SATURDAY QUICK HITS
* In an
article published yesterday in the Toronto Star, the agent for former two-stint Flyers forward Ruslan Fedotenko said that the Ukrainian forward hopes to return to the NHL next season.
Last season, Fedotenko served as the captain for KHL team HC Donbass Donetsk. Amidst the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the team's arena was vandalized and set on fire back in May. The Donbass team has suspended operations for next season and it is uncertain what the future holds.
Fedotenko, now 35, was one of the few plus-rated Flyers at even strength (plus-eight) during the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season. However, he had very little offensive pop left in his game and he was unhappy with playing a strictly defensive role (nearly 65 percent of his shifts started outside the offensive zone).
If he returns to the NHL, it is very likely that Fedotenko will be assigned to the same sort of checking and penalty killing role he played with the Flyers and Rangers. At this point, Fedotenko's choices are to try to earn a fourth-line spot with an NHL team (it won't be in Philly), sign with another European team or retire. No NHL team will have a spot for Fedotenko in its top nine at this stage of his career.
Fedotenko's teammates with Donbass last season included several other former Flyers: goaltender Michael Leighton, defenseman Oskars Bartulis and forward Randy Robitaille. Next season, Leighton will remain in the KHL with HK Sochi. Bartulis and the 38-year-old Robitaille remained unsigned.
* What is your earliest Flyers memory? When did you attend a live game for the first time?
My earliest Flyers memory is listening to a game from the 1973-74 playoffs on the car radio. I was already getting bitten by the hockey bug at age 3 but, of course, really didn't know the game yet or understand the terminology. Specifically, I recall Gene Hart describing a routine play in which "Clarke gets broken up at the blueline." Alarmed, I asked my mother if the other team had just broken Bobby Clarke, because I had a mental image of my hockey hero being shattered into a million pieces that crumbled to the ice, ala a Warner Brothers cartoon. She reassured me that Clarke was just fine. Sure enough, he was.
My first live hockey game was not a Flyers game. In fact, even though I was a diehard fan as a child, I did not get to my first Flyers game until a 1979 game against Hartford -- yes, I saw Gordie and Mark Howe at my first Spectrum game. My first live game was in 1975-76, when the Philadelphia Firebirds took on the Erie Blades in an NAHL match at the Civic Center. I ended up becoming a big Firebirds as well as Flyers fan. My favorite Firebird was Gordie Brooks, probably because he scored a hat trick in the first game I attended.
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