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Meltzer's Musings: Homer Talks Deadline, Internet Waaayback Machine & More

February 25, 2014, 3:44 PM ET [247 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
HOLMGREN TALKS TRADE DEADLINE

Yesterday, the Flyers' beat writers spoke with general manager Paul Holmgren after practice about the prospects of the team making a move before the March 5 trade deadline.

Such sessions rarely elicit much information apart from something along the lines of "we will make a move if I think it will help our team and won't disrupt the group we have now (AKA, the team is not looking to move any of the regulars in the starting lineup)." Holmgren said that he does not anticipate making any major moves.

Of course, people will joke "That means expect a big trade." I wouldn't hold my breath, especially if you are waiting for the Flyers to add a major upgrade to the blueline who would log first-pairing type of minutes.

For one thing, the number of teams in seller mode are limited. Secondly, the rental candidates on defense are nothing earth-shattering. There are a few veteran forwards with some scoring ability who may be available and there may some gritty veteran forwards available but then it becomes a question of asset management in making a trade.

The likely rental market on D tops out with the likes of Andrew MacDonald or Tom Gilbert. Acquirable scoring line rental candidates may be players such as Mike Cammalleri or Ales Hemsky and the "grit" candidates would include someone such as Steve Ott. I'm not sure the Flyers would give up what their current respective teams would ask for any of these players, but they are all impending UFAs who would probably not require trading a current starter on the roster.

I would not be surprised if the Flyers add a winger or another defenseman (especially if Andrej Meszaros is dealt) but it is going to be a supporting cast player if so. Any major moves will probably wait until around the time of the draft to the start of free agency this summer.

Side note: I will be in Texas until early next week, celebrating my daughter Lily Claire's first birthday, before returning to Philadelphia for the duration of the season and playoffs. I will resume covering practices (with post-practice blog updates) and live games upon my return.


Video from Flyers.NHL.com

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FLYERS INTERNET WAAAYBACK MACHINE: 1974

It is always fun downtime activity to read old hockey magazine and newspaper articles to see what was being said about the Flyers and other teams at the time. During the offseason in particular, I also enjoy perusing the Internet Archives on the "Wayback Machine" website and reading old threads about the Flyers and the NHL.

During the off-days prior to the start of the Olympic tournament in Sochi, I looked through a bunch of old articles and web posts still available online. That got me to thinking: What if the internet as we know it today had been around 40 years ago during the season when the Flyers won their first Stanley Cup? Specifically, what if today's viewpoints and style of discourse could be superimposed onto the team of 40 years ago?

I decided to have some tongue-in-cheek fun with that incongruous idea. Of course, back then, the game moved slower and was played differently than today's. Society and media were also quite different than they are now. To me, that's part of the fun of imagining a cross-section of Flyers internet articles and message board posts from 1974 on the Internet Archives.

In my search of the Flyers Internet Waaayback Machine from February 1974, I discovered the following:

* I learned that most of the Flyers defense was too slow (Ed Van Impe, Barry Ashbee, Joe Watson, Moose Dupont) to contend for the Stanley Cup. Watson was too undersized as well as being too slow. Van Impe couldn't handle the puck. Ashbee couldn't make breakout passes and was an injury risk. Dupont took too many bad penalties.

* I learned from the message boards and Twitter that Tom Bladon was a turnover machine and soft to boot. However, the advanced stats sites loved him, even above fellow young Flyers defenseman, Jimmy Watson.

* I saw a newspaper editorial from just before the start of the season that the Flyers re-acquiring Bernie Parent from Toronto was just another case of the Flyers recycling a familiar face. I saw a February 1974 message board post that Parent had never won a playoff series at the professional level and had had a stretch games against Original Six teams -- five goals yielded to the Bruins on Feb 9, 1974, four goals on 24 shots allowed to the Rangers on Feb. 14 --his excellent season was a fraud and he'd fold in the playoffs.

* I found one on my old HockeyBuzz blogs -- never mind that I wasn't even quite four years old yet -- that the Flyers could not afford to keep taking so many penalties that left them shorthanded. If they were going to sustain their success, they had to cut back the PIMs.

* Right around this time of year, Eklund posted a short blog about how the Bruins were in the hunt to acquire Tony Esposito and said there was a "MAJOR possibility of an Esposito brothers tandem in Boston.... More to come."

* I was informed by some out-of-town trolls that Bill Barber was (apparently) the only diver in the game.

* I saw a lot of questioning of Fred Shero, including his line combinations. Here on the Flyers HB board, there was daily debate on why MacLeish isn't playing with Clarke and Barber and whether he should be moved from center to wing. CSN Philly comments pondered why Bill Flett was in the doghouse after his big goal-scoring season the previous year. Broad Street Hockey had a chart to question why Dave Schultz, Bob Kelly and Don Saleski were in the lineup at all and Hockey's Future had a 20-page thread on why poor Simon Nolet and Bill Clement can't get more ice time.

*On the flip side, a regular Twitter poster who preferred the tough guys wanted Schultz out there every other shift, wanted Bladon shipped off for a bag of pucks and informed everyone daily that defensive forward Terry Crisp was useless since he wasn't a scorer or fighter.

* The boards were filled with endless debates on whether Orest Kindrachuk was too slow and small, and whether Ross Lonsberry and Gary Dornhoefer were bonafide top six forwards or if Keith Allen needed to get an upgrade before the playoffs.

*A local sports columnist, leading with his own sensitivity to smoky rooms, wrote an article about which Flyers players were smokers and which ones were in the habit of chewing tobacco in the locker room. Strictly by coincidence, there was an enlightening Bleacher Report photo gallery of Flyers and other NHL players holding cigarettes and/or beer cans in locker room or public appearance photos with the headline "Top 50 Smokers and Beer Drinkers in the NHL". That was a worthy followup to the list of "The 25 Best Mustaches in the NHL," "The Top 100 NHL Players Missing at Least One Tooth" and "The 30 Worst Dressers in Hockey" (Rochester Americans coach Don Cherry did not make the list but Bruins coach Bep Guidolin did).

* A locally based sports gossip web site had all kinds of lurid stories from their "sources" at Rexy's. They could hardly keep up on reporting regularly which players hung out at Rexy's until the wee hours -- to the point that they simply started writing about the one or two who HADN'T been out (usually it turned out those guys had the flu). Later on, they mainly focused on ripping beat writers Jack Chevalier and Bill Fleischman.

* Philadelphia City Paper had a cover story about some obsessive puck bunny who wrote 5,000 fantasies starring Gary Dornhoefer. I skipped that article, but found out later that she apparently had posted on a variety of hockey message boards with the handle "Horny4Dorny."

I don't know about you folks, but I can hardly wait until this summer for my next visit to the Waaayback Machine, where I'll probably learn in 1978 that Behn Wilson is already as good as Larry Robinson and in 1981 that he is simultaneously an NHL All-Star AND someone who doesn't even belong in the league because he's too mistake prone.

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CASINO ROYALE FUNDRAISER WITH FLYERS ALUMNI

On Sun. March 9, starting at 5 p.m., Abrams Hebrew Academy will hold its annual Fund Raising Dinner and Casino Royale Night at Congregation Beth El in Yardley, PA. Special guests for the night will include Bernie Parent, Brian Propp, Bill Clement, Joe Watson and Bob "the Hound" Kelly.

Apart from the dinner and casino event, there will also be a host of items available via auction, including a signed stick by all three members of the Flyers' legendary LCB line (Reggie Leach and Hall of Famers Bob Clarke and Bill Barber), boxes of Bernie Parent's signature cigar line, a handsome Clarke lithograph and many more goodies.

All proceeds go to benefit the school. My nephew, Sammy Sherman, attends Abrams and my sister, Liza, helped to organize the event and line up the Flyers alumni guests. The slogan for the event is "Help Abrams Make Its Goal."

For more information, click here.


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