Quick Hits: August 26, 2022
1) Wade Allison has signed a two-year, two-way/one-way contract with an average annual value (AAV) in NHL of $785,000.
2) Linus Högberg has signed a one-year, two-way contract worth $750,000 at the NHL level.
3) It was two years ago today -- August 26, 2020 -- that the Flyers earned a 4-3 overtime victory to even up their Eastern Conference semifinal series with the New York Islanders at one game apiece. The Flyers would go on to win two additional OT decisions in the series before losing in Game 7.
Truthfully, it feels like so much longer because of the way the last two seasons have gone and the large-scale current pessimism/vitriol within the fan base. The 2019-20 season, in which the Flyers were the NHL's stingiest team in term of shots allowed per game, ranked 7th in goals per game (3.29) and tied for 7th in goals against average (2.77, same as eventual Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay), feels like a figment of a different pre-pandemic era. The Flyers' lost their consistent structure, commitment and process-driven identity that had been so much a key to their 2019-20 resurgence, They have yet to rediscover it. Maybe John Tortorella can unlock it. He'll certainly try.
There's still a lot of the same key players who are either still on the roster or were Flyers until recently such as Claude Giroux or Oskar Lindblom. Somehow, though, bringing up players from 2019-20 feels almost as if we might as well be talking about now long-retired names like the late Dale Hawerchuk and Petr Svoboda or even Pelle Eklund and Doug Crossman.
At any rate, in Game 2 of the series against the Islanders, Philly jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead in the first period on two goals by Kevin Hayes and one by Sean Couturier. The Flyers took that lead and an 11-7 shot advantage to the first intermission.
The second period was pretty evenly played but the Islanders got the lone goal as they paid for a delay of game penalty on Jakub Voracek for accidentally putting the puck over the glass from the defensive zone. Power forward Anders Lee, the Islanders captain, was a down-low force the entire series and cashed in here on a chance created by Mathew Barzal.
The Flyers were still in good shape heading into the third period. They had a 3-1 lead and a 20-18 shot on goal edge through 40 minutes. However, the Islanders made a heavy push in the third period, outshooting Philly by a 15-8 margin and getting goals by Anthony Beauvillier (8;49 left on the clock) and J.G. Pageau (2:09 remaining in regulation). The latter goal developed after a failed clearing opportunity was held in the Flyers' defensive zone.
The Flyers' head coach at the time, Alain Vigneault, challenged to tying goal for an offside entry (Brock Nelson may or may not have tagged up legally at the blueline). The challenge was unsuccessful, and the Flyers had to spend most of the remainder of regulation on the PK.
At 2:41 of OT, Sean Couturier worked the puck to Philippe Myers and the big defenseman fired a shot past relief goaltender Thomas Greiss to win the game. Greiss had entered the game when it was 3-0 in the first period and had not allowed a goal until Myers' overtime tally.
Flyers goalie Carter Hart, despite yielding three regulation goals, was outstanding overall in this game. He finished with 31 saves on 34 shots.
Again, discussing this game feels like I'm talking about events from the distant past and not just from two calendar years ago. But the 2020 playoffs were a strange time, and not just due to the empty arena in the Bubble. The Flyers swept through the round-robin to earn the No. 1 seed in the East and played quite well in doing so. But they were just OK overall in outlasting Montreal in six games in the quarterfinals. Hart outplaying Carey Price was the No. 1 reason the Flyers won that series.
In Round 2 against the Islanders, the Flyers had one or two poor periods per game -- but also one or two superior or evenly played periods -- and it was a combination of OT magic and timely saves by Hart that got the series to a Game 7. Hart himself was not infallible in that series but he was lights out in overtimes and kept the Flyers in most of the other games even in the stretches where they were outplayed.
4) Add one more signing to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms' offseason additions. On Thursday, the club signed 22-year-old former Colorado Avalanche (2019 sixth-round pick) Luka Burzan to an AHL contract for the 2022-23 season.
Burzan was a productive Western Hockey League player for the Brandon Wheat Kings, especially as a 19-year-old. He parlayed a 40-goal, 78-point season over 60 games into being drafted 171st overall by the Avalanche one year after going unselected in the 2017 NHL Entry Draft. He was teammates in Brandon with the likes of Ridly Greig (Ottawa Senators prospect, son of Flyers Alum and western Canada based scout Mark Greig) and Ben McCartney (Flyers camp tryout player in 2019, later selected by Arizona in the seventh round of the 2020 Draft and made his NHL debut with the Coyotes last season).
After turning pro in 2020, the 6-foot, 185-pound Burzan has played 24 games as an AHL fourth-liner (three goals, four points) and 41 games as a middle-six forward at the ECHL level (13 goals, 31 points). Come the start of the 2022-23 season, the natural center could split time between the Reading Royals and Lehigh Valley Phantoms and try to make a push to stake down a regular AHL spot. If not, he'll be a regular for Reading.
5) Today in Flyers History; McCrimmon Traded to Calgary
On the worst trades in Flyers history took place on Aug. 26, 1987. The Flyers traded defenseman Brad McCrimmon to the Calgary Flames for a 1988 third-round pick (goalie Dominic Roussel) and a 1989 first-round pick (later traded to Toronto in the Ken Wregget deal).
McCrimmon had been part of a dominant defensive pairing with Hall of Famer Mark Howe since the 1984-85 season (before that, Howe's primary partner was Glen Cochrane) while McCrimmon played with other partners. The Beast had originally been acquired from Boston in a one-for-one trade for NHL All-Star goalie Pete Peeters.
Flyers icon Bob Clarke was still an active player at the time of McCrimmon's acquisition. Clarke's final few seasons and McCrimmon's early years in Philadelphia were spent as teammates. Clarke and McCrimmon did not hit it off particularly well in their relationship, but they coexisted fine as teammates.
After Clarke became GM and Mike Keenan became head coach, McCrimmon's play truly took off. It was Keenan who put the Howe-McCrimmon pairing together and played them 30-plus minutes a night. Although McCrimmon pulled his weight in the pairing as an equal partner -- a stellar shutdown D, nasty physical presence and someone who could burn an opponent who ignored him to over-key on defending Howe's side of the ice -- Clarke did not agree with Keenan that McCrimmon's value was THAT much higher than Cochrane's had been in riding shotgun to Howe.
Clarke accepted Keenan's private assertion that McCrimmon, who'd been through a divorce in his personal life, had come out refocused and mentally recharged. "Beast" and Howe were the best of friends as well as defense partners. However, the GM did not believe that McCrimmon was a "re-sign at any price" player, and Clarke did not get along with McCrimmon's agent.
Unsigned in the summer of 1986, McCrimmon did not report to training camp. The holdout was acrimonious, although the two sides eventually reached a compromise. McCrimmon followed up his career-best 1985-86 season with another rock-solid campaign for the 1986-87 squad, which ultimately reached Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
Another contract dispute followed in the summer of 1987. Both sides dug in their heels and would not budge an inch off a $25,000 gap in their respective proposals. Not wanting to deal any further with the situation, Clarke traded McCrimmon to Calgary for the two Draft picks. Keenan was opposed to the trade, but did not argue it with the general manager.
To his credit, as the years past, Clarke accepted full blame for what turned out to be a disastrous trade. He'd let his emotions and personal feelings get in the way of a needed re-signing and he also came to realize that McCrimmon was far more important to the Flyers than he'd given credit. The 28-year-old version of McCrimmon was a better and more consistent version of the player Clarke had played with before retirement. Clarke admitted to the late Jay Greenberg in Full Spectrum that the McCrimmon trade was his biggest regret as a general manager. If he could have had one do-over, it would have been on that negotiation and eventual trade.
For his part, McCrimmon instantly stepped in as a bedrock player on the Flames blueline. He was a vital part of Terry Crisp's defense corps on the eventual 1988-89 Stanley Cup championship winning team and remained a highly effective NHL defenseman until his retirement in 1997. Late in his career, a member of the Hartford Whalers, McCrimmon was the first partner of a rookie Chris Pronger.
The Flyers never found a comparable replacement for McCrimmon. When Howe started having chronic back issues that kept him out of the lineup for long stretches, the Flyers fell from being an elite team and perennial contender to just another club. Ron Hextall's groin issues (and a contract holdout of his own) hastened the demise that ended up with Philly missing the playoffs for five straight seasons after a last-hurrah run to the Wales Conference Final in 1989 spearheaded by the remaining old guard stalwarts.
6) August 26 Flyers Alumni birthday: Wayne Simmonds celebrates his 34th birthday today. The best years of the power forward's 1,019-game NHL career were his eight seasons with the Flyers including back-to-back campaigns and five seasons with 24 or more goals. Beloved by teammates and Flyers fans alike, Simmonds will always stand as one of the organizational bright lights of the 2010s.
His final game as a Flyer was in the comeback win over the Pittsburgh Penguins at the 2019 Stadium Series match at Lincoln Financial Field. However, his most memorable moment came when he dedicated the final home game of the 2017-18 season to dying Flyers chairman Ed Snider and then went out and scored two goals to clinch a playoff spot for the team.