Tonight, hockey is back..again, as the Flyers host the Ottawa Senators at the Wach.  This is the first meeting of the year between these two clubs, who appear to be headed in opposite directions. Philly is smokin’ hot, winners of 4 straight while the Sens are a stinky 2-4-2 in their last eight games. I don’t know how much mojo can stay with a team that hasn’t played in 5 days, but Philly will look to make it 5 straight. Good news for the Flyers is the Danny Breeze and JVRabbit should be back on the wings of Jeff Carter. The bad news is that OKT and Ryan ‘Bernie’ Parent are both on the shelf, which means we get a 5-6 combo of Dany Sryvret and Oskar Bartulis! I wonder how many minutes those guys will get, but its more than likely that we see Chris Pronger playing around 25-30 minutes tonight. Either way, the Defense will be the deciding factor in this game. I give the big edge to Razor and the Flyers against Pascal Leclaire and the Sens blueline. Speaking of Razor, he’ll be geared up for this one. Sure, its not a career-defining game tonight, but it will be nice to shut down the Senators. The Senators represent Emery’s past and the game might have a symbolic ‘turn-the-page’ feel to it. I kinda hope Chris Neil gets into the goalmouth a bit and Razor unloads a right hook to his button. Razor will need to keep his eye on the one scoring line for Ottawa, which has Alfredsson, Spezza and Michalek putting up the majority of the points so far for the Sens. Shut these guys down, and you take away virtually all of this teams scoring power. I touched on it earlier ( can you touch words?) that the Sens blueline is pretty shit and I stand by that. I don’t think they have the talent to match up against the Flyers 2 scoring lines plus battle against our 2 checking lines. 4 game win streak is because of a solid team effort and I look for that to continue tonight, maybe even seeing a greasy Aaron Asham goal after a hard working shift. Ex-Flyer Alexandre Picard is a #3-4 defenceman if that gives you any indication. For the Flyers, look for Rabbit to continue to dominate. He seems to love playing at home and I look for him to notch at least a point tonight. Razor will be locked and loaded and will be playing with a fire that might cause the Wachovia center to burst into flames. Carbomb, Lappy and Betts should continue to dominate and open up some great matchups for Carter, Giroux and co. It’ll be fun to see what Bartulis can do, and if Laliberte gets to lace ’em up in place of anyone else.
Photo:
View original blog post here: Flyers Goal Scored By… – A Philadelphia Flyers NHL Blog