Over the course of the Flyers' recent westerly road trip and home victory over the Islanders, Ilya Bryzgalov's game started to come together. There were still some letdowns and potentially stoppable early-game goals against, but the goaltender increasingly stepped up in crunch time.
Last night, it all came together in a 1-0 road win in Washington. By the early stages of the third period, there was a palpable sense that the Capitals (who have now been shut out in back-to-back games) were not about to score on Bryzgalov. That was a real nice feeling in this tumultuous season.
The Flyers played solid team defense against the Capitals, especially with Kimmo Timonen and Andrej Meszaros lost indefinitely to lower-body injuries. I thought Nicklas Grossman and Pavel Kubina turned in yoeman work down low in the defensive zone last night, and Braydon Coburn (who took a maintenance day of his own on Saturday) and Matt Carle also stepped up when needed. In addition, the forwards pitched in on the backcheck and puck-support in defensive scrums.
Discipline was a big part of last night's win, too. The Flyers (who only had one power play of their own) did not take a single minor penalty. Referees Wes McCauley and Francois St. Laurent let the two teams play and let plenty of marginal stuff go, but there were no obvious infractions that forced a call. That was especially big in the third period.
Make no mistake, though. On a night where the Flyers got outshot (34-23) and also outchanced, it was Bryzgalov's play that was the single biggest factor in the skinny victory.
The Flyers' top line just didn't have it last night, at least not Claude Giroux. I thought both Jaromir Jagr and Scott Hartnell played decently, especially Jagr. Danny Briere's offensive drought continued but he had several scoring chances and looked to finally be on the brink of a breakthrough.
After a scoreless first period, Philly finally broke its string of giving up the first goal of the game. Rookie Eric Wellwood tipped home a Kubina point shot for what proved to be the only goal of the night for either team. The Flyers' fourth line was tremendous most of the game, in fact.
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Today is a travel day for me. I am en route from Dallas back to Philadelphia, and will be there for the rest of the regular season and playoffs. If feasible, I would have walked back to Philly to make sure I could see Mark Howe's jersey retirement ceremony and the subsequent Flyers-Red Wings game tomorrow night.
Although I blog for the Stars as well as the Flyers here at HockeyBuzz -- and have come to really like the scrappy, never-say-die club the Stars have put together -- the Red Wings have long been my "other" NHL team after the Flyers.
It has everything to do with Mark Howe, at least in its origins. When Howe elected to sign with the Red Wings as a free agent in the summer of 1992, the Flyers were three years in to a stretch of five seasons of missing the playoffs. The Flyers had just acquired rookie Eric Lindros but it was clear it was going to take a few more years until the club could put enough pieces in play around Lindros, Rod Brind'Amour and Mark Recchi to contend.
As such, I adopted Howe's new team (which also featured his longtime Flyers defense partner Brad McCrimmon that season) as my secondary team of interest. I pulled hard for the Red Wings in the 1995 Stanley Cup Final against New Jersey -- the Devils won in a sweep, however -- because I wanted to see Howe get a Stanley Cup ring before his retirement as an active player.
In the years that followed, I came to admire Detroit's year-in-and-year-out ability to remain Stanley Cup contenders (and win the championship four times) through a combination of outstanding scouting and top-flight coaching. I was envious of their ability to identify late-round draft gems from Europe and the way they always seemed to be well-prepared for opponents of any style.
Of course, Mark Howe has played a role in Detroit's enduring excellence through his role as the team's director of pro scouting. He has an extremely sharp eye, and doesn't mince words in describing the strengths and weaknesses of a team or particular players -- including those on the Red Wings.
Although the Flyers will always be the team of my heart and (to the extent that I "root" for other NHL teams) the Stars are the ones I currently follow second, I still have the utmost respect for the Detroit Red Wings organization. Their hockey operations are the NHL's gold standard, and although my all-time favorite player never got his name on the Stanley Cup , his behind-the-scenes work as a scout is still part of the reason why his team has four Cup banners hanging from the rafters.
Today and tomorrow on Flyers.NHL.com, there will be two more articles I compiled on Howe's Flyers career. The first is a year-by-year capsule review of his career in Philadelphia. The latter is a compilation of tribute quotes from his former Philadelphia teammates and coaches.
Special thanks go out to Brian Propp, Tim Kerr, Paul Holmgren, Dave Poulin and Kerry Huffman for taking time over their past week to share their stories and thoughts on Howe's value to the Flyers during their respective time together with him.
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