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Pronger: Good or Bad?

April 4, 2010, 9:01 PM ET [ Comments]
Tim Panaccio
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Chris Pronger told me more than once this year that he stopped reading newspaper clippings years ago in St. Louis because of the negatives written about him.

I believe him because when I wrote about his wife, Lauren and her involvement in the Flyers' Wives Charities, he knew nothing about it, days after it had appeared on CSNPhilly.com.

The Philly media got Pronger off to the side today after the cameras and mikes had gone away and we asked him Larry Brooks' Sunday NHL Notebook in the NY Post in which Brooks quoted 2 unnamed GMs saying that the real problem on the Flyers isn't the goaltending - well, some of us would argue it is - but Pronger in the dressing room.

Pronger knew nothing about the story and when started to telll him what was written, he stopped us and said, "let me guess" and correctly guessed what was written.

I've said this before. If Chris Pronger's atty-tude is a problem on the Flyers, then I want MORE players on this team with that same atty-tude. I want a guy who know when to nice and when to be a prick and doesn't mince words.

I want a winner; not just a guy who won the Hart and Norris, but who won a Stanley Cup because he knows what it takes to be a winner.

Everything I know as fact from sources is that the problem in the Flyers' room is that some of the younger guys don't like the hardass approach to the game Pronger brings. Many reads at HB and CSNPhilly.com have correctly said this year that the Flyers don't have the rigth attitude toward games and their collapse in the second half, even allowing for the goaltending fiasco, bears that out.

You don't think Scott Stevens was a hard ass in the Devils room when New Jersey was winning Cups? Ask Ray Shero whey he brought Bill Guerin into the Pens' room last season.
Kris Draper in Detroit? Kirk Maltby?

Chris Pronger isn't the reason the Flyers have been so inconsistent this season. But if they ever get it right and win a Cup someday, he might be the reason why.

For my story on CSNPhilly.com, click here:

http://tinyurl.com/y9fmfds
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