Quick Hits: September 5, 2018
1) Flyers 2017 first-round pick
Morgan Frost, who is in training camp with his OHL team, the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, before leaving to attend the Flyers rookie camp and training camp
spoke this weekend with the Sault Star. Frost said that he felt he could have played better in the Ontario Hockey League playoffs last season and wants to continue working on his play below the dots in both the defensive and offensive zones. He also said that the World Junior Summer Showcase in Kamloops last month was a great learning experience.
In terms of his push to make the Flyers' NHL roster out of training camp, Frost said "I think I'm ready" but added that he's going in "without expectations." Flyers general manager
Ron Hextall and other members of the organization have hinted pretty strongly that they think Frost needs one additional year of junior hockey
before he is pro ready. It would take a spectacular camp for Frost to have a chance at playing in the NHL this season.
2) Yesterday, the crew of Flyers and Phantoms players working out at the Skate Zone in Voorhees welcomed a special guest on the ice: 46-year-old cancer patient
Keven Chandler, whose lifelong dream has been to skate with the Flyers. The organization fulfilled that wish yesterday; exactly two years to the day of his giloblastoma diagnosis.
3) Today in Flyers History: On Sept. 5, 1991, the eventual Canada Cup champion Team Canada defeated Sweden, 5-1, while eventual runner-up Team USA downed Finland, 3-1.
Coached by former Flyers head
Mike Keenan (by then with the Chicago Blackhawks), the lone Flyer on the Canada squad was
Rick Tocchet. However, there were two notable future Flyers on the Canadian roster: 18-year-old
Eric Lindros (at the time the holdout first overall pick of the 1991 Draft, selected by the Quebec Nordiques) and 22-year-old Montreal Canadiens defenseman
Eric Desjardins. Veteran center
Dale Hawerchuk, then still a star-level performer for the Buffalo Sabres was also on Team Canada.
With
Pelle Eklund unable to participate due to injury,
Kjell Samuelsson was the lone Flyers representative on Tre Kronor, along with then-prospect goaltender
Tommy Söderström. Two other players who later briefly played for the Flyers -- checking forward
Mikael Andersson and defenseman
Ulf Samuelsson were also on Team Sweden.
No then-current Flyers were on Team USA, but the squad included future Flyers centers
Jeremy Roenick and
Joel Otto, defenseman
Eric Weinrich, goaltender
John Vanbiesbrouck and future Flyers assistant coach
Joe Mullen (then a still-active player for the Pittsburgh Penguins).
Unless one were to include Hockey Hockey of Famer right wing
Jari Kurri as a player with a Flyers connection, there were no Flyers-related players on Team Finland. Earlier that offseason, the Flyers were part of a three-way trade with the Edmonton Oilers and LA Kings that very briefly sent Kurri's rights to the Flyers from Edmonton before he was immediately flipped to the Kings (reuniting him with longtime Oilers linemate
Wayne GretzkySteve Duchesne to the Flyers.
Team USSR had several players who eventually played for the Flyers when they came over to North America: the late
Andrei Lomakin (Dynamo Moscow), fellow Flyers draftee
Slava Butsayev (CSKA) and future Flyers
Alexei Zhamnov (Dynamo Moscow),
Alexei Zhitnik (Sokol Kiev) and
Andrei Kovalenko (CSKA).
The star of the Czechoslovakian team -- the last time the Czechs and Slovaks played together as a combined team in the tournament -- is exactly whom one would suspect it would be:
Jaromir Jagr, then a burgeoning 19-year-old NHL star with the Penguins.
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