THURSDAY ROUNDUP: FLYERS AT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS
Yesterday's Results
* Team USA (3-1-0) put in an outstanding 60-minute performance to down tournament co-host Team Finland (3-1-0) by a 4-1 score at Helsinki's Hartwall Arena. Craig Smith tallied a hat trick for the Americans, while Stephen Gionta scored a beautiful goal that put a 3-1 stranglehold on the game after it entered the third period tied at 1-1. Nineteen-year-old goaltender John Gibson was outstanding in his senior-level international debut. Phantoms goalie
Cal Heeter remained a healthy scratch and, given Gibson's performance against the 2011 gold medalists, is increasingly unlikely to dress even as a backup for the duration for the tourney.
* Germany downed rival Austria by a 2-0 score. Phantoms forward
Marcel Noebels was a healthy scratch for the Germans. He has skated very limited fourth-line ice time and then been scratched in the next match on an alternating game basis thus far.
* Flyers defenseman
Erik Gustafsson continued to lead Tre Kronor in ice time, skating a team-high 24:24 in Sweden's 5-1 win over Norway yesterday. The Swedes held a narrow 2-1 lead after two periods before a three-goal onslaught in the final stanza turned it into a blowout. Gustafsson played another solid two-way game. It would have been nice if he could have gotten a point on a late-game 5-on-3 power play, but the game outcome was already sealed by that point. With the impending arrival of Vancouver defenseman Alex Edler, it will be interesting to see if the current top-pairing tandem of Gustafsson and Henrik Tallinder remains intact (I don't see a reason for coach Pär Mårts to change it) and whether Gustafsson's heavy ice time decreases a bit in favor of Edler's pairing.
Today's Games (Times in EDT)
* 9:15 AM: Russia (3-0-0) plays France (1-2-0). KHL goalie Vasili Koshechkin will get the start over Semyon Varlamov and Ilya Bryzgalov. Flyers goalie Bryzgalov is scratched as the third goalie today. A live stream will be
available here.
* 10:15 AM: Czech Republic (1-2-0) takes on Denmark (1-2-0). Flyers forward
Jakub Voracek has points in all three games the Czechs have played thus far, while
Oliver Lauridsen has averaged 19:28 of ice time for the Danes. A live stream will be
available here.
* 2:15 PM: In today's marquee matchup, Team Canada (3-0-1) takes on Sweden (3-1-0) at Stockholm's Globe Arena. Flyers forwards
Claude Giroux (one goal, three assists to date),
Matt Read (one goal) and
Wayne Simmonds (zero points) along with defenseman
Luke Schenn (one assist) will be in the Canadian lineup. For Tre Kronor, Gustafsson (one assist) will face his toughest matchups of the tourney to date. Edler and Vancouver teammates Daniel and Henrik Sedin are set to join Team Sweden. The game will be televised in Canada on TSN and an online stream will be
available here.
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Bobrovsky and the Flyers
The announcement yesterday that former Flyers goaltender
Sergei Bobrovsky is one of the three top finishers in the Vezina Trophy balloting came as no surprise around the hockey world. The Columbus Blue Jackets netminder had a magnificent season, and it would be a small injustice if either reigning Vezina winner Henrik Lundqvist or San Jose's Antti Niemi were selected over him to win the award this season.
Nevertheless, Bobrovsky nomination absolutely does not mean the Flyers were mistaken to trade him last summer for draft picks. In hindsight, the Flyers' errors in judgment born of impatience actually came to roost the PREVIOUS spring and summer.
Let's go back to Bobrovsky's NHL rookie year of 2010-11. Initially expected to need some AHL seasoning after being signed out of the KHL as an undrafted free agent, Bobrovsky won an NHL job out of training camp and soon became the Flyers' starting goaltender. His displaced an injured Michael Leighton, who was eventually waived and sent to the AHL's Adirondack Phantoms for the duration of the regular season.
At one point during the first half of the season, Bobrovsky started 18 straight games for Peter Laviolette. The rookie's midseason stats were outstanding -- had the season ended in mid-to-late January, Bobrovsky would have been a strong Calder Trophy candidate. However, his performance tailed off in the final three months of the season and Bobrovsky ended up more or less rotating starts with veteran Brian Boucher.
When the Eastern Conference playoffs started, Laviolette tabbed Bobrovsky as his starting goaltender against the Buffalo Sabres. The rookie justified the decision in Game 1. The game entered the third period in a scoreless deadlock before Buffalo scored the game's only goal midway through the final stanza. The tally came off the stick of Patrick Kaleta on a preventable rebound that represented Bobrovsky's lone mistake of the game. Even so, no one could honestly fault the goalie for a 1-0 loss.
Bobrovsky seemed to take the Game 1 loss exceptionally hard. He came out pressing in Game 2, and lasted barely 12 minutes in the first period before he was pulled in favor of Boucher. Bobrovsky looked awful on all three goals he allowed. In what would later become a familiar pattern in the series, the Flyers rallied from behind to win 5-4.
On the first Sabres PPG by Thomas Vanek, Bobrovsky took himself too far out of position to have any chance at a save. On the second, the goalie failed to hold the post. On the final goal by Andrej Sekera coming out of the penalty box, Bobrovsky made himself the size of Sky Low Low, getting too far back and giving up both the short side (he was beaten over the shoulder) and the five-hole.
OK, so Bobrovsky had an awful game. He'd had a couple of those during an up-and-down stretch run, too, but had usually bounced right back in the next game. Even so, Peter Laviolette apparently decided he'd seen enough of Bobrovsky.
For the next four games, Bobrovsky was a healthy scratch. Leighton, who cleared waivers to re-join the Flyers for the postseason, was dressed as the backup to Boucher in Game 3 (a 4-2 Flyers win), Game 4 (another 1-0 Buffalo win) and Game 5 (a 4-3 Buffalo win in overtime). Boucher was solid in Games 2, 3, and 4 but imploded in Game 5 and gave way to Leighton as the starter for Game 6.
Leighton's performance in Game 6 was worse than Bobrovsky's in Game 2 or Boucher's in Game 5. He allowed three extremely soft goals and was quickly pulled in favor of Boucher. Almost miraculously, the Flyers battled back to take the game to overtime and win, 5-4, on a Ville Leino goal.
After being unceremoniously demoted from starter to third-string goalie, Bobrovsky was elevated from healthy scratch to Boucher's backup. The veteran Boucher won easily in a semi-blowout game in the deciding seventh game against Buffalo.
In round 2 of the playoffs, the Flyers took on the eventual Stanley Cup champions, the Boston Bruins. The previous year, of course, Philly rallied back from a three-games-to-none deficit in the series and a 3-0 deficit in the first period of Game 7 to win the series. It wasn't to be this time around.
Boston steamrolled the Flyers in Games 1 and 3, sandwiched around an overtime win in Game 2. With the Flyers facing elimination and having all but waved the surrender flag, Laviolette turned back to Bobrovsky as his Game 4 starter against the Bruins. He did not fare any better than Boucher in an all-too-easy 5-1 Boston win in the elimination game.
Taken on the whole of his rookie season, Bobrovsky had shown promise of becoming a decent NHL starting goaltender in the future. Flyers chairman Ed Snider, however, had no interest in waiting for the future.
First, Snider publicly proclaimed that the team would "never again" have a goaltending problem such as the ones that led to Leighton and Boucher splitting duties in the 2010 playoffs and which led to the three-headed monstrosity that Laviolette used in the 2011 postseason. It also should be recalled that, during the 2010 offseason, it was general manager Paul Holmgren's call to re-sign budget friendly goalie Leighton as a free agent.
A few weeks later, in a move that had Snider's win-now fingerprints all over it, the Flyers acquired the negotiating rights of soon-to-be unrestricted free agent Ilya Bryzgalov from Phoenix. The Flyers then pre-empted Bryzgalov's free agency by signing him to a nine-year, $51 million contract.
At this point, Bobrovsky's fate in Philadelphia was sealed just a few weeks after the conclusion of his rookie year. He was bound to either be traded in the near future or else to serve as a high-priced (due to the bonus structure of his entry-level contract) backup to Bryzgalov for many years to come.
In retrospect, the Flyers should have traded Bobrovsky in 2011 at around the same time they committed the huge contract to Bryzgalov. Instead, they hung onto him an additional season, which actually served to somewhat lower the young goalie's trade value.
Bobrovsky had a good first half of the 2011-12 season. At the statistical midpoint of the year, he had a 2.42 goals against average and .916 save percentage. In particular, he played well in the month of December; significantly outplaying Bryzgalov during that stretch to the point that "Bob" got a run of starts and was even tabbed as the starter for the Winter Classic at Citizen's Bank Park.
Unfortunately for Bobrovsky, he allowed a backbreaking short-side goal early in the third period of the Winter Classic as the Rangers rallied back from a 2-0 deficit in the second period to take a lead they'd never relinquish. After the Winter Classic, Bryzgalov was reinstalled as the game-in and game-out starter.
As was the case in his rookie year -- and his final pre-NHL year in the KHL -- Bobrovsky's second-half performance in 2011-12 tailed off considerably from the first half. In fact, he was pretty bad in the majority of his 13 appearances in the second half. Bobrovsky's final season stats ended up with an unimpressive 3.02 goals against average and .899 save percentage.
I will admit that I was among the people who got a bit down on Bobrovsky's potential after seeing his play decline in the second half of each of his first two years. I pegged his likely future as being along similar lines to former Flyers goalie Antero Niittymäki -- in other words, a goaltender who could look excellent for stretches but then falters when given the chance to grab the reigns as a full-time NHL starter. I confess that assessment was a bit hasty.
The Flyers entered last summer's offseason with a bold plan to spend megabucks to land a top-pairing defenseman and add another high-skill forward. They were about to send an eye-spinning contract offer to unrestricted free agent Ryan Suter, followed by signing restricted free agent Shea Weber to an even more staggering offer sheet. Simultaneous to pursuing Suter, the team also tried to land forward Zach Parise before both players signed with the Minnesota Wild.
Trading Bobrovsky to Columbus on the weekend of the 2012 Draft served two purposes. It cleared a little bit of cap space (the Flyers ended up re-signing Leighton as a dirt-cheap backup to Bryzgalov and then reacquiring Boucher from Carolina in January). Additionally, it ended an awkward situation of Bobrovsky's starting ambitions being blocked by Bryzgalov. The two Russian goalies had a distant relationship with one another during their one season as Flyers teammates.
Meanwhile, the Flyers and others suggested that Bryzgalov plays his best when he's a workhorse rather than having competition for playing time. That was part of the logic for ultimately bringing back Leighton and Boucher as benchwarmers. The Flyers would later reverse direction yet again by trading with Columbus for former Calder Trophy winner Steve Mason -- who had been unseated by Bobrovsky as the Columbus starter.
One other piece of context needs to be added to the Bobrovsky-versus-Bryzgalov discussion: At the time Bobrovsky's contract was traded to Columbus, the NHL was a few months away from a lockout. No one had any idea what the next salary cap ceiling would be or if there would be "amnesty" buyouts in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement.
In other words, the Flyers had NO CHOICE but to operate under the principle that a) for good or for bad, Bryzgalov was going to be on their cap for eight more seasons to come and b) Bobrovsky's contract was too high for a young backup but low enough to be able to be traded to a team like Columbus where he'd have the chance to compete for a starting role.
No one had any idea that Bobrovsky was going to go on to perform at an elite level this season. In fact, had Bobrovsky stayed in Philly this season, I doubt he'd have had nearly as much success amidst all the turmoil, injuries, poor team defense and the team's stated goal of maximizing Bryzgalov's regular season playing time.
When everything is put in context, I have no problem with the final decision to trade Bobrovsky. Rather, my problem with the situation lies first in Laviolette's handling of the playoff goalie rotation in 2011 and then Snider's impatience for an immediate long-term solution in net. Once things played out that way, the die was cast and there was no chance Sergei Bobrovsky would ever become the Flyers' long-range starter.
A final thought on Bobrovsky: Given his strong first halves and second-half struggles in his first two NHL season, let's see next year if he plays at a Vezina-caliber level for an entire 82-game season. This year, he did it for what was slightly more than the equivalent of a half-season after the lockout.
I don't think the hard-working Bobrovsky will be the next Jim Carey (the Vezina winner in the lockout-shortened 1994-95 year whose career nosedived thereafter). Even so, he needs to play like an elite goalie for more than 38 starts to truly show he's become a top echelon netminder in the NHL.
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