Quick Hits: May 10, 2020
1) Newsday's Andrew Gross reported yesterday that the National Hockey League may have narrowed its return-to-play scenarios to two possibilities. Neither would include having all 31 teams reschedule some or all of their remaining regular season games.
* Scenario 1, per Newsday, would have 24 teams involved. The top four teams by points percentage would play for their opening playoff seeding and the bottom teams would have a postseason play-in for wildcard spots.
* Scenario 2 would be to simply go straight to the playoffs with 16 teams. No further pre-playoff games would be played.
The venues for the games are still up in the air. Any venue would, almost certainly, not have fans allowed in the stands. There are also no deadline dates yet to make decisions on whether the season can be realistically completed or when the NHL Draft will be held.
2) In the new edition of Therien's Take, Chris Therien looks at each of the three major keys to a successful return to play: geographic location of teams/ venue availability, fans, and ongoing Covid-19 testing procedures and plans on handling any potential positive tests. For more, click here.
3) The in-depth Flyers player profile series continues with a look at Ivan Provorov. At the time of the NHL pause, Provorov was well on his way to capturing the second Barry Ashbee Trophy of his four-year NHL career, and his first since his rookie season of 2016-17. At age 23, Provorov appears to be on the brink of breaking through into the elite echelon of NHL defensemen. 4) Flyers Alumni YouTube page: In addition to the new "Flyers Decades" series, we have started to build a library of videos for fans to watch at their leisure. The video below was taken from Channel 57's original postgame coverage after Game 7 of the 1987 Stanley Cup Final. Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" was the team's postseason theme song that year and a montage of playoff highlights were set to the song.
Per-Erik "Pelle" Eklund had a spectacular series during the 1987 Wales Conference Finals against the Montreal Canadiens. Generally much more of a playmaker than a shooter, Eklund temporarily shed his reticence to look for scoring chances of his own, and results were spectacular. Perhaps the greatest game of his NHL career came in Game 5 of the series. Eklund puts on an electrifying show, scoring a hat trick. The Habs, simply could not cope with his anticipation, speed and shiftiness.
Scott Mellanby, Brian Propp and Ron Sutter also scored for Philly, as the Flyers grabbed a three games to one lead in the series. Flyers rookie goalie Ron Hextall outplayed both Patrick Roy (16 saves on 20 shots) and Brian Hayward (five saves on seven shots). Hextall stopped 25 of 28 shots and earns an assist on Sutter's first period goal. Montreal recovered from an early 2-0 deficit to tie the game before Eklund and company pulled away to move within one victory of a trip to the Stanley Cup Final.
6) May 10: Flyers Alumni Birthdays
* Defensive-minded forward Mikael Andersson was born May 10, 1966, in Malmo, Sweden. * Longtime minor league power forward standout and depth NHLer Denis Hamel was born May 10, 1977 in Lachute, Quebec.