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)

Big Flyers Game Tonite (and other hockey stuff)

- Habs coach Guy Carbonneau hasn't announced a starter, but I'd be stunned if it weren't Carey Price. The Habs made their bed with Carey Price when they traded Cristobal Huet for a virtual bag of peanuts.

- "Obi-wan" Knuble should be back in the lineup for the Fly-boys tonite. I wouldn't put him back on Carter's line right away, but I think he's definitely been missed on the power play.

- We haven't seen the best game from either of these two teams yet. Need the Flyers to assert themselves offensively and stay out of the penalty box. Saw on Bill Meltzer's pre-game report on Hockeybuzz.com that respected veteran official Bill McCreary will be on hand tonite officiating the game. I wonder if that assignment has anything to do with the Flyers carping in the press about the officiating. From Mike Richards on anti-Flyer bias from officials:

“We know the circumstances we're in,” he said. “We know if we go into a scrum, the odds are we're not going to come out on top of it. We just have to know that and get out of there. That's the mindset we have; we can't take that extra jab ... we'll get called for it.”

- File this under "I totally saw this coming".....Former Flyer Joni Pitkanen, pending restricted free agent, is apparently looking for WAAAY more money than he's currently worth. Sorry, Flyer-bashers.....Paul Holmgren will be vindicated for this deal (if the play of Joffrey Lupul hasn't done so already). I wonder if the light will ever go on for Joni. For a stark comparison on Joni's play, one only needs to look at the way fellow countrymen Kimmo Timonen and Lasse Kukkonen play....both play with passion and grit....two things sorely lacking in Pitkanen's game when he was in Philly. The sad thing is that Pitkanen has more raw talent than both of them.

Flyers, Biron Best Habs in Game 3

For all of those years, I saw the New Jersey Devils come into Philadelphia and kick the Flyers' asses with a French Canadian goaltender named "Martin", I always wondered what it would be like to have our dominant French Canadian goaltender named "Martin".

Well, last night, I found out, as the best player on the ice for both teams was none other than Flyers goaltender Martin Biron, as the Flyers beat the Habs 3 - 2 to take a 2 games to 1 lead in their best of 7 series.

Biron's performance could not have been more timely. The Flyers gave up 8 power plays, including a solid 2 minutes of 5 on 3 power play time and a full 5 minute power play assessed to Derian Hatcher for boarding.

At the other end of the rink, Habs rookie goalie Carey Price was shaky to say the least. Scottie Upshall beat him pretty clean on his goal, but the Mike Richards shorthanded goal was one Price should have had and the goal seemed to suck the life right out of the Canadiens. When a fat rebound kicked out to RJ Umberger for the 3rd goal of the game, you had a feeling that maybe the Canadiens were considering pulling Price, which they eventually would do.

Let's be clear: This was, by far, not a perfect game by the Flyers. I thought the officiating was a bit one-sided, but the Flyers need to play a little smarter. The Derian Hatcher play is a perfect example. While I don't believe the play warranted a full 5 minute major (should have been a double minor for boarding), Hatcher should have never put himself in that position to begin with. Lasse Kukkonen took two bad penalties in the latter stages of the 2nd and 3rd period. Because of all the penalties, the penalty killers saw a lot of ice time and you can never get into an offensive rhythm when you're killing penalties the whole game.

Did you notice?

- The play where Steve Downie allegedly tripped goaltender Carey Price was a good example of how Downie cannot catch a break of any sort from the officials. Price clearly flopped and threw his own mask off in embellishing the call and it should have been called a dive. The penalty calls should have been evened out on that play, but it was just another example of shaky officiating.

- Montreal definitely had a territorial advantage as the game wore on. The Flyers were outshot 17 - 2 in the 3rd period. Yikes. They need to tighten that up going into Game 4.

- Has any Flyer been the recipient of more good bounces in the first 3 games of this series than RJ Umberger? That second period rebound, after a Jeff Carter shot, came right onto his stick for the eventual goal. Carter couldn't have passed it to him that well.

- Another strong game from Braydon Coburn.

At the game:

- Don't know how it sounded on TV, but the "Marty! Marty!" chants were real loud in the arena. After Upshall scored, you couldn't hear Lou Nolan announce who scored it was so loud.

- Not a ton of Montreal fans, but a few. A couple of idiots in my section brought a sign with them all the way from Montreal, which was in French, so none of us knew what it said. To bring a sign down to a hockey game in another country, it had better say something pretty damned profound. After they put their sign up a couple of times, the fans behind them (most of which are regulars in that section) yelled for them to keep the sign down.

- Saw a good number of Montreal fans leave before the end of the game. Weak!

- The heavy rains before the game put a damper on the pregame tent activities, which was a shame.

- PLEASE stop booing the Canadian national anthem! The Flyers anticipated this, and had Danny Briere record a message asking the fans to respect both anthems, but a bunch of knuckleheads booed anyway. It makes no sense to boo that anthem, considering the majority of the Flyers are, in fact, Canadian. Also -- the "USA, USA" chant when the officials were sorting out the penalties when Price flopped like a fish was sort of infantile. We aren't fighting WWIII our there. This isn't the Iranian national team. You want jingoism? Go rent "Miracle".

- They did the "God Bless America" thing with Lauren Hart and Kate Smith again last night. They are in danger of making it not so special.

- Harkening back to the last series, where a Washington Post reporter said the orange clad Flyer fans all looked like security at a Megadeth concert, the Flyers got Megadeth's Dave Mustaine to record a little speech to rile up the crowd. It worked...and you can probably expect to see it again in Game 4 if you're going.

(AP Photo/Tom Mihalek)

Lupul Scores! Flyers Win!

Joffrey Lupul, seen recently on the side of milk cartons for his lack of offense in this series, potted the game winner in OT (on the PP, no less) as the Flyers beat the Washington Capitals by a score of 3 - 2.

In a game that featured an ebb and flow similar to Game 6, where the Flyers got the better of the early going and the Caps pressed the action late, Martin Biron stood tall for the Flyers. He made 16 saves in a tightly-contested 3rd period, where there were no penalties called, despite several infractions committed. As the Caps were coming at the Flyers in waves, the Flyers managed only 5 mostly ineffectual shots on goal. This team was clearly gassed going into the overtime period.

As OT began, it was obvious that the Flyers had regained some jump and, after a couple of incidents where a Flyer was pulled down by a Cap (the Sami Kapanen play was a pull down in plain sight), one of them was finally called (against Cap Tom Poti) giving the Flyers a rare OT man advantage.

It was incredibly important for the Flyers to score on that power play. The "make up" call giving the Caps the power play was going to occur; it was just a matter of time. Fortunately, Lupul put in his first goal of the series such that the Flyers didn't need to worry about the make up call.

Did you notice?

- Holy Crap, was that Steve Downie on the ice in a Game 7? He committed two minors and looked a little lost, but I blame none of that on Downie. Stevens saw fit to play Downie, a 20 year old who never played in a playoff game, on Mike Richards' line. Sure, he saw some success with Richards during the regular season, but that was before Stevens buried the guy. He should have been in the Riley Cote role, where he wouldn't have seen nearly as much ice time as he would playing on Richards' line. Eventually, Kapanen took Downie's place on that line.

- I don't know how many shot Lasse Kukkonen blocked, but I'd bet it was alot.

- Despite Alex Ovechkin finding his stride somewhat in this series, kudos must be given to Kimmo Timonen. If you noticed, Ovechkin's points were not coming because he simply overpowered or juked and jived the puck around some hapless d-man (see the goal he had in game 1 versus Lasse Kukkonen). The goals were coming off of home run passes, broken plays, and being set up on the power play. All those goals count, but Timonen sublimated some of his offensive game to contain Ovechkin and it worked. The same goes for Braydon Coburn, who is making himself into a star in this league.

- All of the Washington pub is about Ovechkin and rightly so, but Nicklas Backstrom is an emerging player. In a year where Chicago's Patrick Kane got all of the rookie publicity, maybe some folks better get a look at Backstrom, who some hockey writers compared to a young Forsberg.

- Finally, the Flyers' second goal, where Patrick Thoresen knocked a Caps d-man into Huet, enabling Sami Kapanen to score into an empty net was controversial, but the fact that Huet was out of his crease and was bowled over by his own guy, who was back checking hard, was just an unfortunate circumstance. That said, I thought for sure they would review that and it would magically get overturned. Once in a while, maybe the Flyers do get a break from the refs.