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Quick Hits: Konecny, Lindblom, Bundy and Bill, Phantoms, 14 Days of Giving

December 13, 2019, 9:55 AM ET [56 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Quick Hits: December 13, 2019

1) While the Flyers prepare to continue their western road trip on Saturday with a game against the Minnesota Wild, injured Flyers players Travis Konecny (concussion) and Michael Raffl (broken right pinky finger) skated and worked with skills coach Angelo Ricci at the Skate Zone in Voorhees on Thursday.

2) Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher may have an update on the status of Oskar Lindblom (upper-body injury) on Friday. Lindblom took a maintenance day on Monday (after a team off-day on Sunday) but was slated to play during the current road trip. On Wednesday, the team recalled David Kase from the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms and announced that Lindblom was out due to injury. At the time, head coach Alain Vigneault told the traveling media that the team would know more about Lindblom's situation within a few days.

3) Kase's ice time in his NHL debut in Colorado on Wednesday was rather limited, as expected, but the undersized winger played well in showing his characteristically fearless high-energy style of puck pursuit. Although he's never been a high-end finisher, Kase is a smart and feisty player that grows on you the more you watch him play. He goes to the high-traffic areas, works to get the puck and doesn't get intimidated despite giving up size to most opponents. His motor is always going, as long as he's reasonably healthy.

Goals have been very hard to come by in general for the Phantoms of late, but Kase had noticeably been one of the team's most consistent forwards the last couple weeks before his NHL callup. He wasn't lacking for being in the middle of a lot of offensive chances but very few points were going up on the board. Although the natural tendency is to compare the player to his brother, Anaheim Ducks winger Ondrej Kase, a better stylistic comparison might be former Flyers winger Sami Kapanen with less offensive upside compared to Kapanen in his younger years and less pure speed; not a knock on David, because Sami could fly.

The real long-term issue with Kase, apart from staying healthy, is that he's a player who is hard to project into a particular regular spot in an NHL lineup. Unless he starts putting a few more pucks in the net than he has historically and recently done, it's tough to project him as a top nine forward. Wingers Kase's size typically need to be regular scorers to be regulars in a lineup, and there is still often a preference for bigger-framed players on a fourth line (a bigger-framed winger who skates well north-south and has a good work ethic, ala Tyler Pitlick, is kind of the prototype fourth line ideal nowadays).

4) Most between-period and postgame interviews with players, because of their short durations, the fact that the player is out of breath and a general tendency to try to give "safe" and generic cliché answers, tend to be forgettable. Here's an exception.

Carrlyn Bathe, the daughter of Flyers Alumni defenseman Frank Bathe, did a postgame interview with Kings defenseman Drew Doughty and asked him about a spirited mid second period fight between the Kings' Kurtis MacDermid and Anaheim's Nicolas Deslauriers. For those unfamiliar with Doughty's personality, he is very much like the Flyers' Jakub Voracek in that he hates speaking in clichés and doesn't sugarcoat his opinions.

Said Doughty, "[Fighting] can't make its way out of the league. We need fighting. I know people don't like it, some of you, but then you're gonna have all those meatheads running around, little guys being rats out there. That's just how it's gonna go. So you need fighting. People gotta protect their teammates and themselves. When it's safe like that [mutually agreed MacDermid vs. Deslauriers fight] and no one gets hurt, that's the best way."


5) Speaking of meatheads, the new edition of the Bundy and Bill podcast for Flyers Radio 24/7 and Flyers Podcast Central is now online. This week, Chris Therien and I talked about the Flyers-Colorado game, preview the weekend tilts in Minnesota and Winnipeg and go around the league. To me, the most interesting portion is Chris talking about what it's actually like playing hockey in the altitude of the Mile High City; how it affected him when he played and how long it took to adjust and to become like any other road game. Listen to the podcast here.

6) Coming off a rough 0-3-0 week that saw the team score only a combined two goals on 120 shots, the Lehigh Valley Phantoms (10-10-5) are on the road on Friday to take on the Atlantic Division leading Hartford Wolf Pack (15-4-7) on Friday night. There hasn't been much good news of late for the injury-riddled and NHL recall laden Phantoms, but there a couple pieces of positive news:

* German Rubtsov's shoulder injury could have been much worse than it turned out to be and he is reportedly getting close to being ready to return to the lineup.

* The AHL justifiably rescinded an abuse of official penalty on Kurtis Gabriel, stemming from the continuation of a confrontation with Kale Kessy early in the third period of last Saturday's game in Hershey. Although Gabriel was tackled down to the ice by a linesman who was trying to prevent Gabriel from re-engaging with Kessy after an initial fight ended, the Phantoms forward in no way initiated physical contact or applied force to the official in effort to get away from him to go after Kessy again. Had the penalty not been recategorized, Gabriel would have had to serve an automatic three-game suspension.

On the flip side, the AHL should have suspended Kessy for a dirty-looking hit in the second period that injured Phantoms center Cal O'Reilly. There was no supplementary discipline forthcoming.

The league did suspend Hershey's Beck Malenstyn for an elbow that injured Phantoms defenseman Mark Friedman one night earlier in Allentown, but the Malenstyn play looked like he unintentionally caught Friedman up high and the Kessy hit on O'Reilly looked like the player knew exactly what he was doing on someone who had no chance to defend himself. If one hit or the other should have brought about a suspension, it should have been the Kessy incident rather than the Malenstyn one.

Following Friday's game in Hartford, the scene shifts to Allentown on Saturday for the back end of the home-and-home set. Saturday's game at the PPL Center is the annual "Teddy Bear Toss" game. All collected stuffed animals will be donated to Valley Youth House for children in need across the Lehigh Valley.

7) As part of the Flyers Alumni Association's brand new 14 Days of Christmas Season Giving program, the Alumni are making daily donations of money and/or volunteer time to local charities, community organizations and individuals/families in need. Each successive recipient is being spotlighted daily on the Flyers Alumni's official website, with a new one added each day. A new charity, the South Jersey-based BookSmiles, will be spotlighted today. The recipients profiled thus far:

* Ed Snider Youth Hockey Foundation; Danny Briere's dollar-for-dollar match of the Flyers' Alumni's $1,000 contribution turned it into a $2,000 donation.
* Families Behind the Badge Children's Foundation; Flyers Alumni $1,500 donation on direct behalf of severely injured Philadelphia police patrolman Andy Chan.
* In conjunction with Simon's Hart, donation of an automated external defibrillator (AED) to the Boys and Girls Club of Philadelphia.
* $1,500 monetary donation to Northwest Victim Services.

Northwest Victim Services is an organization that has become especially near and dear to Flyers Alumni player and longtime Flyers/national broadcaster Bill Clement. As some of you may know, back on July 10, Bill's son, former Philadelphia Fury soccer player Chase Clement, suffered life-threatening and extensive injuries when he was victimized by a hit-and-run accident.

The Clements and the Flyers Alumni are grateful to Northwest Victim Services-- as well as to police, emergency responders and Temple Hospital doctors-- for all they've done for Chase and other crime victims. Chase still has a long road to go and his life will never be the same but he is doing better. To learn more about Chase's story and the work of Northwest Victim Services, based on Germantown Ave. in Philadelphia, click here.
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