The New York Islanders beat the Philadelphia Flyers 4-2 last night in New York.
Scoring for the Flyers was Petr Nedved on the Power Play and Mike Knuble at even strength.

Antero Niittymaki got the start in goal stopping 22 of 25 shots. A pretty decent game for Frank, but the rest of the team just didn’t measure up. Like pretty much all the games recently the Flyers were out-hit, out-shot and out-played, just no heart. Flyer gave up 2 Power Play goals on 7 chances. They did score one PP goal on 6 tries, but it was a fluke goal at best.

I think Hitch needs to stop canceling practice to hold meetings with the team leadership group and start coaching with some fire and brimstone. It just does not seem that anyone care’s that they have now loss 4 in a row and have been sucking since January.

Stars for the game were Trent Hunter, Mark Parrish and Jason Blake

Simon Gagne is expected to return to the lineup on Monday’s game against Montreal.

Only 4 days remaining before the trade deadline, which means if the Flyers are going to pick anyone up its going to be soon.
Also only 21 games left in the season, which could be a good thing. If the Flyers continue their play as of late, there is a possibility of them not making the playoffs.

The Olympic Affect.

Now that the Flyers have played three games since the Olympics its time to see what impact the Olympics had on the Flyers.

Simon Gagne suffered a knee injury in the Olympics and has missed the last 3 games because of it. He is expected back very soon. A very negative affect since Gagne is the Flyers leading scorer.
Mike Knuble has picked up another goal since the Olympics and looks about the same.
Derian Hatcher also looks about the same.
Robert Esche has looked good since coming back, but really need a couple more games to tell if the layoff has affected his sharpness.
Antero Niittymaki has also looked good in goal since the Olympics. He should be bringing more confidence back from the Olympics, that and the fans believe in him.
Peter Forsberg was only at 60% for the first two games according to Hitchcock. Two days off from the Gold Medal game to the first game back. Why was Forsberg not %100? Oh yeah, the Sweden hockey team went back to Sweden to celebrate. See Forsberg celebrate here, and this picture should pretty sum up why Forsberg was only at 60%. Although this is a negative, maybe some positive has come out of the Olympics with Forsberg. He had been having nagging groin injuries more than half of the season. Sweden’s athletic trainers gave Forsberg a hard groin massage. The massage was so painful they had to put a towel in Forsberg mouth. Since then his groin hasn’t caused any issues.
This has led to some criticism of the Flyers Athletic Trainers. Especially given all the injuries the Flyers have had this year. Groins were pulling left and right there for awhile.

So overall, Olympics definitely had a negative impact on the team.