Friday Quick Hits
* In Thursday's action at the World Junior Championship Evaluation camp in Lake Placid, NY, Canada hammered Sweden, 7-3, while Team USA bounced back from a listless shutout loss to the Swedes the previous day to defeat Finland via shootout, 4-3.
Anthony Stolarz went the distance in goal for the Americans, stopping 34 of 37 shots in regulation and overtime. In the shootout, he turned back six of seven attempts, including the first five in a row. Adam Erne (Tampa's 2nd round pick in the 2013 Draft) scored twice in the shootout to win the game for the USA.
Robert Hägg, who had a very strong game against the Americans on Wednesday, was among many Swedish players who had a forgettable performance against the Canadians. For the second straight game, Scott Laughton did not dress for Team Canada.
Friday is an open day on the schedule. The tournament concludes on Saturday with clashes between Canada and USA as well as Sweden versus Finland.
* Veteran forward Mike Knuble, who dressed in 28 games for the Flyers last season after being signed to a one-year contract early in the lockout-shortened season, has probably played his final NHL game. However, the 41-year-old veteran of 17 NHL seasons has not yet officially retired.
Knuble realizes he is unlikely to find an NHL taker, especially in light of the fact that, for family reasons. he would pretty much only consider the Detroit Red Wings or Chicago Blackhawks at this point. Knuble no longer wants to live far away from his wife and kids during the season (which is permanently settled in Michigan). However,
according to MLive.com's Peter Wallner, Knuble has had exploratory discussions with Jeff Blashill, the head coach of the AHL's Grand Rapids Griffins, about joining the minor league team in either a playing or assistant coaching role. No decisions will be made until shortly before the season starts.
Knuble told Wallner that while he'd like to continue playing if the circumstances are right, he's comfortable with whatever happens. In his two stints with the Flyers, Knuble played a combined 338 regular season games, scoring 118 goals and 229 points. He dressed in 24 playoff games, registering six goals and 14 points.
* Longtime Flyers center Rod Brind'Amour, who played 633 regular season games for the team, celebrates his 43rd birthday today. Brind'Amour, whom the Flyers coveted in the 1988 NHL Draft but were unable to move up to select, unexpectedly became available in trade in 1991 after a tough second season in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues.
In order to obtain Brind'Amour, the Flyers dealt team captain Ron Sutter and sturdy defensive defenseman Murray Baron to the Blues. It turned out to be one of the best trades of an otherwise dark era in Flyers hockey. Philly also received offensively skilled but defensively weak forward Dan Quinn in the deal.
Brind'Amour earned a spot in the 1992 NHL All-Star Game, which was played at the Philadelphia Spectrum. That year, he scored 33 goals and 77 points in 80 games and won the Bobby Clarke Trophy as the team's MVP.
The Flyers valued Brind'Amour so highly that they made him untouchable in any of the trade packages being discussed with the Quebec Nordiques for the rights to Eric Lindros (which ultimately contributed to the Flyers reluctantly parting with top prospect Peter Forsberg, who did not plan to come over to North America until 1993 or 1994). Brind'Amour would spend much of his Flyers career being mentioned in a variety of trade rumors but he always ended up staying put until he was finally traded in January 2000.
Lindros' arrival in Philadelphia put an end to Brind'Amour's brief stint as the team's first line center. However, for the rest of his tenure in Philly, Brind'Amour became one of the NHL's best second-line forwards and he typically moved up to the top line whenever Lindros missed time with injuries. Brind'Amour went on to set a Flyers' iron man streak of 484 consecutive games played.
Brind'Amour enjoyed his career-best offensive season in his third year in Philly. That year, he compiled 35 goals and 97 points while primarily centering a line with Kevin Dineen and assorted left wingers. Although never known as a gifted goal scorer, Brind'Amour had four seasons in Philly in which he scored 33 or more goals.
One of the physically strongest players in the NHL, the muscular Brind'Amour also gained a reputation as one of the league's top two-way centers and top faceoff men. He occasionally shifted to left wing during his Flyers years, but clearly preferred to play center.
Brind'Amour frequently played left wing or moved down to the third line when the Flyers acquired Chris Gratton in 1997. He wasn't too happy about being shuttled around the lineup, but produced a 36-goal, 74-point season. The next year, the Flyers reinstalled Brind'Amour as the second-line center and moved Gratton to left wing. Gratton scored only one goal in 26 games before being traded back to the Tampa Bay Lightning along with Mike Sillinger in exchange for Mikael Renberg and Daymond Langkow.
Brind'Amour produced a 24-goal, 74-point season in 1998-99, which proved to be his final full season in Philadelphia. His iron man streak came to an end the following season, as
a fractured foot suffered before the start of the 1999-2000 season required surgery and kept him out of the line for the first 34 games of the season.
On January 23, 2000, the Flyers traded the 29-year-old Brind'Amour to Carolina in the deal that brought Keith Primeau to Philly. Brind'Amour spent the remainder of his career with the Hurricanes and went on to capture a Stanley Cup as the Canes captain on the Peter Laviolette-coached 2005-06 team. After a rough start to their player-coach relationship, Brind'Amour eventually bonded with Laviolette.
For many years, Brind'Amour was one of the NHL's most underrated players because he so frequently (and understandably) took a backseat to Lindros in his Philly days. It was only in his final couple years in Carolina that people leaguewide started to realize just how good his career was in many different aspects of the game.
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Thank you to everyone who participated in the Flyers Team of the 2000s polls. The roster is now complete.
Starting Forwards (12): Claude Giroux, Keith Primeau, Mike Richards, Peter Forsberg, Simon Gagne, Mark Recchi, John LeClair, Scott Hartnell, Jakub Voracek, Mike Knuble, Jeremy Roenick, Jeff Carter.
Reserve forwards (2): Sami Kapanen, Danny Briere.
Defensemen (6): Kimmo Timonen, Eric Desjardins, Chris Pronger, Kim Johnsson, Derian Hatcher, Braydon Coburn.
Reserve defenseman (1): Chris Therien.
Goalies (2): Roman Cechmanek (starter), Brian Boucher (backup).
Head coach: Peter Laviolette.
Based upon the readers' roster selections and trying to arrange lines that would best fit within Laviolette's preferred system of play, I arranged the following line combinations:
John LeClair - Claude Giroux - Mark Recchi
Simon Gagne - Peter Forsberg - Jeremy Roenick
Jakub Voracek - Mike Richards - Jeff Carter
Scott Hartnell - Keith Primeau - Mike Knuble
Kimmo Timonen - Eric Desjardins
Chris Pronger - Kim Johnsson
Derian Hatcher - Braydon Coburn
Roman Cechmanek
[Brian Boucher]
Notes:
* Because the voters chose so many natural centers for the lineup, I had to arrange the lineup with several players out of position. This is actually somewhat appropriate, considering that many players teams of recent vintage have been overloaded on natural centers, necessitating some to play wing.
* I tried to spread around the speed, size, creativity and physicality as much as possible. I had considered keeping the real-life combos of Gagne, Forsberg and Knuble and Hartnell, Giroux and Voracek together as intact units but I liked the idea of giving Forsberg a more naturally gifted linemate to feed the puck to in Roenick. I am not sure how well Recchi and Giroux would click initially, because both are more playmakers than finishers but I think they'd have found a way to work together. Even as a declining player in the 2000s, I'd give LeClair the first crack at playing on that line over Hartnell. I ended up switching Voracek from right wing to left wing, and hoped that he could be part of a productive third line anchored by Richards. Primeau and Richards would help anchor the PK.
* To me, a defense pairing of Timonen and Desjardins would be a dream combination; they are both among the headiest two-way D-men the team has ever had and they would also be a lefthanded shooting/righthanded shooting match. I envisioned the Pronger-Johnsson dynamic as being similar to the chemistry that Pronger had with Matt Carle, as Johnsson in most of his pre-concussion Flyers career was a superior version of that same sort of puck-moving defenseman. Hatcher and Coburn were an actual pairing for much of Coburn's early career in Philadelphia, before Coburn moved up a pairing to play with Timonen.
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Former Flyers forward Ian Laperriere, now the organization's Director of Player Development, will be participating in the Ironman Mont-Tremblant: North American Championship on August 18. Apart from competing in the triatholon, Lappy is raising funds for a variety of charitable causes: the IRONMAN Foundation, Ronald McDonald House, the National Pancreatic Cancer Foundation and Go4theGoal Foundation- Tunes4Teens. For more information or to make a donation,
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