A New Beginning

And it has begun.

The 41st season in Philadelphia Flyers history began last night with a clutch 3-2 victory over the Western Conference powerhouse Calgary Flames. I have to admit, I was a bit nervous going into the game. Our preseason ended with a sketchy 3-5 record, and there was still some chemistry issues that were being addressed in practice. Not to mention - we were facing Kipper and Iginla in our first game. Can you say "test?"

Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic about the moves that Paul Holmgren made in the off-season, but having at least 9 new players in your roster can make for some lofty confusion on the ice. Fortunately for the Fly-guys, last night's game lacked the issues fans and media alike were half-anticipating.

The game featured impressive performances from Danny Briere (first goal and game winning goal), Simon Gagne (2 assists), and Mike Knuble (1 PP goal, 1 assist). Aside from the first line point-getters, Mike Richards and the understated Braydon Coburn had especially strong games. Richards' forechecking game was determined, high in energy, and consistent. He played a ton of minutes (19:10) and seemed to make something happen every time he stepped out. Coburn's game didn't involve any points, but holy-defensive-positioning Batman - this guy was just great when it came to being responsible on the ice. He's often overlooked when he doesn't put up any points, but I can honestly say that he looked like one of the most confident defensemen on the ice.

In other Flyers/NHL news, I had a chance to chat with former Flyer defenseman Chris Therien last night before the game. I've been trying to find out what's going on with free agent LW John LeClair since he was released in November 2006 from the Penguins roster. Knowing that Therien and LeClair are good friends from "back in the day," I figured this was my best chance to find out what the deal is - is he retired? retiring? planning on a comeback? seeking a contract? Whatever I could find out, I was happy with.

When asked about LeClair's status, Therien told me to "consider him retired...He's had a tremendous career and [now has the chance to] ride off into the sunset." I couldn't have said it better myself, Chris. Although, what I wouldn't give to see him play one more game in the NHL.

Here's to John LeClair, his extraordinary career (even though it's not officially over), and a new beginning for the Flyers in the 2007-08 season.

A flurry of deals...Vokoun, Toskala, Aucoin and Bell...

Just got home, and realized that some huge deals have been pulled off in the last few hours, especially in the goalie market.

For starters, the Nashville Predators traded goalie Tomas Vokoun to the Florida Panthers, about an hour and a half ago, in exchange for a first round pick and two second rounders.

Vokoun agreed to waive his no-trade clause to be dealt to the Panthers.

The Czech goaltender had a in-and-out 2005-2006 season.
He got injured for about 2 months early into the year but remained his usual solid self when he returned.
Chris Mason, however, proved to be too good to sit on the bench down the stretch and for the entire playoffs in GM David Poile's eyes.

As a result, Poile has chosen him as the team's number one goalie heading into next season.
Mason broke out of a backup role to post all-star like numbers.
I think a 2.38 GAA, 24 wins, a .925 save percentage and 5 shutouts in 40 games is pretty wicked.

Vokoun had a nearly identical season to Mason's, posting 27 wins, a .920 save percentage, a 2.40 GAA and 5 shutouts in 44 games.

But, in the end, Poile dealt Vokoun and showed the hockey world that money is still talking.

Vokoun will be paid an average of $5.5 million over the next 4 seasons, while the thrifty Mason will earn only $1.25 million over the 2 coming seasons, before being eligible to hit the open market at the end of 07/08.

That, faithful fanatics, explains the entire logic and reason behind this deal.

Vokoun is an established no. 1 goalie, something Florida hasn't had since Roberto Luongo, and certainly something they didn't get from the terrible Alex Auld and the party-wild Eddie Belfour last year.
Time will only tell how he adjusts to Eastern Conference teams and especially his new team, which is a huge downgrade from the dominating and powerful Predators he played for in the recent years.

It wasn't Manny Fernandez, or Tomas Vokoun but, hallelujah! The Toronto Maple Leafs have FINALLY gotten a respectable goalie.

And GM John Ferguson Jr. has just silenced his critics and some sour (aren't they all?) Leafs fans by getting top-notch 'tender Vesa Toskala from the cross-continent Sharks to go along with tough-hitting and scoring forward (see Blackhawks days) Mark Bell.

But it's worth mentioning Bell had a pathetic season on the scoresheet, scoring only 11 times and ending up in the coach's doghouse during the Sharks playoff run in favour of youngsters Ryane Clowe and Patrick Rissmiller.

I'm also feeling lazy today, and don't really want to write this up myself, but here are the complex details concerning the picks San Jose gets, courtesy of the Globe link above:

The deal, which includes forward Mark Bell going to Toronto, has cost the Leafs a conditional first-round selection, 2007 second-round choice and 2009 fourth-round picks. The Sharks can choose whether to take Toronto's first choice tonight (13th overall) or the 2008 first-round selection. If the Sharks choose the latter condition and the Leafs have a top-10 pick next June, the Sharks have to wait until 2009 for Toronto's first-rounder.

And where does this leave Andrew Raycroft, whom the Leafs gave top goalie prospect Tuukka Rask to the B's so he can go back to his Calder days, and be their solid number one goalie.
He did neither, and had a very streaky season in goal.

Toskala didn't quite repeat his terrific 2005-2006 year, he was good, but not better than the wall named Evgeni Nabokov, who re-claimed top-goalie status after losing it in the previous year.

Adrian Aucoin's miserable and injury-raddled days in Chicago are over.

TSN is reporting that the Flames will acquire the former star defenceman from Chicago, along with a seventh round choice for defenceman Andrei Zyuzin and prospect Steve Marr.
Zyuzin was a quite "gets the job done" type player for Calgary last year, and was well-liked by the media and fans.

Aucoin, on the other hand, was not.

Constantly booed, injury and lost on the ice, Aucoin's tenure in Chicago has stained his successful career, and has erased all memory of his glorious Islanders days as a top scoring point man.

His hefty salary of $4 million over the next couple years is also a major cap hit in Darryl Sutter's books, and the Flames clever GM must be praying this pans out for him.

Aucoin may be a replacement for impending UFA's Roman Hamrlik or Brad Stuart, one of which is expected to pack his bags and play elswhere next year with the most likely being Stuart.

And that's all for now!

If anything else happens, you'll hear from me later or if I'm still lazy, tomorrow.

--BBR

Sutter brings back and old buddy...

The Flames officially named Mike Keenan head coach today, and that's not much of a surprise.

Keenan took a year off from the NHL after he was dismissed as general manager of the Panthers before the start 2006-2007 season.

He was subsequently replaced with current Panthers head coach Jacques Martin.
Rumours swirled that Keenan did not get along well with his coach, and that trading Roberto Luongo to the Canucks, rather than re-signing him, was the last straw.

Flames GM Darryl Sutter, following the Flames' 1st round loss to the Anaheim Mighty Ducks last year, stepped down as head coach of the team and gave that duty to one of his closes assistants, Jim Playfair.

However, Playfair had a very inconsistent year behind the bench, and was constantly criticized for his lack of control over he players, and his team's inability to score at critical points of the season.

After a terrible start to his first season as head coach, which saw the Flames fall to last place in the Northwest Division with only a miraculous streak being able to save them, Playfair was under hot water with the Calgary media who were getting more and more clouded about Sutter's decision to name him.

The Flames were SOOO desperate that rumours went as far as suggesting that Sutter would return as head coach...incredibly, only 30 games into the year!

But, luckily for Playfair, the Flames got that miraculous run and were the hottest team in the NHL heading into the Christmas holidays, thus saving their season and giving the team a chance to inch closer to those teams chasing a playoff spot.

The streak eventually died down, and the Flames went back to their old ways, cooling down for the last 2 months, while watching their playoff picture quickly crumble away.
With under ten games remaining, the Flames were in a dog-fight with Colorado to claim the 8th and final playoff spot in the Western Conference.

It was tight, and went down to the wire.
Calgary managed to win it out and make the playoffs with a single point seperating them from the Avs.
Good thing for Playfair as well, since those rumours of Sutter taking over with only 5 games remaining in the season became increasingly possible.

Their success of beating out Colorado was short lived, and they fell to the powerful Red Wings in 6 games. Their 2 victories came at home and, yeah you guessed it, they were the only games in which they actually made an effort to show up and play.

Their loss was ugly, after an embarrassing rout in Game 5 and an overtime knuckleball getting past Miikka Kiprussoff in the pivotal Game 6, fans wanted Playfair's head on a stick, double-grilled.

Sutter got the message, and brought back one of his old buddies in Mike Keenan.

Keenan is a known quantity to Darryl Sutter, who played for the coach in Chicago and was an associate coach to Keenan in 1990-91 and 1991-92, and the Hawks went to the Stanley Cup Final in ’92. And remember, there was quite the hue and cry around Calgary to fire Larry Playfair as coach during the stretch drive of the regular season and even during the playoffs.

"We've coached with each other, against each other and for each other, all those things," Sutter said. "I can't say that I've been associated with a coach or worked with a coach that has a more focused vision than him."

"We've worked very closely together,” Keenan said. “We've been in the trenches together and when you are there together you understand and know each other very well. When I was the manager and coach and Darryl was my associate, it worked very well. We had good chemistry and I think it will work again.

Good luck to Mike, and I hope this pans out for you Flames fans!

--BBR

Jamie McLennan an "imbecile"....

UPDATE (3:25 PM EST): I was right! McLennan got 5 games from the NHL, just as Jordin Tootoo got when he punched Stephane Robidas in the face a few weeks ago.

Jamie McLennan entered Game 5 with about 3 minutes remaining in which the Calgary Flames were losing 5-1.of

His ice-time was short-lived, he played only 18 seconds until he got kicked out for a cheapshot on Johan Franzen.

McLennan replaced Kipprusoff, who had allowed 5 goals and looked shaky.

Just as the Flames backup went into the game, the starter came back in.

He was at the edge of his crease and was constantly jabbing at a Wings player (turned out to be Franzen, his eventual victim) screening him, the puck went wide and McLennan went out to play it and just as he skated back into his crease, jabbed Johan Franzen around in the chest area.

Franzen went down to the ice and McLennan savagely fended off a few of the officials that escorted him out of the game and into the Flames dressing room.

Everyone expects a suspension to be announced by the NHL sometime today, and if it should mean anything at all to the Calgary Flames, it'll likely be around 5 games.

Wings fans are going crazy on YouTube: "The Calgary Flames are a bunch of goons."
"McLennan and Calgary Flames go crazy."

And to top it off, Pierre McGuire and Gord Miller both exclaimed on the air "OH MY GOD!" "THAT IS PURE IMBECILITY"

But...what people fail to understand is that it's not important...I mean, McLennan getting suspended is not important, it won't help the Wings at all, Kipprusoff figures to play every single game...
What matters is that Johan Franzen is out...but is he?
Many suggest that Franzen was acting on the play and he dove.

Here is an interesting piece from HockeyNutz

7. Noodles should be suspended!

• Flames fan: For what? He hardly hit Franzen and Franzen dove. Noodles should have gotten 2 for the original slash, 2 more for the next one and that is it. Why doesn't Franzen get 2 for high sticking on the play. Yes he was battling with Hamrlik, but the standard is you have to be in control of your stick at all times. He should get high sticking and diving!
• Wings fan: Playfair should get suspended for sending Noodles out to goon the Wings. Noodles should get suspended for his Simonlike Swing!
  
• HockeyNutz: I agree the ref overreacted. My first reaction was it was a major, but watching the replay the second slash was not as serious as Franzen made it out to be. I think this was a brilliant play by Noodles. Send a message to the Wings. Who cares if he gets suspended? He is not seeing real game action unless Kipper goes down...and if Kipper goes down the Flames are done regardless of who backs them up. This was Noodles being the ultimate team guy.
  

I wonder how the NHL will see it?
Probably the Wings' fan's way.

I also wonder how biased Don Cherry can be?
Maybe Franzen was acting, but it was an intentional hit from McLennan.
How can you call it "a little tap" Don?

But look at it this way too...if Kipper goes down...who will Calgary turn to?
Brett Khran?

And McLennan is apparently the best backup in the entire NHL, I once saw a feature about him in Florida, on how he loved being a backup and helping out Roberto Luongo, and how Luongo needed him.

Ah! Here it is:

Atmosphere in Hockeytown is pathetic...

While watching today's uneventful 3-1 Calgary Flames loss to the Detroit Red Wings that will put Calgary down 2 games to none, it really struck me at how bad the atmosphere in the old Joe Louis Arena is.

You wanna know how bad it is?

If you watched CBC's broadcast of the game at 1:00 PM today, you can tell from the start the crowd wasn't into it.

After Pavel Datsyuk scored yet again barely over a minute into the game, the crowd exalted a kind of tired cheer, as if they were exhausted of watching this happen.
The siren, the siren in the so-called "Hockeytown" rink, was also kind of silent, what was supposed to follow a blaring deafening horn was a shriek of happiness from the crowd.

But no.

I swear, I've never seen anything so dull in my life.

There was nothing, the crowd gave nothing to the Red Wings, they gave them no support whatsoever and were "calm" on missed calls by the officials.

Maybe I'm just used to the out-of-this-world atmosphere at my local sold-out Bell Centre, where the croud is LOUD.

Where you feel like you're in the game, where you feel the passion that the fans are showing their team, that the team feels and gets pumped up by.

It makes me wonder sometimes how the Detroit Red Wings can be such a dominating team without any energy shown by their fans, it's like, the fans don't even try to "inspire" the Wings to per say come back from a 2 goal deficit, or try to re-energize them by showing them they have confidence in them.

Whatever, it's sad to see such a great team have such a pathetic crowd.

The arena is not filling up very much either, and that also makes me wonder if they feel more pumped on the road; the Red Wings draw the most fans on the road in the whole NHL and they are louder in a place like Minnesota or Nashville, than at home in Detroit.

I also hear that, surprisingly, the Saddledome isn't as great as it looks.
Man, that place looked awesome back when the Flames made it all the way to the Cup Final...

I'm sure going to Joe Louis Arena is nice because of the history, but, I don't know if I'd feel like going every night if it was empty or dull.

-Sherry has a nice array of Price pictures from his pro debut.
It's really worth checking out as you won't find this many Price pictures in Hamilton on the web for probably another year and a half.

Time to watch the Sens and Pens, and then hit the books again...

McGuire: Koivu almost a Flame...

Now remember...this is a few moons ago when I was trying to become general manager of the Calgary Flames, the first thing I would have done was to get Saku Koivu and I remember there was an amazing offer that had come through.

-Pierre McGuire, on "Melnick in the Afternoon" (Team 990 Montreal), broadcast Apr 09.

EDIT: I'm sorry, it appears I have misheard what Pierre said, thanks to a few readers, here's what he really said.

You won't get this anywhere else, unless you were listening to the Team 990 yesterday.

Wow, Koivu in Calgary, now that would be something!

His first move would've been to get Koivu, but Craig Button won out the GM job.

McGuire was always close to the Flames organisation, so he probably knew of their inner workings.

I wonder what was so amazing about this deal?

Avs giving Flames plenty of problems...

The Colorado Avalanche are hot.
Period, no fancy-schmancy adjectives to be employed here, simply, red hot.

That is something the Calgary Flames have not been in the last few weeks.

They have won only 3 games in the month of March and have seen their seemingly huge lead in the Northwest Division and Western Conference diminish.
On their heels now, they have lost their last 3 games in a row.

The losses have fueled more speculation on the Flames' coaching staff part, that GM Darryl Sutter would dismiss head coach Jim Playfair and take over himself the head coaching duties.
Sutter was quick to downplay these rumours.

Despite his team's struggles, the Flames still remain in a playoff position but if their current trend continues, they can find themselves playing golf early this year, something many didn't, couldn't even imagine back in January and February, as the Flames were riding Mile-high, posting 8-3-2 and 7-4-3 records respectively, that's in total 15-7-5.

Well, maybe I did exaggerate when I said nobody couldn't "imagine" them not making it, but anyway, we were all under the impression this was the way they'd finish the season, on that kind of note.

The hockey world has seen the Flames fall mightily down the Western Conference standings...no, I meant "PLUMMET" as they have gone from "top team" to "crap team".

The Calgary Flames also got another bullet in their heart, as the Colorado Avalanche have won 8 of their last 10 games and have only lost one in regulation in that process.
Helped by Paul Stastny's 20-game point streak (now over, was pointless in Colorado's 4-3 win over the Canucks 2 days ago), Joe Sakic's "still going strong" season and Milan Hejduk's recent rejuvenation have put the Avalanche only 4 points behind the extinguished Flames.

With Peter Budaj regaining his confidence and Jose Theodore becoming the best bench-warmer in the NHL, the Avalanche could be in posession of a playoff spot by the end of the week.

The Flames are not alone in the "fallen down in the standings" category, many other teams include the Montreal Canadiens, Edmonton Oilers, Minnesota Wild and New York Islanders.

Things have gotten so bad in Calgary, that Miikka Kiprusoff has to get his girls to pump up the slumped Dion Phaneuf, who's lost that magic he showed in his rookie season.

Yet another "Playfair to be dismissed" rumour ridiculed by Sutter...

For two days, the local airwaves have been buzzing about the possibility of a Calgary Flames coaching change — and that Jim Playfair's job was in jeopardy. General manager Darryl Sutter put an end to the speculation Monday morning, saying it simply wasn't going to happen.

"Just put it to bed nationally," said Sutter, in an interview. "Somebody put it to bed. Every time we lose two games, they say it's the coach. It's not a coaching thing. It's a collective team thing. You get to this point of the season, it's a team thing. Don't somebody try to isolate it on one player or the coach. -Erik Duhatschek, Globe Sports

I've also had enough of these "Sutter to dismiss Playfair for playoffs" rumours.
Ok, the team gets in a funk for a few games then gets Flame hot again and people forget about these sayings, which have grown way out of proportion.

Playfair has done a good job, his Flames are slightly worse than last year and if they continue to play good hockey, like they have for most of the second half, they'll be a shoo-in for the playoffs.
Besides, it's not as if the Flames are "choking" with him behind the bench, he (well the team) did pull them out of their slump back in October-November when his head coaching career got off to a bad start.

Nevertheless, he's the man, and Sutter stands by his words.

Kipper and Phaneuf Flaming up cigarettes now...

Miikka Kiprusoff (centre) and Dion Phaneuf (far centre) getting it done (to put it politely)

Hat tip to e over at Theory of Ice for this scandalous picture.

The rumour is that Kipper is the "pimp" and those are his girls hanging around Dion...don't know exactly how to react to this question, e's done a better job for me.

True, Dion looks kind of desperate getting Miikka to get him back into the lame "groupie" stunt we're witnessing above. He's an NHL athlete and should really know better.

Strip club anyone?

Not saying what Dion did was bad, but definitely dissapointing for Flames and hockey fans alike...don't quote me on any of this since this is just my assumption and not actual fact.