called up from the Phantoms to provide forward assistance while Simon Gagne remains out with his concussion (yeah, they admit now it’s a concussion). First points of the season for Cote and Tolpeko, and Tolpeko’s first point in the NHL. It was a puzzler; Dowd was behind the goal line, but somehow, and I’d like to think this was premeditated, he saw an opening by putting the puck off Lundqvist’s skate, deflecting backward and in. The thing about it was that Lundqvist was up against the near post; the margin for puck entry was minimal. But apparently just enough. An impossible goal was made, the Flyers were 1-0, yay woohoo etc. The celebration was short-lived, however. With under five to go in the period, Fedor “Darn” Tyutin rocketed a shot past Biron from the freaking blue line, tying it up. I sat there on the sofa with my jaw open, voice frozen from saying “What the?” How does Biron miss a shot like that, coming from a hundred miles away? A bit of a stunner.

Still, not all was lost yet. But before two minutes had passed into the second period, the Rangers scored again, and I blame Ben Eager for it. The Flyers found themselves in a 3-on-1 situation, Ben Eager handling the puck goal-ward, and then, hesitate, hesitate, not passing, not shooting, allowing Henrik Lundqvist to position himself as solidly in front of the net as possible, he finally shot – and completely, 100% missed the net. Not even close. The puck rebounded around and the Rangers took control with their own odd-man rush, moving immediately back up the ice and Shanahan made the Flyers pay, dearly as it turned out, for Ben Eager’s deplorable play. Don’t forget Jeff Carter, either, who chose not to make Shanahan work for the shot, and was in retreat mode instead. After this goal, I texted to J. something like, %$^# Ben Eager! She replied, Maybe Avery will beat him up for you. I decided that wouldn’t teach him a good enough lesson not to miss the net on a freaking 3-on-1. I want Richie to beat him up, I replied. Then I wasn’t sure if J. would realize I meant I wanted Richie to beat up Eager, not Avery, but we got that cleared up. Texting was more interesting than the game at that point, but Danny Briere drew my attention back with a nice power play goal with under five to go in the second, tying the game and lifting my spirits. Hey, the game should have been 2-1 at that point, but Shanahan’s goal had to be water under the bridge. I tried to have faith. The Flyers were 6-0 at home, and the Rangers are beatable. Really. I know, Lundqvist is what he is, but he does have weak spots. The Flyers just have to spot them and take advantage of them when they appear. There was no reason to give up on the Flyguys yet.

Not even after Petr Prucha scored early in the third. Not even when it happened because of a series of major mistakes by Rory “All-Star” Fitzpatrick. Turnover, turnover, Rangers goal. It was disgusting, but there was still plenty of time for the Flyers to make it right. And they were playing a better game, not chasing so much. It was Denis Tolpeko, probably still feeling good after getting his first NHL point, that tied the game. Smith had taken a shot, which rebounded only a few feet off Lundqvist, toward Tolpeko, who neatly kicked the puck to his stick and he then put it in the net underneath the goalie. It was a cute play, a self-tic-tac-toe, very admirable. A worthy first NHL goal, a timely first NHL goal. I was pretty proud of this Phantom call-up. I cheered. Yet deep-down I had the feeling that was going to be it. Fortunately the Flyers kept the Rangers out of the net for the rest of the game. (Jagr, who was frequently booed when he had the puck (something I enjoy), was kept off the scoresheet entirely. But does that really matter much when Shanahan, Gomez, and Avery all get onto it more than once?) The game went to a shootout, and all the faith I had earlier in the game deserted me completely. Even though it was the Flyers’ first shootout of the season – with new players – the weight of too many pathetic shootout losses last year was burdensome. Also, I have vivid memories of a particular thirteen-round shootout against the Rangers that ended with a sad, sad goal by Hossa. I did not relish the idea of this game being decided this way. I do not like the shootout. I don’t care if the Flyers win every shootout from here until the end of eternity, I still will not like the shootout because I think it’s a terrible way to decide which team wins.

Briere: no goal. Waited too freaking long, and Lundqvist had no trouble whatsoever, poke-checking him and that was that.
Hossa: no goal.
Richards: no goal. Dammit.
Shanahan: goal. ARRRRGH.
Upshall: fingerscrossedpleaseScottieplease oh dammit no goal, Flyers lost at home for the first time this season.

Deflated, I turned off the TV and stormed upstairs to go to bed, not bothering to watch the post-game blah-blah-blah. I didn’t want to hear it.

The only “positive”, if you can call it that, from the result of the game was that the Flyers got a point for losing, since things went past regulation. Technically they held onto the division lead, though tied with NYR for points, because of games played. It was the equivalent of hanging onto a cliff by one pinkie fingernail. (Yeah, I’m that melodramatic.)

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Friday I knew I was in for a better scene. The Phantoms, coming off their Wednesday “school day” loss to Wilkes-Barre, were out to make things right again. It immediately proved to be a rough game, when three seconds in, Martin Grenier and Binghamton’s Matt Carkner had a fight. The puck had no more than dropped before their gloves came off. Grenier is a huge guy. Carkner’s no pipsqueak, either. There must have been some bad blood simmering from the last Bingo-Philly meeting. The fight did nothing for me, though. Too early in the game for it to provide any moral boost to me; I’m always psyched at the start of a game, don’t need a fight to get my Phantoms adrenaline going. The big dudes went to the box, and the game got a re-start, still five-on-five, and I can’t say that I noticed Grenier’s 5-minute absence much. Nor did anyone else, I think. I love how the Phantoms’ play so often resembles that you might expect when a team is on the power play, controlling the puck low in the zone, passing and setting up plays and keeping their opponents busy on the defense. Still, Bingo was first to score, on a power play that resulted from a hooking minor taken by Nate Guenin. For a while, the Phantoms bided their time, taking shots, getting their chances, and finally Stefan Ruzicka capitalized on a loose puck situation, maneuvering it behind the Senators’ defense and, more or less all alone, moseyed up to the goalie and stuffed it in.

I am not familiar with their goaltender, Brian Elliott. We made constant E.T. jokes, and he did not make anything easier on himself when he caved in to instinct to hilarious effect on one shot. I don’t even remember who it was that rocketed the puck toward him. It was certainly a hard shot, flying high right in the direction of his head. He pulled a Tommy Salo, cringing as it hit him, his arms flying up to protect his face, ducking away.


Oh god no not a puck nooooooo!

Fortunately for him, the puck did not go bouncing into the net off his head the way it did for poor Tommy Salo. It went flying away from the goal, but we roared with laughter. (We are not kind.)

Phantoms took the lead in the second when Darren Reid (who I think I had not seen play lately) was behind the net and slid the puck up to Matsumoto, who was barreling down on the net. Nice, low shot. 2-1 good guys. It didn’t last long. The goal-trading continued when Bingo scored on a rebound. It was, alas, former Flyer/Phantom [and former Chicago Wolf (that looks funny in the singular)] Niko Dimitrakos. This made the kids directly behind us quite sad. They insisted the rest of the game that the Phantoms not allow Dimitrakos to score again. Whenever he was hit, or denied in some way, they gleefully announced, “Dimitrakos! Former Flyer, former bitch!” I’m not sure they quite knew what they were trying to say, but I have to admit that I was a little surprised. They can’t have been any older than ten. Kids these days! Dimitrakos was not the only former Flyer/Phantom out there; Denis Hamel, who played part of last season with them, was on the Bingo roster. Another face familiar to me was Greg Amadio, who played a while with Iowa. And Lawrence Nycholat (“NyChocolate”) was another familiar name – did he not play for Hershey before? I think so.

(We also made hearty fun of the dude whose last name was Bois. It is a good time, sitting a few rows behind the opposing team’s bench.)

Goal-trading again, Ryan Potulny scored a go-aheader just as a 5-minute power play ended. This “never-ending” man advantage happened when Bingo’s Jeremy Yablonski decided he was going to play rough-and-tumble instead of hockey, and after stalking Grant around for a while, tried to goad him into a fight. Grant’s recovering from a broken finger, I think, and while he would normally have been more than willing to throw down (no matter how monstrously big his opponent), he was not particularly interested at that time. I was impressed by the restraint he showed, not getting into something that might cause his barely-healed injury to worsen and take him out of the lineup again. But Yablonski refused to accept that Grant was not going to oblige him. Grant turned away and Yablonski grabbed his shirt and hauled him around. Grant tried to get his fists up but the fight never really got anywhere, Grant falling to the ice and Yablonski going too. Tempers flew, there was a scrum, and when it was done, Yablonski was slapped with a 2-5-10 (roughing, fighting, game misconduct – aggressor) and was removed from the ice. The Phantoms played the PP OK, but did not even get one goal during it, waiting instead until it had just expired. WOOHOO Potulny! At the time, it was set to be the game-winner, and we were pretty happy with the situation. Potulny is apparently the game-winning goal artist of the team, coming through with clutch goals to put the Phantoms where they belong.

This one happened with a lot of time left to play, though – an entire period.

Zingoni scored the next two goals for the Phantoms, giving them a sizeable cushion. His first goal was bee-yoo-tee-ful, corralling a loose puck in the neutral zone, zooming forward past the Senators’ defense, around the net, and bam – wristed it in, surprising Elliott, and the Phantoms were 4-2. A bit later, on the PP, he scored again, 5-2 Phantoms, dancing in the stands. I think I love games when they play out this way: close for the first two periods, but with an edge to the good guys, only to have my team pull away decisively later on, so that it doesn’t get scary on toward the close. A strong finish is very enjoyable. The Sens ruined Potulny’s game-winning goal by scoring a third (so it was Zingo that scored the game-winner, despite what a small article in the Inquirer said – it was not Potulny, after all). But it was a mostly-meaningless goal because Boyd Kane scored an empty-netter and the Phantoms won solidly, 6-3.

According to the Phantoms’ website, it is the tenth time in a row that the Phantoms have beaten the Binghamton Senators (dating back to all eight games last season). If only the Flyers could own the Ottawa Senators this way. (I suppose they will get a chance to start the owning, this upcoming weekend.)

We left the Spectrum feeling pretty good. It had erased my bad hockey feelings from the night before. Incidentally, I met Ben Eager before the game, when he was signing autographs in the concourse. In my head I castigated him for his screwed-up play the night before, but only for the comedic effect. Not only would I never do such a thing on principle, I also would not because, well, he’s a lot bigger than me. In reality, I merely said hello, and he signed a player card and then agreed to sign my scarf. I thanked him. I am a polite girl, after all. I now have two ex-Phantoms’ signatures on my Flyers scarf – Randy Jones from the prior weekend, which apparently I failed to mention. That exchange went like this:

Crusher: “Hi! Can you sign my scarf?”
Randy Jones: “Sure.” [signs]
Crusher: “Great game last night.”
Randy Jones: “Thanksssss.” [That’s right. He sss’ed out the s a little bit. I think he was bored.]
Crusher: “Thank you!!”
Randy Jones: [smiles vaguely]

Keep ‘em coming. I enjoy “meeting” these guys.

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Saturday night’s travesty against the Devils? I thought I was watching last year’s team. Martin Brodeur was fighting all week to get his 500th win, and I said earlier in the day that it would, naturally, come against the Flyers. How not? His record-setting season-high 48th win came last year against the Flyers. What was it the Devils fans were chanting at the end of the game on the 8th? “Still our bitches?” Yeah, sometimes there is truth in the chanting.

Biron played atrociously, once again letting in four goals in two periods, which I am doing my best to forget – but I know that at least one of them, probably more, were 100% stoppable, or at least preventable. Zubrus’s goal came on a rebound. Zubrus was camped right in front of him. A shot from another Devil rebounded right to him. Biron was down, and Zubrus had only to lift the puck over him. He had his choice of just where he was going to put it, and Biron had a one-in-a-zillion chance of guessing. I don’t remember if he even tried to guess. It probably wouldn’t have mattered. I cursed Zubrus, former Flyer from days before I was a Flyer fan and the scorer of two goals during the game I was at. Then he let in a blister from the blue line by Karel Rachunek, who hadn’t scored a goal in donkey’s years. (WHY do the Flyers always allow that to happen? Some dude will not have scored a goal in six seasons, but he will find a way to get one on the board against the Flyers.) Another blue-line goal that I am not sure Biron even saw, despite facing the right direction. In my head, he does not even react to the puck flying past him, but I am sure that in reality he did. My head makes it worse than it really was. In my head, he was picking at a hangnail and wondering what he would have for dinner later while Rachunek lined up the shot. Biron later blamed himself for the horrific 6-2 loss (SIX to TWO): “You've got to be accountable for what you do, and I am accountable for the thing that happened tonight.” I wouldn’t say he’s completely responsible, but he certainly did not look like the Biron we perhaps have come to expect (take for granted?). There were mistakes going on all over the place. The Flyers got down 3-0 when Zach Parise eventually scored while the Flyers and Biron flailed about in front of the net, the Devils getting a handful of tries and nothing got cleared.

Mike Richards at least prevented Brodeur’s 500th win from being a shutout victory when he tipped the puck home in the second period. 3-1 is not an insurmountable deficit, not with a whole period left to go, but they were sure gonna have to play a much stronger and vastly more sound game in the last frame if they were gonna have any chance whatsoever. You could tell that goal sparked the Flyers a bit, but the air went blasting out of the sails when Pandolfo sauntered in completely unattended and …. Yeah. 4-1. Where the hell were the Flyers?

Niittymaki replaced Biron for the third period. Devils: two shots the entire 20 minutes. Devils: two goals.

The first one was a fluke. Niitty was standing, facing forward. The puck came bouncing up over him. La la la, loooop up, over his shoulders, down behind him, and in. It was scarily reminiscent of the goal scored on Biron in Newark, lobbing up behind him, unseen, hitting his shoulder and going in. I don’t know if this one hit Niitty at all. It just traced an arc over his body and down behind him across the goal line. What can you do but shake your head at the unfairness of it? The second one was ridiculous. Forget it. Scottie Upshall scored a nice goal but it didn’t go anywhere after that. Briere was stopped by an amazing glove save, Brodeur twisting and flopping around and getting his glove on it just in time to stop it from crossing the goal line (it was reviewed anyway); the camera showed Briere behind the net, gazing down at the net in disbelief, his lips forming the single word “Wow.” Wow, indeed.

So the Flyers gave Brodeur his 500th win on the goldest of gold platters and even commemorated it on their own jumbotron. What did Brodeur say about the occasion?

“It would have been nice to win at home, especially against a New York team.”

Oh, wah wah. Winning your 500th against the Flyers not good enough for you? Take your 0.894 SV% and suck it, doughboy. BOOOOOOOOOO.

D. and K. were over at my house watching this sadness unfold (eating pizza, chips and salsa, cupcakes, and ice cream – more and worse than what I eat at games, but I had my reasons for the fare – so much junk food that I couldn’t decide if I was feeling kinda sick because of the game or what I had eaten). K., the traitorous Devils fan, claimed not to be gloating, yet still managed to get up and dance. BOOOOOOO. Why do I let him into my house!? This is what I get for consorting with a Devils fan – Flyers losing, ashes, bitterness. K.’s gloating-against record is now 2-1. I had the pleasure early in the season when the Flyers stopped the Debbies 4-0. Next chance to tie the gloating score is December 16.

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The Phantoms did not play again last weekend. The Iowa Stars had two games. Friday night, while I was dancing in the stands to a Phantoms 6-3 win, the Stars were losing in a high-scoring affair against Chicago. Are you surprised? I’m not. 7-5 was the final score, in favor of the Wolves. Apparently, the trend of allowing ridiculously high goal totals against Chicago continues this season. When the tallies get that high between both teams, you can probably safely bet that it was a wild game. Scoring for Iowa came from what I regard as the usual suspects: Petersen, Lessard, Lundqvist, but Sertich, Polak, Holtet, Lee, Vas, and former Flyer/Phantom Nolan Baumgartner also put points up. 5 power play goals between the two teams (Iowa 3 for 7). Stephan allowed 6 goals, the Wolves’ 7th an empty-netter. And then Saturday, with Phillipe Sauve in net (a.k.a. “Rico Suave” for no reason other than his last name reminds us of it), the Stars lost 6 to freaking 0 to the Flaming Q’s. Apparently the Stars were short-handed on d-men and Petersen dropped back to play as a blue-liner. Thinned out, no wonder the Stars gave up so much. Yet that doesn’t really excuse them from failing to score a single goal. Yeah, McElhinney is a good goalie, but so is Chicago’s Braithwaite, and they got 5 on him. Maybe they were just tired from the game the night before. Whatever. I am planning on going to a Stars game on December 28 when I am back home in Iowa. I do not want to see this kind of action taking place. OK?

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Standings:

Philadelphia Phantoms are 14-2-1-0, still in first place in their division and in the league with 29 points (though the Wolves are closing in with 27). Their next game is tomorrow, away at Norfolk. Look for them to extend their winning series against the 5-10-0-2 Sadmirals. Boucher may be ready to play again; Munroe’s done an outstanding job in the meantime.

Iowa Stars are now 8-8-1-0, fifth in the West division with 17 points. Middle-of-the-packing it right now. Not too bad, not too great. Tomorrow they try again against the Flames, who are two points beneath them.

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Other bits:

Todd Fedoruk was placed on waivers by Dallas this week. As far as I know, he wasn’t claimed. Will he be assigned to Iowa? A new addition to Iowa is Bryce Lampman, through a trade which sends Mario Scalzo to Tampa Bay – that is, Norfolk. Great, another former Star I can boo, along with Jancevski.

The Wild were playing the Canucks the other day. Mikko Koivu put an elbow into Mattias Ohlund’s head at one point, and this incensed Ohlund. So much so that he deliberately used his stick in a two-handed baseball-bat-type slash against Koivu’s leg. I saw the clip on YouTube, and I thought, “That’s a bad slash,” agreed that the intent to injure was there, but I also did not think it looked so bad as to warrant the broken bone that resulted. Koivu should have gotten some kind of punishment for the elbow, no question about it –but it sure didn’t mean that Ohlund was free to slash and hack and intend to injure. Still, I am shocked that the NHL took any action against Ohlund – he isn’t a Flyer, after all – he was suspended 4 whole games.

Four whole games for a slash that broke a player’s bone.

I don’t know. I think ten might have been appropriate. It had all the hallmarks of the kind of play that should be far more stringently penalized, based on suspensions that have been handed out already (mainly to Flyers): a dangerous, retaliatory slash clearly meant to injure (why would you hit someone like that otherwise?); Koivu did not walk away from it unharmed. Chris Simon baseball-bats a dude in the face last season and gets 25 games. Mattias Ohlund baseball-bats a guy in the leg, breaking it, and gets 4? Is it only because of where the baseball-batting landed? And let’s not get started with Boulerice hitting someone in the face, a person who did not miss any time at all, and getting 25 games. I’m glad the NHL decided to do something about Ohlund’s actions, but seriously, “consistent” is not a word the NHL seems to understand.

Scott Burnside, that gem of hockey journalism, has quite a bit to say about the incident. (Why do I bother to read this guy’s columns? It’s almost the same as deliberately driving up I-95 to Philly on a Saturday knowing there is construction pinching it down to one lane. An aneurysm is inevitable.) He spends quite a few sentences rehashing the Randy Jones Bruin-hunting incident – you know, the one where he cold-bloodedly tried to murder Patrice Bergeron? – as though it is at all comparable, getting in a few more tired digs at it. Sir, why don’t you just go to Randy Jones’s house and spit in his face in person and be done with it? Jones’s hit from behind had nothing of the premeditation or circumstances this did, so, you know, have you heard the phrase about apples and oranges before? Where was your indignant outrage at the failure of the NHL to mete out proper punishment in regard to the Sutton hit on Kukkonen? Sure. That’s what I thought. Get off the high horse unless you’re going to look down on all ugly incidents the same from up there.

Which brings me to say, (yeah, I’m going to go here): if Jason Smith had broken Crosby’s hand the other night? What do you think? 300 words on the brutality the Flyers, and only the Flyers, have brought back into the game and a call for 20 games minimum? Sounds about right. Luckily the crybaby only got a wittle hurt thumb and didn’t miss a second, sparing me the volcanic uproar that would have ensued.

I’m sick of this crapshoot punishment scheme.

It was one year ago today that the Flyers somehow beat the Anaheim Ducks, eventual Stanley* Cup champions, 7-4, while being out-shot something like 40-16.

It was one of the only beacons of light. Another was sweeping Atlanta.

Though the Flyers have repeatedly shown themselves to be a completely different team than the one I suffered last year, it is still very difficult to let go of it, and hard not to make comparisons. You know, the "It's only a quarter of the way through the season and already the Flyers have won 60% of the home games they won all last season!" type of comparisons. I predict they will last until next year.

Power Rankings from around the Wide World of "The Media":

tsn.ca: 5th. "The Flyers have been alternating wins and losses for the last eight games and they need their young players to step up, particularly in the absence of Simon Gagne, if they are going to be better than that." Well, they won two in a row just recently (Pens, Isles); that counts, doesn't it?

Yahoo sports: 8th. "One wonders how the Flyers could have let concussed Simon Gagne return early – and get knocked out again – when the team has had such a history of concussion problems (Eric Lindros, Keith Primeau and Jeremy Roenick)." Um, maybe because he passed the tests and said he was feeling fine? How could he/they know he was going to get rocked again so quickly and that it would end up this way?

ESPN: 6th. "This past week, the Flyers posted their first back-to-back wins since Oct. 20 and, in the process, sit atop the Atlantic. They are also the league's only unbeaten team at home (6-0-0)." That's right, they are. WOOO!

SI.com: 7th. "Win, lose, win, lose. That's been the pattern since October 27. One positive: both wins last week came against the Pens, who whitewashed Philly 8-0 in last season's series. Another plus: the Flyers' fourth-ranked PP notched more than one score (4-for-7) for the first time in five games." I count that as two positives, not one and a plus.

Average amongst these few lists: 6.5 ... I'll take it. Points-wise the Flyers are 6th in the NHL.

*While I was initially typing this, it came out "Satanley". Interesting slip of the fingers. Perhaps an omen that the Islanders will win the Cup this year (Miro Satan scoring the Cup-winning goal)?

There was an actual article in the Inquirer today about the Phantoms. Gives a little bit of insight as to why the Phantoms blew so badly last year [some bitter veterans in the lockerroom (yeah, you, Nedved)] and shines some nice light on a team that is doing remarkably well this year (despite yesterday's bump in the road) [much better attitude (even you, Gauthier!)].

Also: I remembered the second enjoyable moment from the Devils/Flyers game last Thursday!! It was when Knuble mildly checked a linesman into the boards, catching himself at the last second and pulling up. Knubs was helping defend, then basically just turned around and there was a guy there so he played him like he would have played a Devil, only realized at the last second it was not a Devil, but a zebra, and we laaaaaaaaaughed.

Flyers/Rags tonight at the Wachovia Center (for me, on TV at the House of Crusher). Rangers beat the Debbies last night. Flyers must win this game to retain the lead in the Atlantic Division.

Good thing I made no bets. Phantoms lost, 4-1. Ugly! Not playing today: Bartulis*, Ross, and Parent went out but is back. Munroe almost certainly has to be a little tired, four games in a week; apparently, everyone seemed a little flat.

Well, I'd prefer that their off game be one that I am not at, anyway. Rest up for Friday, boys!!

*My defenseman has a first name, it's O-S-K-A-RS ....

Deeper forces than we can comprehend were at work during Monday night’s game. Scottie Upshall scored two goals and Mike Richards one goal. Scottie’s #9, Richie is #18.

9+9=18

It was predestined.

On a serious note, those goals were great. Scottie collected a puck that I think was trying to be cleared, and fired it in. Then he got himself a one-on-one with DiPietro and faked him out, sliding the puck in at the side. Richards, after whiffing badly on a one-on-one with DiPi earlier in the game, took the puck while on the PK and moved up the ice. His first shot was stopped, but while DiPietro was flat on his back, stuffed in the rebound.

I have to admit that though the score was kept close the entire game, it did not make it a very exciting game. Dullness between the Isles and Flyers seems endemic. My attention often would drift while listening to their games in the two seasons prior to this one, and while I was stretched out on the sofa Monday night, I began to wish time would move more quickly during the third period, so that I might just go to bed and read or something. It was fine hockey. It was not thrilling hockey. Shot totals were very low, for both teams (though this number seems artificial when you consider how many shots the Flyers blocked – 20+) I enjoyed the freedom of the game, unhampered by flurries of penalties. The Flyers’ goals were great, the Islanders’ goals less so. One fight (Fitzpatrick and someone) – not all that impressive. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s game against the Rags. That should have more going on than fine hockey.

Other stuff I’ve thought about:

At the end of the game, Andy Sutton bashed Lasse Kukkonen into the boards. It was cheap and unnecessary and dangerous, because Lasse was bent down and got his head rammed into the wall. He went down and struggled to get back up. Kukkonen, of all players to cheap-shot. Kukkonen deserves that like Randy Jones deserves to be called a dirty player. Referees didn’t really let anyone punish Sutton for it, and Kukkonen did get up though seemed a little wobbly. He had enough self-possession to try to do something about what had happened, but no one got much of a real chance. For his dangerous, pre-meditated cheap hit, Sutton got 2 minutes for charging, that’s it. Pathetic. Kukkonen does that to Sutton, it results in a fine, minimum, for the dangerous head shot, and pages and pages in the media about the Flyers goons striking again. I seethe.

Last night, Pronger started a fight with Michal Handzus after Zus slapped a puck toward Giguere just as the buzzer went (as immediately after the buzzer as is possible). Pronger was given a 2, 5, and 10 and the automatic one-game suspension for the instigator was rescinded. Ben Eager does this and you see him sit at least one game, plus the attendant mudslinging. Pronger is a punk but gets the white gloves again. I seethe. (Dr. Pronger probably believes that the whole incident was a matter of physics, the laws of which are immutable; Handzus’s face met his hand, of course, it had to since Pronger’s taller. Or something.)

J. mentioned that Hasek got chased from the net in last night’s Blues/Wings game. I watched part of the game, and what I saw was that the Wings were winning 1-0. Quite a turnaround after I turned off the TV! I browsed the stats lists on NHL.com for goalies, and it’s just not a good year for hallowed netminders and new superstar goalies. In save percentage, the leaders are:

Dan Ellis
Tim Thomas
Pascal Leclaire

whereas trusty never-fails such as Brodeur and Hasek find themselves kicking around in the 30s. These new mega-goalies, e.g. Kiprusoff, Luongo, Miller – they are suffering, too. (34th, 19th, 25th respectively!) In the top five for save %, the only “superstar” you’ll find is Henrik Lundqvist. (Gerber is 4th, and hot on Lundqvist’s heels is Biron.) In the GAA list, it’s a similar story. Are we looking at the emergence of a new crop of super goalies, while the old guard reluctantly stands aside? Or is it only a month or so into the season, and the goaltending world will right itself by April?

Speaking of reversals of fortunate, there was a thread on HF Boards wondering about Buffalo going from best to pretty much not best. Someone commented it’s too early in the season for that kind of talk, and then we get this:

“Wayyyyy to early, there is too much parody in the NHL.”

Parody.

Good stuff. I enjoy that almost as much as I enjoy the fact that Buffalo is scrubbing the bottom of the league with the Caps and Oilers with only 13 points. Enjoying the view, Lindy?

P.S. Pittsburgh: 15 points. That’s nice, too.

-------

The Phantoms are starting their school-day game as I write – an 11:05 puck drop against Wilkes/Barre-Scranton. I chose not to take time off to see this game, primarily because I did not want to subject myself to the screaming madness of thousands of kids who are lucky not to be in school for a few hours. I don’t have much time off to meter out as it is, and if I’m going to take some time off some morning, it’s not going to be to suffer in that way (I can hear the kid who sits behind us even here, screaming “BONVIE!! YOU’RE OLD!!! YOU SUCK!! BONVIE!!!”). I’m sorry to miss a hockey game, though. Out of ten home games so far this season, it’s only the second I will have missed. The Phantoms should be able to handle the Penguins without much trouble, but I hesitate to make any bets. Phantoms are 13-1-1 right now, a franchise-best start to a season, and I’d love to see it be 14-1-1 by this afternoon. That will make 6 wins in a row, if I’m counting correctly (the last loss was that OT loss in Portland?) And then only 11 off the AHL-record 17 in a row (Phantoms, 2004-2005 season!). They can do it, right? I have the faith!

You waited for it all weekend; now you shall have it.

Weekend Hockey Update

Friday night we were sitting in a slightly different place than usual, since we had two guests with us. We were two rows back from our season ticket seats, and it’s funny how two rows seems to be a huge difference (Sunday night, back in the right seats, I felt a great deal closer). The Phantoms, curiously not wearing the new white jerseys but rather the much more attractive purple third jersey from seasons past, played 58:06 of pretty brutal hockey. Flyers’ bad hockey illness seemed to have infected the orange and purple as well. The Phantoms got behind 2-0 in the first period, and they never were able to mount any attack or make any headway, and there was a great deal of frustration at the officiating, which seemed highly suspect and inconsistent. (Apparently, one of the stripes is related to one of the Bridgeport players. How in the world did he get scheduled to serve a Bridgeport game?) When it is your team that is down you are often quick to point fingers at the zebras, but let’s face it, it really was poor going both ways. Someone back and to the left of me shouted creative abuse, suggesting that the referee bend over and look at the game with his good eye. I was frustrated by the Phantoms playing so poorly, and shouted at Bridgeport: “YOU’RE NOT THAT GOOD!!” (It made me feel better.) For 58:06, the Phantoms forced us to suffer, until 1:54 remaining when Ryan Potulny broke the scoring drought and brought the Phantoms within one. Honestly, though, we were just relieved that they would not be shut out. We did not believe they would actually mount the successful comeback. Oh we of little faith!

Munroe was pulled and there were six Phantoms out on the ice. The game was in the final 30 seconds. There was a monstrous scrum in front of the Bridgeport net. Bodies were piling and thrashing, and there was no whistle. There was more struggling, thrashing, piling, and still no whistle. It seemed to take a year, and we asked out loud, “Where is the whistle?!” Given the once or twice earlier in the game that the whistle was blown far too prematurely, ending plays that definitely should not have been ended, it seemed very peculiar for this to continue, and continue, and continue. Hey, if the ref actually had sight of the puck, then it was right for him not to blow the whistle, but I am amazed if he really was seeing it through all that flailing traffic. And I don’t like to complain when it allowed the Phantoms to score the tying goal with 18 seconds left. Potulny with his second goal of the night. We were on our feet screaming, hugging, high-fiving – you might have thought we were inches from a Calder Cup or something, rather than simply making it to overtime in a November game.

Overtime: I can hardly stand it. The Phantoms were on a power play, so it was 4 on 3, and they were handling the pressure fantastically, making good passes and moving the puck to set up a wonderful one-timer from Downie to Potulny, and it went sailing past MacDonald for the win. Potulny with a natural hat trick in under 4 minutes!! Naturally, there was madness in the arena, screaming and elation, as Bridgeport went straight to the tunnel and got the hell out of there. Textbook snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory on the part of the Sound Tigers. We all stood around congratulating ourselves, as though we had had anything to do with the feat, saying, “WHAT AN AWESOME GAME!” Which actually is a complete lie. It was an awesome three minutes and fifty-four seconds. 90% of the game was terrible.

The most amazing part of it is that Potulny was back playing his first game after having sat out injured for a while, and Coach Berube had considered scratching him.

The comeback comes in second to the comeback of 2005’s playoffs, when the Phantoms sucked until the last ten minutes of the game, scoring 6 in a row to beat Wilkes-Barre/Scranton 7-4. It surpasses the comeback I saw early 2006, where the Phantoms came back to tie Hershey and then force a shootout to win. These are great moments, but damn if it sucks sometimes having to endure crappy hockey to get to them.

It was nice to dance out of the arena in high spirits, after the drubbing of the Flyers the night before. Somehow the Phantoms stayed in it. This year my teams are doing things to other teams that were done to them, ad nauseam, last year, and it’s fascinating to understand how fans of those other teams must have felt last year. I mean, how many times did the Flyers give away a game in the closing moments? Overflowing cups of last year’s bitterness have turned to sweet nectar.

Saturday, the Phantoms traveled to Binghamton while the Flyers were at the Wachovia Center playing the Penguins. It started out on the right foot, with the Penguins taking a too-many-men penalty at 31 seconds in. A minute later, the Flyers scored. Before ten minutes had gone by, the Flyers had two power-play goals. Early in the second, Lupul scored to make it 3-0. The Penguins made it interesting, unfortunately, by scoring twice in the second period, their second coming with less than a second left. It was also a power play goal. The Pens had been given the man advantage because of a delay-of-game penalty taken by Hartnell when the puck went into the stands. I hate this penalty. I think it’s worthless. Half the time when the puck goes out it’s an accident, not a deliberate attempt to delay, and yet the penalty is called all the same. So the Flyers’ lead was cut to one because of that stupid penalty.

But the third period was awesomeness. Danny Briere scored the Flyers’ 4th power play goal and Jason Smith tried to chop off Sidney Crosby’s arms (I’m just going by what Pens fans seem to think happened) which led Criesby to throw off his glove and helmet and collapse to the ice, sliding into the boards, with a contorted grimace of unendurable agony on his face. When the referees weren’t having any of it, he got to his feet, shaking his still-attached hand, glowering, and I swear to god I thought he was actually crying, the expression on his face was that tortured. No, he was just spewing quality language and acting as though he had been wronged in the extreme, skating to the bench, shaking that hand. He and Mike Richards exchanged words and it looked to me like Richie was inviting him to make it more than words; more quality language from the Crybaby, with Philly’s announcers advising Sidney that he may not want to get into a physical scrap with Richards (I agreed, while hoping that he would be foolish enough to try). Next thing you know, he’s on the bench with the thumb being iced. Jason Smith is on his bench, grinning and shaking his head in poorly-concealed enjoyment of Sidney’s having made a complete ass of himself. And, people, he’s not laughing “because someone got hurt,” assuming that Criesby’s hand really did hurt that much, he is laughing because he probably can’t believe that the supposed best player in the world (and a team’s CAPTAIN!) would drop to the ice so shamelessly. Smith himself fell onto the ice the other night when he got cracked in the face on a slap-shot follow through, but after a few moments he got up. He didn’t flail around, scream, sob, etc. trying to draw a penalty. Give me a break, Sidney. Give me a break and grow up a little.

YouTube has the Pens’ feed’s version of the incident, and the exaggeration is comical; note particularly the comment that Sidney has a reputation in Philly for being a diver merely because ex-coach Hitchcock said it once. Um, he has a reputation for it in Philly because he does it, and not just in Philly. He is an embarrassment when he behaves like that. In today’s Inquirer, he was interviewed by Panaccio and Gormley (Courier-Post) and they mention to him that he’s been accused of diving, and he snapped back, “Accuse me of diving? Watch the play ... I don't think you'll see me diving.” Um, I think we will, Mr. Louganis. Other guys get tapped on the hands/stick all the time, and somehow it doesn’t affect their abilities to stay upright (or keep their helmets on). High comedy.

Waiting for the “suspend Smith” calls. Oh, wait, already out there (see “Gollum of the Game”, scroll down a bit). PLEASE!!! Ha ha ha ha ha!!! This dude wins the silver medal for Exaggeration of the Week (Crosby’s dive being the gold winner).

Anyway, the game was over even before Hartnell scored his first goal as a Flyer, an empty-net affair when Richards passed the puck to him – and it looked like Richards passed the puck to Hartnell so that Hartnell could score it. I loved how Hartnell stuck his tongue out and grinned and everyone came over to congratulate him. This is no Kyle Calder, folks. Don’t bail on him yet.

5-2 Flyers, very nice control of the game for the most part, a very good rebounding from Thursday’s debacle. I like that the Flyers this year can recover in strong fashion after a bad loss. Last year’s Flyers would have let Thursday snowball into six horrible games in a row. Hope they can come off Saturday’s win and roll with it tonight, facing the Islanders.

Also on Saturday: Phantoms beat Binghamton 2-0. Guess who scored the game winner? Ryan Potulny.

And then rounding out a nice weekend of hockey, I was the Phantoms/Albany game last night. After pulling Friday’s win out of nether regions, as exciting as that last few minutes was, I hoped for something a little more even. I don’t like sitting through 58 minutes of horrible hockey even if my team redeems itself in the end. We got a pretty even game, though most of it seemed to be played with one team or the other on the power play. This was reflected in the scoring: all three goals between both teams were on the PP. Albany scored first, but the Phantoms defense (and Scott Munroe, playing in his third game in as many nights!!!) kept them out for the rest of the night, though my eyes were playing tricks on me and for fractions of seconds I was sure the puck was in many times. This is not good for the heart. It is also not good for the heart when your team does not score until the third period. But the heart is soothed when your team scores again to take the lead. WHO SCORED THE GAME WINNER? RYAN POTULNY. For his five-goal weekend, three being GWGs, plus an assist on Sunday, he was named the AHL’s Player of the Week. According to the announcement on the Phantoms’ website, “he is the 11th Player of the Week honoree in Phantoms history and the first since Kirby Law won in the week ending April 4, 2004.” WOOHOOO!

It was sweet.

Munroe is 6-0 and is doing better than I expected out him as backup. He holds the AHL lead in GAA (1.68!!!). At the other end, Michael Leighton was peppered with 47 shots, stopping 45 of them. The Phantoms were not making very dangerous shots for the most part – they made a lot of ‘em but most of ‘em were right at Leighton – but as has been noted with Biron’s shots faced, when that many start coming at you, some are bound to get in, and that more did not get in is a testament to Leighton. He’s a pretty good goalie, no question. In fact, he is second in GAA (1.83) behind Munroe. Just wasn’t quite good enough last night.

Phantoms are 13-1-1, miles ahead of second place in the East (Albany sits there) and with 27 points is still 4 points better than the next team (Chicago). It’s a franchise-best start, and it’s really very fun to be part of it.

Iowa gets second billing this year because I am not there to absorb any of it in person, but I checked box scores for their games from the weekend. Two wins! Friday night it was Stars vs Rivermen, a 6-3 victory with 2 goals by Petersen (now leads the AHL with 9), Vas, Neal, Lee, and Lundqvist! On Saturday, the Stars beat San Antonio (NICE!) 3-1, with goals by Eriksson, Scalzo, and Vas. Um, when did Eriksson get sent down??* I need to pay more attention, apparently. Joel Lundqvist watch: Friday, a goal and two assists. Saturday, 1 assist. Glad he is back to his old ways. Iowa should start marching up the ranks in the West given that they’ve got all of Eriksson, Lundqvist, Lessard, and Petersen.

*Quick scanning of Dallas boards claims Loui asked to be sent down to get more playing time.

I don’t know how much I want to say about last night’s game, but I will probably end up saying quite a lot. The day started off so nicely, leaving work at noon to drive to Philly to meet K., then driving to Trenton to catch the Northeast Corridor train to Newark, then wandering around downtown Newark a while until we finally located a bar to eat that did not have pizza that appeared to have been sitting out since ten a.m. (and that was not Popeye’s or McDonald’s) just down the road from the arena. We were buzzing with excitement, though we had different hopes for the night. At the bar, I was completely outnumbered by people in red and black, and on the TV there was a rerun of Game 7 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Championships (hint: Flyers did not win). I had to sit there watching reply after replay of Scott Stevens ramming Eric Lindros with that technically legal hit which left him lying as though dead on the ice. I seethed a little bit, but reminded myself where I was. No love lost between NJD/PHI, right? I definitely can appreciate a good, intense rivalry, but a sizeable portion of the New Jersey fans at the game last night proved themselves to be shallow and extremely disrespectful people while the national anthem was being sung. At pauses between lines, you could hear “FLYERS SUCK!” being bellowed from more than one section of the arena. There’s a time for that kind of thing, you know? During the national anthem is not one of those times. My opinion of Devils fans was already low by virtue of those fans preferring the Devils, but when I heard that? Yeah, they sank below the basement in value as far as I am concerned.

I did not get much heckling, but it is not surprising given the not-insignificant fraction of Flyers fans skulking about the arena and the generally low number of attendees overall. As we moseyed toward our section (129) some dude roared something at me, but I could not tell exactly how insulted I should feel because I didn’t understand a word he said except “FLYERS”. Maybe I shouldn’t be insulted at all? I am only jumping to the conclusion that I should be, because he had on a Devils jersey. I can’t imagine he would have been saying, “Welcome! It’s great to have you here! The Flyers are awesome!” It was after the game when I heard the most, but even that was pretty mild. There was more general heckling than Crusher-specific heckling – Devils fans roaring that Flyers suck, Let’s Go Devils, etc. But as we were herded toward the escalators down, some guys behind me saw my Flyers scarf and said, scornfully, “Flyers fans in front of us? Ha ha ha!” K. (traitor!) turned and said, “Her, not me.” I turned and looked at the guys over my shoulder. All I could do was shrug. It’s true, I am a Flyers fan, and it’s true, HA HA. “Oh, well, she’s harmless,” they said. Only because the Flyers lost, my friend. Had it gone the other way, I’d have been merciless in my gloating. But my apparent harmlessness let me get by with no further harassment from them. Outside, on a street corner on the way to the train station, two guys in front of us turned to look back at the arena, and saw my scarf, too. “You are a FLYERS FAN?!” Said with such incredulity so as to be hilarious. Again, what could I do but shrug? I can’t help it. Yes, I’m a Flyers fan. It’s not my fault they completely blew last night. We traded a little “What do you expect? I’m not from here, I’m from Philly” and “Oh, I’m sorry [snicker]” / “I’m not from here either, but I’m still a Devils fan.” (I asked K. if I should tell them I used to be a Leafs fan, would that make it better? Then we snickered.) Then they started to bellow about the score, “5 and oh! .. uh … 5 and 1! Uh … 4 and 1!!” K. helpfully told them that 4 and 1 make 5, and they were laughing, “That’s what we meant, that’s what we meant!!!” All in all, I did not feel threatened or even made that small by the heckling; most of it made me laugh. During the game, a section near us occasionally roared “RANGERS SUCK!!! FLYERS BLOOOOW!!” which I actually thought was amusing and could definitely get on board with their first assessment, and last night could not debate the second, either. (I quietly added a third sentiment about the Devils, but it was not PG-rated, so I'm going to pass on repeating it here.)

Anyway, the game.



What can I say? The Flyers were terrible. They scored the first goal of the game, and it was a nice one, and I was up and cheering with the other Flyers faithful near me, and we were drowned out by boos. And then it just got horrible. The Flyers couldn’t manage to shoot the puck. In the third period –late into the third period – they had not yet hit 10, where the Devils had gotten near or up to 30. They didn’t appear to be able to skate, hold onto the puck, move the puck very well, and were totally manhandled by New Jersey. They did kill penalties reasonably well; no Devils PP goals, at least. And there is nothing else good to say about the Flyers. We got there and I saw Ruzicka on the ice warming up and wondered who was out; when scratches were announced and they said Gagne, I groaned. Even though he was totally invisible Wednesday night, you can’t be glad when he isn’t in the lineup!! Kapanen was out, too, and I just had not heard anything about them earlier in the day, so was surprised. Apparently Gagne has got those concussiony feelings back again after having been hit by Gary Roberts in the Pens game, and Kapanen has hurt his knee and may be out 10 days. Didn’t know watching the warmup who was going to be in goal, but it ended up being Biron. I was of two minds about that – 1) he was super-hot Wednesday and maybe he was on a roll that they wanted to keep going, but 2) don’t you carry two goalies so that one of them can take over in a back-to-back so the #1 can rest? He made some great saves but then these mistakes started happening that were so grossly uncharacteristic that I wondered if maybe he was suffering from some kind of sudden blindness. Or maybe he and the guys stopped at this place



before the game and picked up some sedatives or something – that might explain their lethargic and severely indifferent play. I just don’t understand how Biron dissolved so dramatically. I’m not going to rip him apart, because without him the Flyers would certainly not have the record they do right now, and he’s been out of this world for them. But let’s face it, last night? Goals 2, 3, and 4 were extremely weak. One of ‘em had the puck bouncing off of him – really, the save was made, but and I swear to God it moved in slow motion it fell … fell … fell … behind him and into the goal. The fourth was, in my armchair opinion, completely stoppable, one that 99.999999% of the time he stops (as a scientist, I know when to approximate; that 0.000001% is what we call “negligible” and thus is IGNORED, meaning that shot was for all intents and purposes 100% STOPPABLE*). It could hardly have come from a worse angle (just about 180 degrees to the goal mouth?), sliding along the red line, and in? MARTY! Shame on you! From my eagle-eye vantage point not quite in the rafters but pretty darn high up, I saw Niittymaki stand up, head a few feet down the tunnel, and accept his helmet from someone back there. Biron didn’t know yet that he was about to be yanked. He was skating out and back, out and back, shaking it off, shaking it off; and then, oh, good, a pity pull. And Niittymaki was solid. He probably should have played from the start. I was glad to see him there, doing well. Even the glove hand!

Let’s not even bother to discuss how one of the Devils’ four goals looked pretty much as offsides as you can get. If they had taken that one away, the Flyers would have only lost 3-1. Which is still a loss. And I doubt they would have played any better. The Flyers seemed incapable of putting together 60 seconds of good play, let alone 60 minutes, so it’s no surprise how this game turned out.

Early in the game I had a nice, mean laugh when Brodeur fell on his doughboy butt behind his goal. (I don’t really blame him for it though. The ice seemed absolutely crappy. Guys were falling for no reason. The puck was all over the place. From where we sat, it looked pret-ty sucky.) There was another moment that I truly savored, but to be honest, I can’t remember what it is – isn’t that sad? Maybe it was when Eager hit Sheldon Brookbank (apparently, I cannot escape having to see him play?), but really, Eager should have clobbered him yet managed not to.

Basically it was embarrassing because the Flyers couldn’t get any shots on goal, there were dudes standing in a section up above us that got on the jumbotron with orange-painted naked chests and spelling out FLERS (where was Y??), and the Phantoms could have played better than who was on the roster last night. You know, I could have done what they did. I could have not shot on goal. I could have been poke-checked to death. I could have been rammed into the boards. I could have not won a faceoff. I could have turned the puck over. Why am I sitting here earning pennies compared to what those guys are getting when I could have played equally as badly as they did last night? HMPH!! The guy in front of me (Flyers fan wearing a Roenick All-Star game jersey) kept looking back up at me and shaking his head. There were simply no words.

K. gloated, and then felt bad for it. Not because the Flyers lost – that made him happy. It was because it bummed me out pretty hard. My birthday, for crying out loud! Why did the Flyers have to leave their game at home on that day?! I didn’t actually feel like crying, but it was a difficult disappointment. I appreciate K. having the niceness to be contrite for any pain his gloating may have caused (though had it been any other day, he would not have been, and I wouldn’t have expected him to be. Had the Flyers won, I would have been rubbing it in every minute of the way home.). There are just some teams where it hurts twice as much to lose to: the Devils are one of them. When the crowd starts chanting “Still our bitches!” all you can do is cringe. Cringe because it’s true. (After the game, in the ladies’ room, one Flyers-dressed girl said to her Devils-dressed friend, “I didn’t gloat when we won in Philadelphia.” Apparently her friend was not sorry for being insufferable.)

Ok, I was reading hockey boards this morning about the game, and on one people are up in arms about a cross-checking penalty taken by Scottie Upshall, who hit Sergei Brylin (who went down as though he had been shot). I recall this only because I remember Brylin down on the ice, looking minutes from death. I did not see what happened, because the play had continued past him toward the goal, and suddenly the whistle was blowing and we weren’t sure why. Then we saw this Devil milking things for all they were worth. It probably hurt, but it’s hockey, dude. He got his stick up a little bit, too; he wasn’t totally innocent there. And, Upshall wasn’t trying to decapitate him. From what I can tell on review Upshall was careless and perhaps aggressive on the play but was not trying to end Brylin’s career, which you might have thought he was trying to do, reading some of these comments about it. Apparently, if you were watching the game on CSN, you were able to see Upshall’s lips forming some unflattering words about Brylin. The thread is titled “Flyers do it again – Upshall this time.” It includes another round of uplifting posts with suggestions that the Flyers be fined. Also the suggestions that Briere or Gagne should be “run” which supposedly would put an end to the rampant, unchecked goonery displayed by the O&B. I’m telling you – I want to see this kind of thread when someone else out there, on some other team – you pick! – cross-checks someone and that someone goes down. It is so tiresome that the Flyers are always singled out and whined about when one of them makes a physical play, penalty-deserving or not. Honestly. I’m sure my complaining about how tiresome it is is also getting tiresome, but until this kind of knee-jerk Flyers hating stalls, I’m going to complain. I’m good at complaining. And I can complain here all I want. It’s my blog! I’m a microscopist, you’d think I like things under microscopes, but it’s starting to irritate the hell out of me that the Flyers are constantly under … a microscope. Anyone else makes a play like that, people shake their heads and say, “Bad play” and let it go at that. When it’s the Flyers, they start talking suspensions and fines. Makes sense.

So, some incidences that are only related to hockey because they happened on the trip I made to see the Devils/Flyers in Newark: we were parked in a lot in Trenton near the train station. We got back to it around 11:45 p.m. K.’s car was the only one left in the lot, and the lot was chained closed. Um. We had not looked at the sign which read that the lot was open from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Oops. As we approached from one side, K. said, “At least they didn’t tow it. Or boot it. Wait – did they boot my car??” They did not. I then served as chain prop. Using K.’s newly-purchased Devils scarf to wrap the chain to prevent it from scratching the top of his car in the event that I was not tall enough to hold the chain up enough to drive under it (about the only good use for such an item), I stood and held the chain up. It was heavy. It was cold. But I was just tall enough and could hold it up just enough. We were free! To go across the street to a Sunoco to buy gas, where we saw two things:

1) The car in front of us was being filled by the person who was driving it, not an attendant. Um, is New Jersey or is New Jersey not a state where you are not allowed to pump your own gas? Interesting …

2) This person pumping her own gas was smoking. I have never in my life seen such a thing. I thought it was pretty much understood by all thinking human beings that one would not want to have something burning anywhere near a place that would have flammable vapors. Especially when there are signs screaming at you not to smoke at the gas pump. We also saw her companion wandering around next to her, also smoking. I was absolutely flabbergasted. Seriously! I know some people are pretty much stupider than stupid, but this seemed stupider than abjectly stupid. It got worse. When the gas tank had filled, she reached down to take the nozzle out of the car, and used the hand that had the lit cigarette in it. So a lit cigarette was inches away from the gas tank. Um.

Henrik Lundqvist was on our train back to Trenton. Ok, not Henrik Lundqvist, but some guy who thought he was Lundqvist. He was wearing a Rangers jersey with #30 on it.


Tonight is the Phantoms vs. Bridgeport. We usual three will have a couple friends along with us and so have exchanged some tickets and will be sitting a couple rows behind where we usually do. Sharing the hockey love with new folks…and two games in two nights for me!


*NERD ALERT!

A stat that makes me gleeful on this, my thirty-first birthday:

Sidney Crosby was minus-2 last night.

I disagree with NHL.com’s headline for the game recap -- “Flyers get rare win versus Pens” -- as though alllll the years before last year had never occurred (years where it was the Pens struggling). It is rare if you only look at the microcosm of last year. But whatever. Last year is done, and I enjoyed last night’s game enormously, beginning with another moment to gloat over, during the first shift of the game when Crosby was trying to get too fancy against the boards and Danny Briere took the puck away from him as though to say, “Little boy, this is not for you” and this steal led directly to Joffrey Lupul’s fifth goal of the season, 28 seconds into the game.

Awesome. It wasn’t some garbage goal, either. It was a wrist shot that went past Sabourin and stunned him. Stunned a lot of people. Stunned me, but I recovered quickly with a cat-scaring “YES!”

So I got almost everything that I asked for in last night’s game.

1) Tough start? Check. The Flyers came out with legs moving, brains alert, eyes functioning. There was no sluggish action. They pounced immediately; case in point, the steal by Briere leading to a goal 28 seconds in. And they didn’t let up just because they jumped out to that early lead. Jeff Carter made it 2-0 after 5.5 minutes of play. No one was on him! (And Crosby was on the ice for that, too. Hsss.)

2) Flow, crisp passing, communication? Check, check, check. I saw passes that I had not seen in many a game. Outlet passes, tape-to-tape passes, and passes that found a man rather than sailing into eternity alone. The Flyers moved the puck with confidence, and knew where each other were. Good to see.

3) Effective fore- and backchecking? Check, check. (Heehee.) The Flyers kept the pressure on the Pens for most of the game.

4) Quality shots? Aww yeah, check. 2 goals in 3 shots. Some good breakouts that didn’t make it in, but better looks at the goal than they had been getting. They had 20 shots the whole game, but three went in – nice.

5) Crackdown on opponent’s shot opportunities? Check!! 27 shots total by the Pens. That was barely 1.2 periods’ worth of shots on Monday. An improvement I’d like to see continue.

6) Great hockey i.e. not a stumble-fest where the Pens are always in the Flyers’ zone? Checkcheckcheckcheck! The Pens were hardly ever in the Flyers’ zone. It was a complete reversal of recent efforts. The Penguins were the ones who looked constantly on the PK. The Flyers were always there in the neutral zone to pokecheck it back into the Pens’ zone. They were always passing it forward, they were always there, buzzing around and forcing turnovers and it was possession, possession, possession. Loved it.

6) Fewer turnovers? Check. There were a few that were bad, one that was disastrous and led to the Pens’ only goal (which, alas, was assisted by the crybaby). But it wasn’t nearly so ugly as of late. The Pens were turning it over worse. Those are the hot poppin’ turnovers I like to see.

7) Better transition. Checkity check.

The only thing that I did not get was my desire for Mike Knuble not to take a stupid power-play negating penalty. What did he do? Take out some Penguin in front of the net with his leg, just knocking him down with no room for excuses. It was a penalty through and through and was so ill-advised as to have me on my feet cursing him. How many more times am I going to have to suffer seeing that stuff? Fortunately, the Pens were not able to score on the reduced power play they got once they were back to full strength. Knubs found himself in the box in the third period again, and again, it was fortunate that the Penguins couldn’t score. The Flyers’ PK was spot-on last night, not allowing Pittsburgh’s “lethal” PP any latitude.

Let’s see, what other moments did I particularly savor?

Richards’ goal. I am salivating over this guy. He’s the complete package. Really. There is a campaign brewing on the message boards to get him into the All-Star game as a write-in, and I’m totally on board with that. He’s definitely the Flyers all-star at this time. J., messaging me after his beautiful goal in the second period: “I think I want a Richards jersey.” I’d consider it too, if it weren’t one of those stupid Rbk Edge travesties. Should have gotten one last year, but couldn’t have foreseen just what a force he was going to be so immediately.

Biron’s stunning outstandingness late in the third period to make sure that the Penguins didn’t get any closer. After Coburn took a bad-but-great penalty very close to the end of the game (bad as in there was no reason for it, great as in it was dumping Crybaby rather forcefully to the ice such that for the rest of the game he had snow on his back), the Flyers had to kill a desperate attack. And I don’t know how Biron did it. There were some saves before that which had my jaw down. You’d think one might be growing accustomed to it, but it’s still such a novelty – awesome, consistant, game-saving goaltending? On the Flyers?? – that I am still boggled by his impressive play.

So you have it: as of Thursday, November 8, 2007, Crusher’s two favorite Flyers are Mike Richards and Marty Biron.

Line changes seem to have done a fantastic trick. As Stevens said after the game, “Time will tell.” Tonight? Flyers vs. Devils in New Jersey. I’m going to be there. I was chatting with K., who is going with me, last night. He is the Devils fan, remember, the dude with the divided loyalties. (Our loyalties were completely united last night, though, in hating the Penguins.) Apparently he has gotten a Devils hat to wear to the game. I called him a loser (it’s all in good fun!) and said that I would be wearing a Flyers jersey. A black one; I want to proclaim my allegiance, but draw as little attention to myself as possible in the process, but will likely still attract notice. (I don’t know what it’s really like for a Flyers fan at Devils’ games. I’m imagining the harassment I hear of opposing fans in Philly as the upper limit.) “Oh great,” he said. “For your birthday, I’m going to get beat up defending you.” I appreciate it, but look at it this way: for my birthday, I get to be heckled. Yay!

I’m really looking forward to my birthday adventure. If the Flyers play like they did last night, I think they will have no problem. And if the Debbies play like they did earlier this week against the Penguins (5-0 loss!!!) then they really will have no problem. But I won’t make any assumptions or take anything for granted based on one game last night. I hope I see some good hockey, no matter what the outcome. GO FLYERS!

Want to be annoyed?

In this video you will see Hamrlik hit Gaustad from behind eerily similar to how Randy Jones hit Patrice Bergeron.

No penalty on the play. No suspension. Why? I assume because Gaustad wasn't hurt.

Broken record here, but:

NHL -- you have to wake the $%#^ up. Mere inches, if that, kept Gaustad from ending up on the ice like Bergeron. If you don't $%#&ing legislate the HITS instead of merely the RESULTS, RESULTS will continue to happen, because guys are going to continue to make the HITS.


Bets as to how many more times we're going to see other guys get away with stuff guys in Flyers uniforms didn't?

So I was watching some of the Rangers/Islanders game last night and wondered why other teams seem to be able to come out in the first period on fire, flowing, checking, shooting, passing, etc., while the Flyers come out looking like I feel when I go running in the morning – dragging, flat, heavy, slow. I can blame my lethargy on having only been out of bed 15 minutes and running on fuel I ingested 12 hours before (i.e. a “tank” mostly empty); is that the Flyers’ problem too? Maybe they need to wake up from their pre-game naps earlier. Anyway, I watched the first period and wished it had been the Flyers and not the Islanders. Then I gave up, Henrik Lundqvist frustrating me again with his save magic, and went to read a little before going to sleep. This morning, I see that the Islanders managed to beat the Rags 3-2 and take the division lead. Last night’s game meant someone was going to pass Philly for the top spot, and I am glad that it wasn’t the Rangers. I have not liked them, of course, at all, ever, but this week I realized how much I dislike them. It is much less offensive, somehow, for the Islanders to be ahead of the Flyers.

In the standings, Pittsburgh is one point behind Philadelphia, so tonight’s game matters in more ways than those intangibles, one of which I mentioned yesterday: shove last year in Pittsburgh’s face. If the Pens win tonight, they move ahead. I don’t want that to happen. I want to see the Flyers start the game tough (that is not to say to come out with fists swinging); I want flow, I want crisp passing, I want communication, I want effective fore- and backchecking, I want useless penalties to be taken only by the Penguins [this includes the fact that I want the Flyers to not negate a power play by taking a stupid penalty (I’m looking at you, Mike Knuble, and then I’m sliding a glance at you, Danny Briere)], and I want quality shots – a lot of quality shots – fired at whoever it is that will be in net for the Pens. I want to see the Flyers that played Vancouver. I want to go into the first intermission feeling as though I have seen great hockey, not some stumble-fest with the Flyers in their own zone hosting the Pens for a shooting party. I don’t want to feel like I have just watched 20 minutes of Flyers’ penalty kill. I want the defense to crack down on shots taken by the opposition. I want fewer hot poppin’ turnovers, I want better transition.

Is that too much to ask?

According to things I am reading this morning, Richards will center the top line tonight (between Gagne and Knuble) with Briere moving down to Umberger and Lupul. In the Inquirer, John Stevens is quoted as saying, “We need more flow to our game and to establish some pressure over the course of our four lines.” And, oddly, I completely agree with something Panaccio says in response: “That was the polite way of saying, ‘We need to wake some people up because our four lines are comatose at the start of every game.’” So they shake things up in order to try to wake them up. I’m interested in seeing how this works out. Richards is arguably the best forward on the team right now, no matter how much Briere is getting paid. He’s got the most goals, and he plays every single freaking shift as though everything’s on the line. I guess he’s the only one to realize that everything is actually on the line, every night, every game, every shift. You take one off, who knows what kind of goal might happen, and who knows how that goal might reverberate through your record all the way through to April. Perhaps that’s a little melodramatic, but it seems like a lot of guys were taking a lot of shifts off, and it’s starting to translate to losses, which, as we saw last year, add up if you don’t put a stop to it and play fully every game.

By the way, I might like to see a Gagne/Briere/Upshall line, followed by Umberger/Richards/Lupul. Your thoughts? I don’t know where Knuble fits in in that case, but I have not, personally, thought he has been effective lately on the first line. I’d like to see how Scottie works there.

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The Iowa Stars found themselves down by two goals in the third against Peoria again. In front of a sadly small crowd (I’d blame it being a Tuesday, but …) Toby Petersen scored two of his three goals in order to lift the Stars into overtime. His first career hat trick was the first Stars’ hat trick since the Nasty Norwegian scored three in a game last March (against San Antonio). Two of the goals were assisted by Junior Lessard. After a scoreless overtime, the game moved to the shootout, where Tobias Stephan stopped all five Peoria shots to allow the Stars a win on a goal by Marty Sertich. Both Tobys were named as AHL stars for last night. With the win, the Stars are tied points-wise with Peoria for sixth place in the West, at 6-6-0-0. Middle-of-the-road is not a bad place to be one month into the season, but the West is a tough division with the Wolves, IceHogs (whose players are the former Norfolk Admirals, who made the East tough; now the Norfolk Admirals are Sadmirals), and the suddenly-impressive Rampage. Whatever points the Stars can scrape together early will benefit them in the long run. They have a chance to distance themselves from Peoria on Friday, when they play the Rivermen again.

Lundqvist’s tangible contributions to the game (as noted on the scoresheet): a hooking minor in the second and a missed goal in the shootout. He was also on the ice for two of Peoria’s three goals. Having not seen or heard the game, I cannot judge if his positive play outweighs the negatives noted on the box score. Last season, his role in Iowa was not his role in Dallas; I wonder if that’s different this time.

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Apparently, since I bought tickets for the Devils/Flyers game, Ticketmaster now believes I am a Devils fan and has sent me an email letting me know what the Devils' schedule is for November. Ticketmaster: WRONG.

Friday night I was out for pizza and recorded the Flyers/Caps game, returning home before its conclusion. I discovered the beauty of DVR by starting to watch the game while it was still recording. I also discovered that if one of your cats attacks the other cat while they are in the vicinity of the power cord, chances are the power cord is going to come out of the wall, and the DVR will stop recording. I threatened the cats, who did not seem to care at all, and then discovered that upon restoring power to the DVR, it automatically continues to record, but warns you that there had been an interruption and that things may not turn out as you hoped.

The power cord disruption had occurred at 10:10 p.m., which I figured would be after the game was officially over, but there is no certainty of that; I was afraid that the interruption would have happened just as the game ended or similar. Fortunately, it did not, though I did worry in the last few minutes, mainly because the Flyers were winning 3-2 and I would have been so mad if I would have missed a Caps tying goal to force overtime.

I did not have to be mad, and was in fact pretty happy.

Well, happy after the first period. The Flyers cannot seem to get their act together in the first twenty minutes. Maybe someone should tell them that the game starts at 7, not at 8. Or that it is ok – good even – to keep the puck out of their own zone during that first 20 minutes. The fact that Niittymaki was in net made me nervous, because, well, we all have seen the way he has played in the last year or more. I wish I could stand firm on my conviction that he is a great goalie, the conviction built after watching him in 2004-2005 and in the Olympics, but the truth is that I cringed when the puck came near. I feel as though I have betrayed him by allowing myself to doubt him. But on Friday night he played solidly. He let in a couple goals but I don’t fault him. While I am easing up on my belief in jinxes these days, I blame CSN for Ovechkin’s goal. They ran a graphic along the bottom of the screen commenting that Ovechkin had scored, what, 7 goals on Niitty in his career? “0 tonight” it added. I screamed at the TV. What did Ovechkin then do? Scored on Niitty. And it was a soft goal, on the PP after Smith took an ill-advised delay-of-game penalty (generally, I think the d-o-g penalty (ha!) is a waste, half the time it was not intentional). Sure, the reality is that he could have and should have stopped it, but sometimes, the jinx power is just too strong.

Flyers spend too much time battling in their own zone, but one positive to pull from the game (besides the 2 points for the win) is the fact that they only allowed 26 shots on goal, as opposed to the 40+ they seem to enjoy allowing every other night they play. Would be nice if it were a sign of things to come, but as we shall see, the Flyers are up to their usual tricks again.

The Phantoms had a three-game weekend, playing Friday night in Portland, Saturday night in Worcester, and Sunday night in Lowell. It was the first weekend I did not see hockey in person since the start of the season, and I felt a little bit at a loss. The Phantoms did all right without me, though. In Friday’s game, they sucked up an overtime loss to the Pirates, only their second loss of the season (but still gathering up an ever-important point), 3-2. Phantoms got behind early and came back to tie it, only to go down 2-1 again and battling back to tie in the third. Phantoms goals were scored by Kyle Greentree and Darren Reid (4th and 6th goals of the year, respectively). Jonathan Matsumoto assisted on both, with Reid taking the secondary assist on the first. Reid is doing better this year than I anticipated, after listening to how he played for the Flyers last year (not that great). There is real depth at the forward positions, and it’s quite nice to experience.

In Saturday’s game, Steve Downie made his first regular-season appearance, his AHL suspension having come to a close. (He has served 11 games of his 20-game NHL suspension.) He celebrated first by setting up Zingoni’s first goal of the night, shortly after only a minute had been played. Zingo took a feed from Jussi Timonen to score his second, putting the Phantoms up 2-0. Rosie took Downie’s second celebratory assist, scoring the third goal in the second period. The unfortunate news out of the game is that Boucher, having kept the Sharks out of the net, had to leave in the second period thanks to an “unspecified injury” – but Munroe came in and continued the shut0ut by stopping 19 more shots. So with a tandem team in the net, the Phantoms closed out Worcester, 3-0. Also nice to see Steve Downie’s name legitimately occupying the assist position in the box score (rather than being a weird ghost placeholder, or there as someone’s idea of a joke). Of course, he also got a good start to his PIM record for the year, taking a 5-minute major in the first for fighting. He was the game’s first star. When he gets his suspension worked off, I wonder how much time he will spend playing with the Phantoms. I think some time in the minors might help him out, but he may fill in on the Flyers appropriately given an injury, need for things to be mixed up, etc.

Going into Sunday’s game 1-0-1 for the weekend, the Phantoms faced Lowell and the hero of the night was Denis Tolpeko. The Phantoms allowed the first goal of the game (for only the third time this season, apparently) and so had to come from behind to tie and then take the lead. The Devils would go ahead and the Phantoms would tie again, though it looked bad for the Phantoms in the third, down 4-3 (Tolpeko scoring his first goal of the night early on to make it 3-3) until the last minute-oh-nine when Matsumoto was able to put the puck past Frank Doyle (the goalie that I saw play in the pre-season and had no clue who he was) to tie it up and force overtime. An overtime in which Tolpeko scored again just under a minute to give the Phantoms the win and a 2-0-1 record for the weekend (5 out of 6 possible points).

The Phantoms now have 21 points and still reign supreme in the AHL with a 3-point cushion over the next two, Toronto and … San Antonio???

Rub the sleep out of your eyes all you want; it’s true. The San Antonio Rampage sit at the top of the West Division and contend for second place in the league.

Here’s another shocker: Hershey Bears are last in the East with only 6 points. Um, did this team or did this team not 1) win the Calder Cup in 2006 and 2) go to the Calder Cup finals in 2007? The whole East seems turned upside down since Wilkes-Barre, Norfolk, and Hershey are battering around at the bottom, and that’s unusual. But it’s great that the Phantoms are sitting all handsome looking down at everyone from above. So far, Providence (with 16 points) are the only team that have managed to manhandle the Phantoms, and it’s a long time until they show up on the radar again (February). Teams coming up that we have not already faced: on Friday, Bridgeport (5-5, 10 points, 4th in the East); on Saturday, Binghamton (second in the East with 13 points); on the 23rd, at the Wachovia Center, Hershey. In between Saturday and the 23rd, the Phantoms will face Albany again (13 pts., 3rd place in the East), Wilkes-Barre (booo, 10 pts., 5th place East), Binghamton again, and Norfolk (7 pts., 6th place in the East). It is, apparently, divisional match-up month, making each one a “4-point” game. Given good health and the continual surge of awesome play, the Phantoms are poised to take a commanding stranglehold on the division.

How awesome is that?

Last night, I watched two periods of the Flyers/Rangers game. It may just have been my tired brain, but did both teams seem sluggish? I was impatient watching the first period, because not only were the Flyers playing as though stuck in first gear, but the Rangers did not seem to buzz much either (in spite of spending as much time as they wanted to in the Flyers’ zone). The two fights that happened in the first period seemed like wastes of time. Mike Richards clearly was not into fighting Sean Avery (at the end of his shift, obviously tired, plus with pretty-fresh stitches on his nose from his last fight), but went for it anyway; I know it’s probably difficult to walk away from Sean fricking Avery, but I think he should have rather than put himself in the box for five minutes. We will never know what might have transpired had he let Avery stew, gone back to the bench, and then contributed as usual on his next shift. At least Avery still couldn’t definitively take him down, no matter how empty Richards’ tank was. (I hate Sean Avery.) The next fight saw Riley Cote jumping on Strudwick and getting slugged a few times, another pointless bear-hug contest that ratcheted up my impatience level.

[The announcers seriously did not help my impatience. “Kicked out with a purpose” – more than once, Biron’s routine goalie actions were considered having been done “with a purpose.” No kidding and/or DUH, guys (to co-opt a bit from a Comcast commercial). What goalie thinks “Oh, I’ll stick my leg out just coz, no reason, la la la”???]

22 shots by the Rangers in the first period showed that the Flyers had given up already on limiting opposition chances, and Jagr fired a shot that was embarrassing to the Flyers and put the Flyers behind 1-0. The worst part of it is not that it was Jagr that scored the goal (though that is hard to stomach), but that the Flyers were on the power play only to have it negated when Briere took a penalty, making it 4-on-4. And I don’t know what Coburn was supposed to do with Jagr coming down with the puck like that. Either he tries to check Jagr, which would probably have simply led to Jagr going around him and then what? Or he stays back, like he did, and then Jagr does what he did. It’s a gamble that almost never pays off. The point is that Jagr never should have been able to get into the position he did in the first place. The Flyers should have been able to finish the period on the power play, but Briere … ugh. I cursed him.

And I didn’t watch the third period because I was tired and impatient and did not want to continue to watch Henrik Lundqvist play Superman Goalie and the Flyers get nothing. What did I miss? Briere running his mouth (whether or not it was deserved is not the point) and getting an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty which led to a Rags goal and the game ended 2-0. I did not see the third period, but what I did see in the first and second gives me the impression that it was almost entirely goaltending that decided this one. Biron was shelled and the game should have been a runaway for the Rangers, but he somehow manages to keep the Flyers in it. (How long is that going to hold up??) Lundqvist just effing stops everything anyway. Had the Flyers been playing against almost any other goalie last night (Brodeur, perhaps? When was the last time he got pulled before last night??) I think they probably would have potted something. At least I’m going to tell myself that. The Rags did a pretty decent job of keeping the puck on the opposite end of the ice, plus shoving the Flyers out to the sides. I did see some bright moments here and there, though, which is why I will allow myself to believe that they would have had a better chance with someone not named Lundqvist in goal. Let me have the illusion. I’m tired here today.

Flyers are off until tomorrow, when they play Pittsburgh. This is a week of divisional matchups for the Flyers, too. They’re still sitting at the top, but it’s certainly a tenuous hold – one point over the Rags. Little points here and there are really going to matter, so that’s just one more reason to hope that the Flyers can put a full game together on Wednesday. None of this missing out on the first period BS. They’ve got to come out battling from the first face-off all the way through. I’m tired of theme being lacking play in the first, coming out for it in the second or third. (At least they come out for it, though. We didn’t even get that, last year.) And I so very badly want the Flyers to shove last year back in the Pens’ faces. Last night, Evgeni Malkin made a backwards pass from his knees, spinning around, a pass that led to a goal. It was pretty amazing, but I don’t think it was as intentional as the announcers (homers, both of them) made it sound. Yeah, he was on his knees with his back to the action, and he made a swipe at the puck to throw it backwards, but the way he turned his head said to me that he was hoping to see something good, not knowing that he passed it perfectly. It was lucky, and looked good in the process of being lucky. I don’t want to see any of that crap Wednesday night.

And it goes just about without saying that I want to see something great on Thursday. It’s my birthday, for crying out loud, and I’m traveling all the way to freaking Newark, NJ to see the game. It’s not quite the same as flying all the way out to Philly from Iowa, but the basic idea is that same: I don’t want to go to all that effort and travel just to see poor play. Come on, Flyers. It’s not like you can’t be awesome – we have seen it. So go back to that!!!

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Peter Forsberg withdrew from a Finnish tournament, where he was to play on the Swedish national team, because his foot did not feel right. Apparently he said "I've never been so close to saying my career is over". I thought I might cry when I read that. I don't actually understand what's going on here. He's been practicing with the Swedish team and would never have agreed to play if it wasn't feeling all right. Then suddenly right before the tournament, it's feeling bad enough that he withdraws? What happened?! I know that Forsberg is not the kind of guy who will just do something like that. He's apologized to fans who have bought tickets in order to see him play and says he has "made a fool" of himself. The foot is tricky business but I'm wondering now if it's more a psychological issue. He's struggled with the foot situation for quite some time now; perhaps he's got it built up in his head that it's just not going to be right. Maybe it's been long enough since it's felt "normal" that he doesn't remember what "normal" feels like, and so it never will feel "normal" again, leading to these doubts that lead ... on and on. It's awful. It would be a long, long time before I accepted that Peter Forsberg simply will not play again. I can't imagine hockey without him. It's been hard enough this last month.

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Iowa Stars play Peoria tonight. Looking forward to seeing how Lundqvist does back with Lessard and Petersen (given that they are not out with injuries – I haven’t read anything to that effect).

There is some construction going on at the research center site where I work, and one of the small bulldozers has a Flyers magnet on its back.

Seeing stuff like that makes me happy. I love being out here in Flyersland.

Looking forward to tonight's game for a number of reasons, which includes but is not limited to the following: 1) I think they will play better against the Caps (too much time off seems to drag at their feet, and they will, I hope, have a little more oomph to them tonight, which they will need to keep Ovechkin off the scoresheet); 2) Well, the simple fact that it's the Flyers; and 3) I had to pay my cable bill today, and seeing the Flyers on TV will remind me why the $66.61 is money well-spent. (Even better spent if I get to see a win!)

The red metal tube that forms the outline of the goal mouth was the Flyers' nemesis last night. At least three shots rang off that metal, and were a big part of the difference in the 5-2 loss against the Canadiens last night. Another factor was the BS call on Briere, who must have had a third hand or a second stick visible only to the referee that tripped up Christopher Higgins. The Montreal power play that resulted from the 100% bogus call led to a goal. So if things had gone the way they should have last night, the score would have been 5-4 Flyers.

Seriously, tell me when the rules were changed such that some guy falling becomes a penalty for the other team. If that's the case, then when Richie fell and turned the puck over during a Flyers PP (leading directly to a Montreal 324-on-one, which in turn led to a short-handed goal) a call should have been made and the Flyers should have had a 2-man advantage there. Whenever your team loses you are inclined to place some of the blame on refereeing, but that really was an egregious display of poor (poor? Outright atrocious!) officiating.

The upside was that the Flyers' two goals were nice. Briere, roundly booed every time he touched the puck, made a quick back pass to Richards, who managed to get it past and off the Canadiens in front of the net to score goal #1. And late in the third period, when it made only a moral difference, Scottie Upshall, playing in his first game since breaking his wrist in the preseason, scored a beauty that at first I wasn't sure I had seen correctly. Huet was just standing there. Upshall fired the shot, and did Huet even move? And it was in. 5-2 Flyers. I loved the goal. I only wish it had had more than an emotional meaning.

And I wish the Flyers had looked more together. Is it possible that this team relies that much on the presences of Hatcher and Jones? Did you ever think the day would come when you might muddle over that? Gagne being out affects things negatively, but there was no question of that. I hope the guys take long looks at what did not go right yesterday and stitch things up for tonight's game against the Caps. I did not like looking at a Flyers team that spent most of the time playing sloppily and trying to chase the Habs out of their zone (and failing).

P.S. Richards hit Kovalev with his shoulder last night, with Kovalev subsequently falling to the ice and lying there for a while like he'd been brutally clocked or something. Richards got a penalty for elbowing. Which is hilarious, because his actual elbow was nowhere near Kovalev's head. Perhaps the referee, the same one who saw Briere's invisible stick or leg or something, also saw a mysterious third elbow, invisible to the rest of the world, come up and hammer Kovalev in the head. Should we start a pool on how many games he will be suspended for such an obviously malicious and dangerous head shot?

P.P.S. Biron may have let in 5 goals but without some of his highway robbery action the score would have been far, far more disgusting. I think the crowd was chanting "Beeeee-roooown" at him. I don't think he cared. Or maybe it was "Brieee-eerre." Whatever. En puhun French-Canadian, so maybe they sound the same to me. If it was more heckling of Briere, all I can say to that is sour grapes, people. Sour grapes.

OK, so, SHOCKING DALLAS NEWS: Joel Lundqvist has been sent down to Iowa. Apparently he is a non-waiver player so they don't risk losing him. (Apparently I also don't understand nuances of contracts very well. I thought a one-way contract, which I thought he had, meant he couldn't just be sent down to Iowa. Help?) The Stars are bringing up Chris Conner to try to help out with the scoring, and to make contract room for this, they gotta send someone down, and for some reason, it's Joel. But not, allegedly, for poor play. "Sometimes, you just have to make the numbers work" sayeth Coach Tippett. Well, I'm sure Joel's not too happy, but I doubt it will last long. I hope he's back with Dallas by December, because I want to see him play vs. the Flyers.