Quick Hits: September 27, 2020
1) Last night, in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final, Dallas Stars forward Joe Pavelski became the all-time leading goal scorer in Stanley Cup playoff history when he scored his 61st career playoff goal to pass (former Flyers assistant coach) Joe Mullen. Pavelski's goal forced overtime before Dallas went on to win in double overtime on a Corey Perry goal.
Pavelski's career story is a good reminder of how draft pick assets are like lottery tickets, especially once you move beyond the first round. The odds of hitting the jackpot are low to begin with, and even lower by the middle to late rounds. Once in awhile, though, late-rounders and undrafted free agents go on to have much, much better careers than even most of the top picks in the draft. Hindsight is always 20/20!
On June 22, 2003, during the NHL Draft the Flyers swapped their seventh round pick to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for a sixth-round pick the next year. Ho hum exchange, right? Ninety-nine percent of the time, yes. Pick exchanges like those are almost always mere footnotes.
This particular year, the Sharks used their added seventh-round pick on a Waterloo Black Hawks forward by the name of Joe Pavelski. The next year, the Flyers took Slovakian forward Ladislav Scurko with the sixth-round pick acquired from San Jose the previous year.
The only thing notable about Scurko's career is that he later went on to be convicted of the multiple-stabbing death of Slovakian referee Marek Liptaj (in a monetary dispute that had nothing to do with hockey). Scurko, whose defense lawyer claimed his client suffered from temporary insanity, was later released from a Slovak prison in December 2015.
Obviously, no one has a crystal ball on the Draft floor. It's not a guarantee that the Flyers would have selected Pavelski had they not made the seemingly irrelevant pick swap with the Sharks. Even so, if you could rewrite a single piece of team history, selecting Pavelski would have been a intriguing thing to change.
There is also a Corey Perry connection with the Flyers in the 2003 Draft. According to Jay Greenberg's Flyers at 50, Perry was on the Flyers short-list of candidates the organization considered with their second of two first round picks in 2003. After the organization selected Jeff Carter with the 11th overall pick -- a swing for the fences -- they went with more a sure-thing selection with the 24th overall selection and opted for Kitchener Rangers center Mike Richards over a riskier pick with Perry.
The Richards pick, however, certainly worked out well for the Flyers for the first five/six years of his NHL career. Philly later got a great return from the LA Kings, including Brayden Schenn and Wayne Simmonds, from the 2011 deal that ended Richards' time in Philadelphia.
Perry, chosen 28th by Anaheim, won the Hart Trophy and Rocket Richard Trophy in 2010-11. He's now nearing the end of his NHL career, but has stepped up big in the Stanley Cup Final for Dallas. Even so, if there was a chance to go back in time and redo the 2003 Draft, I would still rather the Flyers have taken Richards than Perry. At the very least, you can make a hindsight case either way.
2) Sept. 27 Flyers Alumni birthdays: Daymond Langkow (1976), Frank Bathe (1954), Blair Jones (1986).