Can The Gays Rally The Flyers?

This ridiculous Flyers season is rapidly drawing to a close -- more rapidly than usual, with the compressed post-Olympic schedule. The inconsistency that has dogged them all season, except for perhaps those four wins right before the Olympics, continues. Since the season resumed they're now 5-6-1, coming up with the occasional inspired effort (3-2 win over Chicago on a Chris Pronger goal in the final 3 seconds) followed by the inevitable lazy followup (3-1 loss at the NY Rangers the next day). And now it's taken a turn for the worse.

After losing starting goalie Ray Emery for so many games, and eventually the season, due to injury, they were basically saved by the surprisingly fine play of Michael Leighton. Then Leighton had to go and get the dreaded high ankle sprain on March 16th at Nashville, sidelining him for 8 to 10 weeks -- meaning he can only return if the Flyers make a long playoff run. The Flyers are down to Brian Boucher and heaven knows who from the minors to back him up.

Boucher ended up losing the Nashville game in the shootout, but won the next night at Dallas. The Flyers haven't won since, losing a home-and-home set to Atlanta over the weekend and at Ottawa Tuesday night. (More on that in a moment.) If that isn't bad enough, the team hasn't scored more than 3 goals in a game in their last 11 games, and just lost leading scorer Jeff Carter to a broken foot bone. He's expected to be out 3 to 4 weeks, and we're in the final 3 weeks of the regular season...

Flyers Resurgent, No Thanks To Cheating TV Network

When I last wrote about the Flyers, they had lost the Winter Classic in overtime and then lost a mess of a game in Ottawa. Fortunately, since then they've won three in a row. Wins at home over Toronto and Tampa Bay sandwiched the most impressive of the three wins, a 7-4 spanking of the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Pens are the defending Stanley Cup champs and have dominated the Flyers recently, both in the regular season and playoffs. So winning in their building is impressive.

It might have been even more of a one-sided game. Late in the second period with the Flyers up 5-3, Simon Gagne seemed to have scored a goal on a rebound but the puck was pulled out of the net by the goaltender. The on-ice officials ruled "no goal." There was a video review in the NHL's "War Room" in Toronto, but the call was not overturned because there was no conclusive evidence. A few minutes later, after the game resumed, Fox Sports Net Pittsburgh aired a replay that clearly showed the puck in the net.

The procedure for video review is that the networks televising the game feed the replays from all camera angles to Toronto, where they are reviewed. Since Comcast Sportsnet here used Pittsburgh's video feed for its telecast, it had nothing to send. Somehow the replay that showed the puck behind the goal line wasn't sent to Toronto by FSN Pittsburgh.

Now, after the fact, the NHL is investigating the network's failure to forward that particular video to Toronto:

It is not yet clear whether FSN Pittsburgh purposely excluded the angle or it was an unintentional oversight, though one Penguins announcer can be heard saying “we saved that one” on the broadcast.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

That comment could well have been a joke. My guess is that, even if someone purposely excluded sending that video, they won't admit it and probably nothing will come of it. A well-run league would institute safeguards to ensure that the "War Room" has every available video, but we all know the NHL isn't exactly a finely-tuned machine.

The Flyers, on the other hand, are now 7-1-1 in their last nine games and stand just one point out of the playoffs, with three fewer games played than 8th-place Montreal, and goalie Ray Emery is back with the team and available to play, having played with the AHL Phantoms on Saturday on a conditioning assignment. So things appear to be looking up again.

Flyers, Eagles, Sixers (Yes, Sixers!) Updates

The fun and absurdity continues on the local sports front. And this doesn't include the Phillies' participation in the baseball winter meetings, because there isn't really much going on there...

Having returned from his exile, Allen Iverson finally hit the court for the 76ers on Monday night. He was in the starting lineup, where he'll presumably be for at least a while. He got a huge ovation when introduced, and kissed the Sixers logo painted on center court. He scored 11 points in 37 minutes. It was a huge success, as they sold out the building and the crowd got to adore their hero. Not that the people cared, apparently, and not that management cares, because they finally sold some tickets, but the Sixers lost -- for the 10th game in a row.

Speaking of returning from exile, Michael Vick returned to Atlanta on Sunday, and the Eagles' afternoon was interesting. I expected it to be pretty close, since both teams were missing key players due to injury, but the Falcons were just awful. For a while it was close (13-0 at the half) because of some lingering Eagles ineptitude, but the game turned on the Eagles' goal-line stand at the end of the first half. The Falcons had 2nd-and-goal from the 1, tried to run it in on 2nd, 3rd and 4th down and were stopped each time. The second half the Eagles became more efficient, and they went on to a 34-7 win, with Atlanta not scoring until the final play of the game with the Eagles' defensive starters out.

Two of the second-half scores came from Vick -- a 5-yard run that made it 20-0 in the 3rd quarter, and then a TD pass that made it 34-0 in the 4th quarter. They were his first scores since getting out of jail. As for his reception from the fans, on both TV and radio (I was monitoring both) it sounded like a lot more boos than cheers the first time he entered the game. But when he ran for his score, and especially when he threw for the touchdown, it was mostly cheers. I don't know how much of that was Atlanta fans. The camera shots of the stands seemed to show quite a lot of Eagles fans in attendance from the start. I'd say that when it got to 27-0 the Falcons fans either started cheering for Vick or just left.

The win puts the Eagles (8-4) back into a first-place tie with Dallas, thanks to the Cowboys' loss to the Giants (7-5). The Eagles visit the Giants next week, and if they win I'd say the playoffs are pretty much a guarantee.

No such guarantee exists for the Flyers. Their first two games since firing head coach John Stevens ended in defeat, making it 9 losses in the last 10. Saturday night against Washington, new coach Peter Laviolette had to be wondering what he got himself into. With the score 1-1 in the latter part of the first period, Flyer Dan Carcillo (I'd call him a goon but really he's more of an idiot than the typical NHL fighter) managed to get 29 minutes in penalties and give Washington a 9-minute power play. The Capitals scored 3 times in that span and rolled to an easy 8-2 win.

Last night, in Montreal, the Flyers managed to hold the Canadiens to just 13 shots on goal in the entire game -- only one in the first 25:51. But Montreal managed to score 3 times on their 13 shots, and held the Flyers to just 15 shots of their own, gaining a 3-1 win.

Tonight, however, the Flyers actually managed to win! The 6-2 victory came over the New York Islanders -- the only team the Flyers beat in the previous 10 games. Unfortunately, there are two problems. One, with so many games on the schedule right now (4 games a week for a couple of weeks) there is little practice time available for the new coach to put his systems into effect. Two, the next nine games are against teams other than the Islanders.

Oh, make that three problems: goalie Ray Emery is having surgery to repair a torn abdominal muscle and will likely be out for 6 weeks. Oh, make it four problems: he's had the problem since November and has been playing with it, with the Flyers' knowledge. They've been trying to treat it without surgery until now. Considering how this team has had a number of players with similar abdominal and groin problems in recent years, I'm amazed Emery wasn't shut down sooner. I think it was irresponsible of the Flyers to let him keep playing.

Post-Thanksgiving coach curse hits Flyers' Stevens

An interesting trend has developed in recent years involving the Flyers' annual day-after-Thanksgiving matinee home games: one of the teams playing the game has fired their head coach for 4 years in a row.

In 2006 the Columbus Blue Jackets fired coach Gerard Gallant and eventually replaced him with former Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock, who made his Columbus debut at the Wachovia Center the day after Thanksgiving. The next year the Washington Capitals fired their head coach, Glen Hanlon, and Bruce Boudreau took over -- against the Flyers, the day after Thanksgiving.

Slightly going against the tide, last year the Carolina Hurricanes faced the Flyers in the Black Friday afternoon game, but they actually waited until December to fire coach Peter Laviolette.

This year's post-Thanksgiving game featured the Flyers and Buffalo Sabres, but in a twist, it wasn't the Sabres firing their coach. Instead, it was the Flyers, who fired John Stevens today -- and in another twist, Laviolette has taken his place.

Stevens seemed to be a promising choice at first. He coached the AHL Phantoms to a championship in 2004-05, and a number of players from that team have been Flyers since then. However, despite one strong run to the Eastern Conference finals, the team has been maddeningly inconsistent, as I mentioned last night. This year, with the additions of Chris Pronger and Ray Emery to a team that already had players like Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, expectations for a Stanley Cup run were very high. But the hot and cold streaks have kept this team from living up to their hype.

Last night, after their dismal 3-0 loss to Vancouver, I wrote the following about the Flyers' recent stretch: "This is the type of thing that should get a coach fired. The sooner it happens, the better off the Flyers will be." It should be noted that another highly-touted team, Pittsburgh, struggled mightily for a good part of last year. The Penguins then made a coaching change and promptly won the Stanley Cup. And Laviolette won a Cup with Carolina in 2005-06. So, less than 24 hours after I wrote that, the Flyers are instantly better off. I wish I had such power over other matters.

Strong start for the Flyers

I still can't quite get around the fact that it's fall, the NFL and college football have been in full swing for weeks, and now it's hockey season. Where does the time go? At any rate, the Flyers began the 2009-10 season with 2 fine road wins. Last night's 2-0 win at Carolina was followed by tonight's 5-2 win at New Jersey. Beating Martin Brodeur and the Devils has been difficult over the years, so to get 5 goals off him (in his 1,000th career game, no less) is very nice. And if the info I'm getting from the post-game show on TV is correct, it's the first time in about a decade that the Flyers have started a season with two wins.

Prior to the season I was skeptical about the additions of Chris Pronger (due to his age and how much he'll count against the salary cap) and Ray Emery (due to his various team-disruption issues). But the Flyers' retooled defense, anchored by Pronger, looks much more secure than it has in recent years, and Emery has been very strong. These two games don't exactly end my skepticism. After all, Pronger is still getting up there and there's plenty of time for Emery to self-destruct. But so far, so good.

The Flyers start the home portion of their schedule with games on Tuesday and Thursday against two Eastern rivals, the Washington Capitals (featuring the awesome Alexander Ovechkin) and Pittsburgh Penguins (featuring the whiny Sidney Crosby). If anyone has extremely inexpensive (or better yet, free) tickets for me, please get in touch.