Weekend Post-Mortem

Flyers

The Flyers played an incredibly boring weekend of hockey, even by Ken Hitchcock standards. They dropped a 2 - 1 decision to the New York Rangers on Saturday afternoon. Robert Esche singlehandedly kept them in this one, making 33 saves. Joni Pitkanen scored the only goal and Peter Forsberg took two cheesy minor penalties. The Rangers outshot the Flyers 35 - 18, but that spoke more to the fact that the Flyers had 7 minors whistled against them (to the Rangers 3).

On Sunday, the Flyers took to the road and played the Atlanta Thrashers and beat them 2 - 1. Antero Niittymaki made 37 mostly brilliant saves playing against fellow countryman, goaltender Kari Lehtonen of the Atlanta Thrashers. The underacheiving Jeff Carter scored both goals for the Flyers, who were once again outshot by a wide margin (38 - 23) most likely attributable to another big discrepancy with respect to power plays (6 penalties against the Flyers, 2 against the Thrashers).

Monday will be a big day for the Flyers as Peter Forsberg will meet with Paul Holmgren, who will presumably tell Forsberg to make up his mind on what he wants to do, with respect to his future. My hunch is nothing will come of this. I suspect that they'll diddle with his foot and finding a skate for it for another couple of weeks. At that time, the trade rumors will come hot and heavy and I think Forsberg will get moved at the deadline.

Sixers

The Sixers dropped one to the Lebron James-less Cavaliers on Friday night by a score of 105 - 97. Andre Miller had a triple double in the loss (12pts, 12reb, 13asst) and Kyle Korver shot a dreadful 3 for 13 from the floor. The Cavs were also able to squeeze off 10 more shots than the Sixers in this game in which they absolutely should have won.

The Sixers made up for this one by beating the Atlanta Hawks 104 - 89 on the strength of 19 points from Samuel Dalembert (8 of 11 shooting) and 24 points from Andre Iguodala. This gave the Sixers wins in 3 or their last 4 games and is seriously screwing up their quest to draft either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. Both Boston and Memphis have fewer wins than the Sixers, who can't even seem to tank the season correctly.