Flyers Drop Opener

The Flyers, playing in their first regular season game of the year, dropped a strange game to the New York Rangers by a score of 4 - 3.

The Rangers, already playing their 4th game of the season, came out and blitzed the Flyers to the tune of 4 goals in the first period. Two of them were absolutely stoppable by goaltender Martin Biron, who was ultimately pulled from the game in favor of Antero Niittymaki.

Ultimately, however, the Rangers dominance had more to do with the Flyers looking as if they were still playing in the preseason. A couple of Flyers attempted to wake up the team; specifically, Riley Cote, who took on Colton Orr, and Mike Richards, who traded fives with Brandon Dubinsky.

Ultimately, however, it took until the 2nd period for the Flyers to wake up and get on the board. Scott Hartnell converted a Glen Metropolit face off win for a shorthanded goal early in the 2nd period by shooting high over Stephen Valiquette's glove hand. The period also featured Mike Richards flying around the ice; he drew two penalties in the period and seemed determined to dig the Flyers out of the hole they dug for themselves.

The Flyers struck again towards the end of the 2nd period when Simon Gagne batted in a Danny Briere rebound to chalk up his first goal in forever. For the game, I thought Gagne looked like a guy who hadn't played in awhile, but more importantly, he didn't look timid, which was a good sign for a guy coming off of post-concussive syndrome.

The third period was all Flyers, but they could only dent the Ranger net once on a Mike Richards goal from a sweet cross-ice feed from Danny Briere. The Flyers certainly had their opportunities in the 3rd period; they had a 2 man advantage with a little under 10 minutes left in the game, but they were turned away.

Notes:

- It's hard to understate how poorly the Flyers looked in the 1st peroid; the only consolation you can take from this game is that when they got their skating legs, they dominated the Rangers.

- Danny Briere....2 assists.

- Lasse Kukkonen was a -2 in the game and was the guy that got beat wide when Sjostrom scored.

- Luca Sbisa wasn't bad in his debut. He was a -1, but the whole team was so bad early, it was difficult to tell. By the end of the game, Sbisa was carrying the puck up ice confidently and even pursued on the forecheck at one point.

- Nice work from Glen Metropolit last night. One of the few Flyers that showed energy early on in the game and he got some increased ice time during the game.

- Stephen Valiquette? Again? Really? You gotta be kidding me.

- In case you missed it, I wrote a preview of the 2008-2009 Flyers season for The700level.com.

- Sarah Palin dropping the puck got alot of press after the game. I don't care about the home crowd booing her; what angers me is that she was there to drop the puck in the first place. I'm not angry about her presence at the game because of her politics; I'm angry that Owner Ed Snider would use his hockey team as a bully pulpit for his political views.

Many of us go to the hockey games to forget about politics and the real world for awhile. While I have no problem with highlighting the contributions of the armed services during the game (as the Flyers are wont to do), I am appalled that Snider, a known McCain donor, would push his choice for President under the disingenuous guise of inviting a well-known "Hockey Mom" to drop the puck. I don't care for it when Rock Stars prosthelize their political beliefs during a concert I pay to attend and I don't like it when rich hockey owners do the same.

Photo: yahoo.com....(Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

Lost Phils Weekend; Flyers Draft Redux

The Phils

Wow, that didn't go well. Six games against the elite in the AL on your home field and you could only manage 1 lousy win. I hope Pat Gillick was watching closely. It was a good wakeup call for this team.

The Phils' lead in NL East is down to 1 game. Now, they go on the road against Oakland and Texas, and if they don't win 4 of 6 games on this trip, I think some personnel will need shaking up.

Look for JRoll to have a good trip in his hometown of Oakland.

The Flyers

The NHL draft was held last Friday and the Flyers were busy with shifting their roster around. They traded RJ Umberger to Columbus for two draft picks; one of which was the 19th pick overall. What they were trying to do, according to the Courier-Posts Chuck Gormley, was to trade up to get a goaltender. When the goaltender was taken, Holmgren took 18 year old defenseman Luca Sbisa. I had no problem with the selection of a defenseman....that is definitely an area of need for the Flyers in their system right now.

There was definitely a logjam at forward and someone was going to have to go. I've never been a huge RJ Umberger fan. Because of how he did in the playoffs against Montreal, Umberger's value was never going to be higher. Umberger has the air of a guy who considers his skills to be vastly more superior than they really are. I would have much rather seen Umberger go than a guy like Scottie Upshall or Joffrey Lupul, both of whom are younger than Umberger and much more skilled.

Where I thought Holmgren went a little off of the reservation was when he traded the Flyers' own 1st round pick (27th overall) to the Caps for D Steve Eminger and another draft pick. Isn't that a little bit of a high price to pay for a guy who has never finished an entire season in the NHL? This past year, he was little more than a spare part for Washington going into the playoffs, but with all of the injuries to the Caps blueline, the Caps were forced to play Eminger, who looked pretty good. It'll be interesting to see if a fresh start can help Eminger, who was the 12th overall pick in the 2002 draft. For Holmgren's sake, I hope it does, because the price was very high. If Eminger tanks, it could be Homer's first real mistake as GM.

Culture

- Saw Pearl Jam Friday night at the Susquehanna Bank Centre. Great show and a great time in the parking lot beforehand. Highlight of the night was either "Better Man" or "Alive", but I also enjoyed the "Baba O'Reilly" cover that Pearl Jam does.

- Saw an interesting documentary on HBO about Roman Polanski, but I'm not sure of the point of the documentary. Was it to maintain Polanski's "innocence"? Or to point out judicial misconduct? Because, while judicial misconduct almost definitely occurred, let's not obscure the undisputed fact that this guy drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. And the documentarians do imply that not only should the 13-year old girl have known better (???) but that we shouldn't have expected better of a known poon hound like Roman Polanski. While I believe the documentary was wrongly sympathetic towards a convicted rapist, I still found the documentary interesting......