Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren just confirmed to me via email that the team has signed Russian goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky to an entry-level contract.
The 21-year-old goaltender was heavily scouted by several NHL teams. He played very well in the KHL this season despite playing for a bad team.
The Flyers will issue a press release later today.
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On today's
Daily Drop at Versus.com, I discussed five key reasons why the Bruins have a virtually insurmountable 3-0 lead in their series with the Flyers.
One point I want to expand on here is depth.
Last night, the Bruins lost David Krejci and kept on rolling. They won the first round against Buffalo and survived the stretch drive (albeit barely) without the services of Marc Savard. So I don't want to hear anyone using the injuries to Jeff Carter, Simon Gagne and Ian Laperriere as the main reason why the Flyers are on the brink of elimination.
Up front the Flyers have "depth" to withstand key losses but only if players like Claude Giroux, Scott Hartnell and James Van Riemsdyk deliver. They haven't. Giroux was tremendous in the first round against New Jersey and has had moments in the second round, such as a shift last night where he skated the puck through three Boston players. On the whole, though, he hasn't delivered in this series and it has hurt the team in the last two games.
Hartnell is not a natural goal scorer and it was unrealistic to expect another 30-goal season from him this year, but he has shown himself capable of being a year-in and year-out 20-25 goal player. The depths to which he has sunk this season -- 0 goals, 2 assists, minus-6 in eight playoff games; 0 goals in his last 20 games; 2 goals in his last 37 games; 3 goals in his last 44 games; minus-12 in his last 44 games -- have been shocking.
But Hartnell is supposed to be the type of player who thrives in the postseason. Unfortunately, he hasn't delivered much in three playoff runs with Philly and three with Nashville. His career playoff numbers stand at an anemic 7 goals, 10 assists and 17 points in 47 career playoff games (with Philly, it's 4 goals, 11 points in 31 playoff games). In that time, he's also been tagged with 83 penalty minutes, many of which of have left his team shorthanded. You can live with those numbers from Dan Carcillo, but not from a player who makes the kind of money and gets the kind of ice time that Scott Hartnell gets.
As for Van Riemsdyk (0 G, 1 A in the playoffs), he gets a partial pass because he's a rookie but not for the fact that, apart from one stellar game during the stretch drive, he has been utterly and blissfully invisible since the Olympics. You expect rookies, no matter how talented, to hit the periodic slump and have some bumps in the road in their first playoff run. But JVR, quite frankly, has done very little to get himself out of it. In his last 29 games, dating back to the first game after the Olympic break he has 2 goals and zero assists. One of the goals came in the first game after the break (vs. Tampa). Rookie or not, the Flyers need him to show a hell of a lot more grit than he's displayed for the last two-plus months.
Meanwhile, on the blueline, the Flyers only have three reliable defensemen (Chris Pronger, Matt Carle and Kimmo Timonen). Every time it seems like Braydon Coburn has come around, he takes a big step backwards. More and more, he has come to remind me of Karl Dykhuis -- another former first-round pick whom the Flyers "stole" from his original organization only to learn over time that for all his tremendous physical tools, he was too mistake-prone to be relied on consistently. The truth of the matter with Coburn is that he went backwards last season and took another step back this year.
It hasn't helped, either, that Zdeno Chara has outplayed Pronger in this series and Timonen has been subpar (by his standards) in the last two games.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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