QUICK HITS: MARCH 20, 2017
1) The Flyers will take their team photo at 11 a.m. today at the Wells Fargo Center. Practice will follow thereafter before the team departs for its upcoming four-game road trip. The Flyers are 21-11-4 at home this season, and another 50-plus point season on home ice is well within reach. Unfortunately, the club is 12-19-4 on the road. A poor road record was the Flyers' undoing in 2014-15 and improved just enough last season for the Flyers (who had 54 points at home) to squeak into the playoffs.
The upcoming trip will see the Flyers play four times in six nights (in Winnipeg on Tuesday, Minnesota on Thursday, Columbus on Saturday afternoon and Pittsburgh on Sunday). Even under less grueling conditions, it would be a very tough gauntlet of opponents.
With 11 games left and six points to make up in the wildcard chase -- factoring in their tiebreaker disadvantage, which will require them to win outright on points -- Philly likely needs seven of eight possible points on the trip to make any headway in their faint but still mathematically possible playoff hopes. That's a very tall order, to put it mildly.
2) Regardless of how the rest of the season turns out, watching Travis Konecny step up during the stretch drive with his best stretch of hockey since early in the season and seeing Ivan Provorov (who stands a good chance of winning the Barry Ashbee Trophy as a rookie) play a dominant game against Carolina has been one of the most hopeful recent signs.
3) Another encouraging sign: Skating-wise, Shayne Gostisbehere and Claude Giroux are now looking like much healthier and unencumbered players than they did for much of the season. Their respective mobility finally has been getting back to their previous standards. Perhaps it's too little and too late for this season -- and with Giroux, staying healthier is something to monitor going forward -- but those groin/hip surgeries are no joke. Those injuries can affect a player for much of the next season. No player wants to use injury or injury recovery as an excuse for a subpar season, but it definitely has an impact.
Example: For the rest of his career after the spectacular start to the first 2 1/2 seasons of his career, Mikael Renberg always seemed to either be playing through a significant injury or just getting back to form after one that forced him out for a while and then soon getting hurt again. That's the biggest reason why his production fell off. In the early days, he produced at virtually the identical pace whether he was playing with Eric Lindros or not (because Lindros was out frequently, too).
4) Over on the Flyers' official site, I wrote a feature story on the Flyers Alumni team's 8-6 win over the Penguins Alumni in Reading on Saturday. It was a fun game, with Dan Carcillo collecting a hat trick, Danny Briere compiling five points (two goals, three assists), John LeClair and Eric Lindros setting each other up for goals and strong goaltending play both from Brian Boucher and especially by Ray Emery. For more,
click here.
5) Bob "the Hound" Kelly, who has played in more Flyers Alumni games over the years than anyone except Joe Watson, is retiring from active participation in the games. He will still be involved in off-ice capacities and lace up the skates for the Alumni Fantasy Camp, of which he is driving force in the annually sold-out event.
I chatted a bit with the Hound in the Flyers Alumni locker room (actually, the Reading Royals locker room) at Santander Arena on Saturday. As with Bob Clarke and Bill Barber -- who each played in their final Alumni Game at the 50th Anniversary Game at the Wells Fargo Center in January -- Kelly feels that the time has come to pass the playing torch to a younger generation of Flyers Alumni.
"I never wanted to play forever, and this is how it should be," Kelly said. "When we have these games, to the fans who come out in Reading or Philly or wherever, it's an event more than a hockey game. But the people also want and deserve to see a good show on the ice. The 80s guys are now getting to be the 'old guys' on the ice. The 70s guys like me? Time waits for nobody. You just get to a point where your body tells you that you can't do this anymore, and you can't ignore that forever."
The Hound, who serves as the Flyers Ambassador of Hockey, remains one of the hardest-working people around the organization. He is tireless in representing the organization and the sport as a whole in making trips to schools, civic events, volunteering for charity drives and meeting people at the Wells Fargo Center. He'll still be a familiar face around the Delaware Valley and he'll still be part of Alumni Games as an honored guest attraction. He just won't be playing in the games.
Incidentally, the Hound scored a would-be goal in Sunday's game in Reading but the goal was disallowed. He did get an assist on Dave Brown's third-period tally.
6) The Lehigh Valley Phantoms are idle tonight. Tomorrow, the Phantoms (40-19-4-0) are on the road in Newfoundland to tak on the St. John's Ice Caps (31-25-7-1).
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