Wanna blog? Start your own hockey blog with My HockeyBuzz. Register for free today!
 

Meltzer's Musings: Pryor Promoted, Desjardins Retirement Anniversary

August 10, 2016, 10:36 AM ET [125 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Flyers Promote Pryor

The Flyers announced today that Chris Pryor has been promoted in title from Director of Scouting to Assistant General Manager, Director of Player Personnel. Pryor had already been doing many of the tasks associated with the title, but the change in title is a way of officially recognizing that the scope of his work and influence has extended beyond draft preparation and directorship of the amateur and pro scouts into areas such as the ever-growing oversight of player development and weighing in other personnel matters.

Former NHL defenseman Pryor, nicknamed "Sarge," is entering his 17th season with the Flyers. He served the previous three seasons as the club’s director of scouting, overseeing all Flyers scouting activities at the professional and amateur levels, both in North America and overseas receiving oversight assistance from Dave Brown on the pro scouting side and Dennis Patterson on the amateur (junior, collegiate and European draft-eligible player) side.

*********


Today in Flyers History: Desjardins Retirement

Ten years ago today, Flyers Hall of Fame defenseman Eric Desjardins announced his retirement as an NHL player. The Flyers were not planning to re-sign him and he had an offer from his original team, the Montreal Canadiens, but he wanted to retire as a Flyer.

I don't think that people at the time realized what a big loss it was to the Flyers. In fact, even with the player's advancing age and litany of injuries, I think his departure played a role in why the 2006-07 season turned out as badly as it did for the Flyers before they brought in Kimmo Timonen (among other big additions) the next year and rebounded from the worst season in franchise history to coming within three wins of the Stanley Cup Final the next. While Desjardins alone would not have been enough to turn around that awful revolving door of a 2006-07 squad, I also don't think things would have gone off the rails so much with Desjardins and Peter Forsberg reasonably healthy and in the lineup.

Desjardins was always a massively underappreciated player during his career. Not by his teammates or coaches or management, who understood he was a special two-way player and a consummate leader by example who brought a remarkable level of consistency and impeccable preparation to play. He was, however, overlooked by casual fans and very unfairly maligned by the segment of the fan base that hyper-focuses on what a player is not rather than what he is.

No, Eric Desjardins was not a Norris Trophy candidate. Rather, he was in the next grouping of NHL defenseman, perhaps a quarter-step down -- the perennial All-Star candidates. For some Flyers' fans, that was never quite good enough. They griped so much about how he wasn't a big hitter and how he wasn't a top-echelon scorer or the very best shutdown guy that they failed to realize his greatest asset was that he was well above-average both with and without the puck. There were no significant deficiencies in his game.

Prior to 1999, Desjardins was also one of the smoothest skaters around. After that, he lost a step, and it took a couple years to adjust his game accordingly -- but he did, and thrived.

To me, Desjardins (along with Flyers contemporary Mikael Renberg) is the ultimate example of the difference between playing hurt, which all players must do at times, especially in the postseason, and playing injured. In retrospect, one of the most mind-boggling things I have seen in hockey is what Desjardins did during the 1998-99 season.

That year, Desjardins continued to play through what at first was deemed to be a "nagging" knee issue and then called a partial ACL tear. It is pretty damn hard for a player to even grit through a smaller partial tear of his anterior cruciate ligament, but others have done it. What Desjardins actually dealt with, however, was an 80 percent tear.... and he not only stoically played, but did so at a higher level than the vast majority of D-men around the NHL. The injury was evident at times but he usually found ways to work around it.

Later in his career, Desjardins started to have more and more injuries, some of them occurring under freakish circumstances. The Flyers started to build up more depth to persevere without him when they needed to -- for a couple of years, Kim Johnsson, surpassed Desjardins as the Flyers' best defenseman -- but they were always a better and more poised team when they had "Rico" than when they didn't.

No one will ever convince me otherwise that, even if the all the other slew of injuries on the blueline had occurred in 2004, having Desjardins available would been the small extra boost the Flyers would have needed to prevail in their seven-game series with the Tampa Bay Lightning and then have gone on to win the Stanley Cup. We'll never know, of course, but I believe it to my core.

Another reason why I feel that Desjardins was so underappreciated by a large percentage of Flyers fans is that the pain of his retirement was only felt by the team for one year. In hindsight, it was pretty remarkable how Timonen -- a somewhat different player in style because he was significantly smaller and a lefthanded shooter, but who otherwise had very similar attributes and hockey sense -- filled the void so ably.

I have always had a particular affinity for defensemen, anyway. Mark Howe, as many readers know, was my all-time favorite player. No one, not even Desjardins or Timonen, was as dynamic of a two-way defenseman as Howe (who was an All-Star caliber winger before switching full-time to defense at age 25 and becoming a Norris Trophy caliber blueliner).

However, whenever the blockbuster 1995 trade that sent Desjardins and John LeClair to the Flyers is mentioned, it is usually the combined impact of the two players that is considered (which I consider to be the proper context) or, if focused individually, it's usually on LeClair and the birth of the Legion of Doom.

In my view, even if LeClair had not turned out to almost immediately become a scoring machine at left wing, the trade would still have been beneficial to the Flyers because Desjardins was the key to a rapid makeover of what had been a below-average blueline in each of the five preceding seasons.

In fact, not enough gets said about how quickly general manager Bob Clarke and head coach Terry Murray turned around the blueline. In 1993-94, the depth chart consisted of Garry Galley, Dmitri Yushkevich, Yves Racine, Jason Bowen, Jeff Finley Stewart Malgunas and the likes of Rob Zettler, Ryan McGill and an end-of-career Rob Ramage.

By the time the 1995 playoffs rolled around, the Flyers had Desjardins, Kevin Haller (acquired for Racine), Chris Therien (an NHL All-Rookie team honoree), Petr Svoboda (himself a much-underrated player), Karl Dykhuis (inconsistent but talented and young; and unquestionably a big upgrade over Bob Wilkie, for whom he was traded to Philly) and Yushkevich (the lone holdover by the end, but soon to be traded after the season for the first round pick that was used on Dainius Zubrus).

As much as the rise of the LOD and the re-acquisition of Ron Hextall (in exchange for Tommy Söderström) were important pieces to the Flyers' turnaround from non-playoff team to perennial Cup contender, it was the remaking of the entire blueline that, to me, was the most dramatic part. LeClair's rise enabled the Flyers not to have a hole created by Mark Recchi's departure in the big trade, but Desjardins was the backbone and centerpiece of a completely overhauled blueline. Keep Recchi (thereby not obtaining LeClair) and the offense would still have fine, albeit a little different. Take away Desjardins and the other blueline changes, and the Flyers would have been no more than a playoff bubble team.

*********


 photo unnamed.jpg


The Flyers Alumni will host a fantasy hockey camp from August 21-24 in Atlantic City, open to anyone age 21 and older. Instructors and Alumni participants will include Bernie Parent, Brian Propp, Ian Laperriere, Todd Fedoruk, Andre "Moose" Dupont, Dave "the Hammer" Schultz, Joe Watson and Bob "the Hound" Kelly.

Participation costs $3,000 apiece and you can register a spot online. Over on the Flyers' Alumni website, there is more information on camp-related activities and on-ice schedules.
Join the Discussion: » 125 Comments » Post New Comment
More from Bill Meltzer
» Flyers Gameday: 3/28/24 @ MTL
» Wrap: Flyers Lose 6-5 OT Game to Rangers
» Flyers Gameday: 3/26/24 @ NYR
» Quick Hits: Flyers-FLA Wrap, Flyers Daily, Phantoms, Bigger than Hockey
» Flyers Gameday: 3/24/2024 vs. FLA; Phantoms Update