Quick Hits: May 29, 2022
1) IIHF World Championships: Team Canada will play tournament host Finland for the gold medal on Sunday at the World Championships. Flyers defenseman Travis Sanheim has posted four points (1g, 3a) and averaged 16:34 of ice time over the seven games played to date.
After going 5-2-0 in the preliminary round, Canada beat Sweden 4-3 in overtime in the quarterfinal game and then defeated the Czech Republic, 6-1, in the semis. Team USA will take on the Czech Republic for the bronze medal on Sunday.
2) This past week, the Flyers interviewed Pittsburgh Penguins assistant coach Mike Vellucci for the head coaching vacancy. The 55-year-old Vellucci has more than a quarter century of coaching experience although he has only been in the NHL for the last two seasons. Before joining the Penguins on Mike Sullivan's staff as the assistant in charge of the defense and penalty kill (84.4 percent in 2021-22), Vellucci was the head coach of the Calder Cup winning Charlotte Checkers and then the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins in a dual role as the team's general manager and head coach.
Most of Vellucci's extensive coaching experience came in junior hockey. At the NAHL level, he coached Compuware Ambassadors to back-to-back championship. He later spent 14 seasons in the Ontario Hockey League with the Plymouth Whalers, winning the OHL championship in 2006-07 with a squad that featured players such as James Neal, Jared Boll, Evan Brophey, Tom Sestito and goaltender Michal Neuvirth. Eight times during his tenure, Plymouth won at least one playoff round, including three trips to the conference final or the championship round.
A former longtime minor league defenseman who dressed in two NHL games for the Hartford Whalers in 1987-88, Vellucci returned to the pro level in 2014 when he accepted an invitation from Jim Rutherford to become the Carolina Hurricanes' assistant general manager and director of hockey operations. He served in the organization for five years.
In 2017-18, Vellucci took on the role of head coach for Charlotte in the Americal Hockey League. In the second round of the playoffs, the Checkers took on Scott Gordon's Lehigh Valley Phantoms. The series is best remembered for the epic fourth game at Bojangles Coliseum, which went five overtimes before the Phantoms prevailed. Lehigh Valley won the series in five games but it was a war of a series, and the Phantoms had little left in the tank when they played (and got swept) by the Toronto Marlies in the Eastern Conference Final. The next season, Charlotte won the Calder Cup and Vellucci won the AHL's Coach of the Year award.
When he moved over from Carolina to Pittsburgh, the Penguins' official website asked Vellucci to describe his coaching style. The coach confirmed his reputation for being tough but fair, which is how players have described him.
"I don't want to call myself a players' coach because I'm very demanding and hard on them," he said to team reporter Sam Kasan.
"But players have a voice with me. They can express themselves on and off the ice, what they do and don't like and we can adjust from there. Like everybody, we want to play fast, we want to be aggressive and we want to score goals. It's pretty identical from what 'Sully' [head coach Mike Sullivan] demands from his players up top."
Given his long-time experience at working with junior and minor league players, Vellucci has a reputation as someone who is effective in taking young players to the next level in their development with a tough-love approach that expects players to pay attention to detail on both sides of the puck.
3) May 29 Flyers Alumni birthdays: Willie Brossart (1949), Patrick Brown (1992), Marc D'Amour (1961),
4) Today in Flyers History; Game 1 of 2010 Stanley Cup Final
There has only been a one game in Flyers' franchise history that was played on May 29: Game One of the 2010 Stanley Cup Final.
The pundits' pre-series predictions of the Final being a cakewalk for the favored Chicago Blackhawks quickly flew out the window. It turned out to be a highly competitive series in five of the six games could have gone either way, and the Philadelphia Flyers prevailed in two of them.
The series opened with a high-scoring battle in Chicago in Game One. Through 40 seesaw minutes, the Flyers led 1-0, trailed 2-1, led 3-2, led 4-3, trailed 5-4, and went to the second intermission tied at 5-5. Beleaguered goaltenders Antti Niemi (27 saves on 32 shots) and Michael Leighton (15 saves on 20 shots) were sometimes left helpless and, other times, beaten on seemingly stoppable shots.
After the Blackhawks took a 5-4 lead at 15:13 of the second period on a Troy Brouwer goal, Leighton was replaced in goal by Brian Boucher. The relief netminder faired better, turning aside 11 of 12 shots but was charged with a hard-luck loss after Tomas Kopecy broke the 5-5 deadlock at 8:25 of the third period. The Flyers, who earlier got goals from Ville Leino, Scott Hartnell (power play), Danny Briere, Blair Betts and Arron Asham, could not find another equalizer in the 6-5 loss.
The stage was set for a highly entertaining - but ultimately heartbreaking for the Flyers - series.