There was a lot of overreaction by people about the significance of Shane Doan's visit to Philadelphia yesterday to meet with Flyers personnel. While it does suggest that Philly is one of the teams the veteran forward would consider if he chooses to leave Phoenix, by no means does it show the Flyers have the inside track to sign the unrestricted free agent.
Doan has come east primarily because of his role in the NHLPA. While in New York for CBA-related meetings, he also met with the Rangers on Friday. He is slated to meet or talk directly with management from several other teams as well. Doan's agent, Terry Bross, confirmed to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that the Penguins made a formal contract offer to his client and remain in the mix of clubs that Doan may consider.
If the Flyers are successful in their offer sheet to Shea Weber -- especially if it results in an overlapping trade that includes one or more top potential top-six forwards -- it could help their chances with Doan. However, the Flyers would still need to get rid of additional salaries to fit both players.
If the Predators match the Weber offer sheet, then the Flyers may choose to sweeten the pot money-wise in an offer to Doan. Philly would still be an attractive destination for the player, but perhaps not quite as attractive as it would if, come the middle of this week, the team has arguably the best defenseman in the NHL to go along with one of the top five forwards in the game in Claude Giroux.
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A couple of people asked me my reaction to the comments former Flyers forward Dan Carcillo made yesterday about Peter Laviolette and Michael Leighton. He said that he has "zero respect" for his former head coach in Philadelphia and also singled Leighton out directly as the reason why Philly lost the 2010 Stanley Cup Final to Chicago.
"If we had better goaltending, maybe we would have put up a fight," said Carcillo.
My main reaction: Why should anyone care what Dan Carcillo has to say? He's always been a guy who acts solely on emotion and shoots from the lip. Thinking before acting or speaking isn't a strong suit of the guy who proudly answers to the nickname "Carbomb."
Secondly, consider where the comments were made: at a Blackhawks' fan event. The trash talking of Philly, I'm sure, was geared to amuse and please the audience. The 2010 Cup Final was actually a very hard-fought, six game series. If the Flyers had won in overtime of Game 6, the series would have gone the full seven games. Had Philly had also not blown numerous leads in Game 1, they may well have skated off with the Cup.
The series as a whole was wide open, with the exception of Game 2. Neither Leighton nor Chicago goalie Antti Niemi played well, but neither received much defensive help from the guys in front of them. Patrick Kane's funky-looking OT goal that ended the series was a disastrous one for Leighton to give up, but to pin the entire series on him? Come on.
Carcillo's indictment of Leighton was particularly distasteful in light of the fact that Cqrcillo is a guy who lives in his own glass house. He's the player who single-handedly gets blamed -- unfairly so -- for helping the Pittsburgh Penguins turn the momentum of the clinching game of the 2009 Eastern Conference Quarterfinals.
Late in the first period, Pittsburgh trailed the game, 3-0. Carcillo (who has never grasped the concept that the timing of a fight is sometimes more important than the outcome) eagerly dropped the gloves with Max Talbot.
Carcillo "won" the fight resoundingly but it was the Penguins who came away with an emotional spark from seeing Talbot -- who is agitator but generally does not drop the gloves -- fight with someone who does it regularly. It was not a smart time for Carcillo to fight, when everything was already going his team's way in a must-win game.
Was it solely his fault the Flyers wound up losing the game? Of course not. No game or series is won or lost because of a single player or just one player.
Actually, I had a bigger issue with what Carcillo did in his final game as a Flyer. With the club facing a sweep by Boston in the 2011 Eastern Conference, he took not one but two brainless crosschecking penalties -- the first of which led to the game's first goal. After the second period ended, he verbally abused one of the officials to the point that the NHL ended up imposing a carryover suspension at the start of the 2011-12 season.
Carcillo acted as if refs and not the blatant stick infractions themselves were the cause of the penalites. Carcillo is definitely a player with a target on his back from officials. He is one of those players who DOES get reputation penalties and rarely gets the benefit of any doubt. But that's only because he has never earned the benefit of any doubt, and yelling at the refs isn't about to make things better for him. It that instance, both penalty calls were legitimate.
Carcillo ended his own season last year with a dirty hit on Tom Gilbert that simultaneously resulted both in a seven-game suspension and his own season-ending ACL tear. It was his second boarding-related suspension of the season. The first was a two-gamer for a hit on Carolina's Joni Pitkänen, after which Carcillo publicly pointed to Pitkänen's reputation for being a soft player as the reason why the offense shouldn't have been suspendable.
As for Carcillo's comments about Laviolette, well, Lavy isn't always the most popular of coaches among his former players. You could say the same about some other successful coaches, too. Most players have the good sense to keep their feelings to themselves, however, because they never know when their paths might cross again with the same guy.
You know what? I should have just left this off at "Why should anyone care what Dan Carcillo has to say?" It's irrelevant. Moving forward, let's get back to the current team or least to discussing former members of the team who have earned the right to have their pronouncements taken seriously.
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