Ever since the Flyers' season came to an abrupt end in the Eastern Conference Semifinal, there were rumors in Sweden that Flyers' defenseman Andreas Lilja planned to forgo the final year of his NHL contract and return home this summer to sign with Elitserien club Rögle BK Ängelholm.
Not surprisingly, the rumors were false.
Speaking from the U.S. to his
hometown newspaper, Helsingborgs Dagblad, Lilja said that he intends to finish his two-season contract out with with Flyers. The defenseman, who turns 37 on July 13, indicated that he'd like to play three or four more years.
If the NHL door closes after next season, he'll likely play for Rögle in 2013-14. Likewise, Lilja told HD that he would join Rögle in the event of an NHL lockout this fall.
Lilja signed an over-35 contract with the Flyers last summer. If he had retired, his contract would still have counted against the team's salary cap this season. Lilja is slated to earn $700,000 in actual salary next season ($737,500 cap hit, because he made $775,000 for the 2011-12 season).
The veteran of 576 regular season games and 66 playoff matches in the NHL is likely to serve as the Flyers' seventh defenseman next season. He started 46 games for the Flyers during the regular season this year and dressed in 10 of the team's 11 playoff games. Lilja actually began and finished the season as a semi-regular starter but he missed a month with a high ankle sprain and played sparingly for awhile after his return.
While some fans acted like Lilja had no business in the NHL, I thought he was adequate as a part-time third-paring defenseman who averaged 13:41 of ice time per game. He has his share of limitations -- poor mobility, no offensive game, difficulty triggering outlet passes and zone clears under pressure -- but he did bring some positives to the table.
In his limited ice time, Lilja blocked 72 shots in the regular season, and doled 61 hits. He added 22 blocks and 14 hits in his average 13:58 of ice time in the playoffs. He was a plus-nine during the regular season, minus-five in the postseason.
Ideally, the Flyers would not have had to start Lilja regularly in the playoffs. The injury to Andrej Meszaros and the ineffectiveness of Pavel Kubina did not allow for it.
Opponents had a definite strategy of attacking Lilja side of the ice whenever possible. If they couldn't generate speed off the line rush to try to go wide on him, they would flip the puck into his corner and try to regain it from him or else draw Ilya Bryzgalov out to handle it in the trapezoid (an even scarier proposition for the Flyers at times).
I thought Lilja held up decently through the first round of the playoffs against Pittsburgh, but he got picked apart by the Devils' tenacious forecheck. It seemed like every time Lilja's pairing was on the ice, the Flyers got pinned deep in their own zone for the duration of their shift.
There were times this past season where it was nice to have Lilja around simply because he's a veteran and the entire defense corps was riddled with injuries. I do not think he did as good of a job as Sean O'Donnell did the previous season, but as inexpensive seventh defenseman with a decade of NHL experience and a Stanley Cup ring, Lilja did not hurt the team in a limited role.
Come next season, the Flyers would like to find a regular starting spot for Marc-Andre Bourdon and/or Erik Gustafsson. Brandon Manning is also the mix somewhere. Even so, I think Lilja will remain in the seventh defenseman role because of his experience and modest cap hit.
COMING TOMORROW: A look at Bourdon, Gustafsson and Manning.
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In a surprise announcement yesterday, the Flyers announced that they have fired Joe Paterson as the head coach of the AHL's Adirondack Phantoms.
The team issued a cookie-cutter public statement from Paul Holmgren.
“As an organization, we feel the Phantoms need a new voice moving forward,” said Holmgren. “We would like to thank Joe for his hard work and service to the Phantoms over the past season and a half, but we feel a new direction is needed at this time.”
Quite frankly, I thought that Paterson got a raw deal.
The fact that the Phantoms missed the playoffs again this season had nothing to do with the coaching. The team was decimated by callups and injuries and the forward corps lacked the scoring depth of the contending teams. Nevertheless, Paterson had his team in the playoff hunt until the final weekend of the regular season.
Beyond that, what is the primary role of a farm team? As I understand it, it is to develop young players and prepare them for potential callups to the big club. All you have to do is look at the contributions made by the likes of mid-season callups such as Bourdon and Eric Wellwood to see that Paterson was doing his job admirably in that area.
Paterson is not only a good teaching coach, he's also one of hockey's true gentlemen. He's usually quiet soft-spoken, so if he raises his voice, it's for good reason. He's patient yet firm with his young players. If they want to play, they have to play the game right. But he is not the type to belittle players or willfully rip at their confidence in the name of showing he's in control.
I thought that the hiring of Paterson was one of the things that the Phantoms got right. In 2010-11, he somehow got the team to play decent hockey after it was hopelessly buried early in the season prior to his hiring. He succeeded where neither Greg Gilbert nor John Paddock (in his brief interim stint) made any headway. This past season, I thought he made further progress.
I guess the Flyers' hockey operations folks and/or the Brooks Group that owns the team felt differently. Either that, or the decision was not truly a hockey-motivated one.
If the latter is the case, I suspect that the Brooks people were the ones who drove the decision; perhaps out of a belief that it's better for business for a sports team to fire the coach (regardless of circumstance) when it misses the playoffs.
Regardless of who pushed the decision, I think it's a mistake. I don't think any other coach would have done a significantly better job in Adirondack this year than Paterson. The timing of the decision is also quite odd. I'm not sure why it was done now and not right after the season.
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When I was a kid, I went to plenty of Philadelphia Firebirds games and lived and died by the Flyers via television and radio. But I did not go to my first live NHL game until 1979. The first game I saw in person just so happened to pit the Hartford Whalers -- featuring Gordie Howe in his final season and Mark Howe in his first NHL season after a stellar WHA career -- against the Flyers.
Seeing Mr. Hockey play in person is something that I have come to appreciate more and more through the years. His legacy both as the sport's most legendary player and as someone who has touched countless lives both on the rink and away from hockey will live on long after he is gone.
Gordie was in the pressbox with Mark several times during the Flyers playoff run. It was like being in the presence of royalty, minus the air of superiority. The Howes have always been down-to-earth and approachable people who just so happen to be Hall of Fame hockey players. You can walk up and shake their hands and they won't act like they're doing you a favor to deign to speak to you.
Now 84 years old, Gordie's health has been slipping the last few years. The Howe patriarch has had a rough time ever since losing his beloved wife, Colleen, who succumbed to Pick's Disease two years ago. Mr. Hockey has significantly scaled back on his once-prolific slate of public appearances. Most of them nowadays are strictly on behalf of charitable causes.
So I was caught by surprise the other week when I was driving back to Havertown from Game 1 of the Flyers-Devils series and saw a sign that Gordie would be doing an autograph signing appearance at Carl's Cards and Collectibles on June 23.
The
event tickets are not inexpensive. I am not much of an autograph collector nowadays -- I was for awhile before I started seriously pursuing a hockey writing career -- and I did not receive a cent to plug the event. I just think that it's pretty cool that Gordie will be coming out that way.
After all, it's not every day that Mr. Hockey himself comes to your neighborhood.
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