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McDavid, Manning and Nights You Hate to Miss; Friday's Buzzcast

December 9, 2016, 12:38 PM ET [116 Comments]
Eklund
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Ever since the Philadelphia Flyers put out their schedule for this season, I had Dec. 8 marked down as a must-attend night to cover in the press box.

First, it was 50th Anniversary Goalies Night for the Flyers as part of the series of special events they are doing. As someone who plays goalie myself, this was right in my wheelhouse anyway, and most especially because I grew up loving the Flyers as my team and idolizing Bernie Parent and then Pelle Lindbergh and Ron Hextall.

Second, the Edmonton Oilers were the opponent, and this was a chance to marvel up close at the talents of Connor McDavid and the rest of the team. You can't really 100% appreciate a team's speed til you see them in person, and Edmonton has speed to burn.

But it wasn't to be. A family commitment had to take priority.

This was one I hated to miss, especially because it was as close to a reunion between Bernie and Pelle as is possible in this lifetime. For those who don't know, the late Pelle Lindbergh grew up idolizing Bernie and the Flyers as a kid in Sweden and, many years later, Bernie became almost like a second father to him as well as his goalie coach with the Flyers. Pelle was represented last night by his longtime girlfriend, whom he was planning to marry in the summer of 1986 before he had his fatal car wreck in Nov. 1985. Bernie would have been an honored guest at their wedding. Instead he delivered a eulogy at the memorial game at the Spectrum.

The opponent that night: yup, Edmonton.

Of course, the Hockey Gods had to make it so that Goalies Night turned out like some goalies' nightmare game from the 80s era with a 6-5 final score. Maybe not the best way to recall the three Vezina Trophy winning Flyers goalies of the past and other notables. But HockeyBuzz's Bill Meltzer pointed out to me that the game-winning shot by Philly's Michael Raffl came on Philadelphia's 31st shot of the game (Pelle wore number 31 and no Flyer has worn it since) and it was scored against a latter-generation Swedish goalie (Jonas Gustavsson) decades after Pelle was the first European goalie to win the Vezina Trophy.

Anyway, I wanted to chime in on the little war of words between McDavid and Flyers defenseman Brandon Manning. McDavid called Manning classless, claiming the Flyers defenseman dredged up the broken collarbone McDavid had last year by trash talking about it and saying he no longer feels like the play was accidental. Manning vehemently denies it.

I'm not going to wade into who said what first on the ice last night. I don't know. What I do know is: Even if McDavid's version is 100 percent accurate, he was showing some immaturity by saying a word about it afterwards. What's said on the ice should stay on the ice, especially when it's clearly one player just trying to get another one one's skin.

By showing that it was pretty easy to get under his skin, McDavid just created a blueprint for players much better than Brandon Manning to drive him to distraction. The Flyers didn't really get McDavid off his game, even though they ended up winning the game. But a team with more of a bonafide shutdown defenseman in a playoff series now has an inkling of how to gain a bit of a psychological edge by knowing that while McDavid's talent level is far beyond his years, he still is impetuous enough to take the bait when the right buttons are pushed if he gets chirped.

We'll discuss this and more on the Buzzcast at 2pm:



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