Flyers play the Hurricanes tonight in Philly.
Carolina leads the season series 2-1 between the two teams. Flyers lost the last meeting 4-3 going to a shootout in Philly on January 17.

Flyers are coming off a 5-4 shootout win over the Canadiens in Philly on Monday. Carolina is coming off a 2-1 win over the Rangers in New York on Monday.

Injuries for the Flyers include Michal Handzus, Kim Johnsson, Keith Primeau and Chris Therien.
Injures for the Hurricanes include Eric Cole, Andew Hutchinson and Josef Vasicek.

Antero Niittymaki should get the start in goal.

27 hours until the trade deadline. Will the Flyers make any trades?
Looking at this Bob Clark interview, it doesn’t seem that likely.

Flyers break their 4 game losing streak by beating the Canadiens in Philly 5-4 going to a shootout last night. Peter Forsberg PP, RJ Umberger PP, Eric Desjardins and Joni Pitkanen scored for the Flyers. Scoring in the shootout for the Flyers were Forsberg and Nedved.

Robert Esche got the start in goal, at times looking great and other times looking average giving up 4 goals on 36 shots. It was hard to get a read on exactly how well the Flyers played, OLN’s fault, more on that later. But looking at the stats, out shot, out hit and out played on special teams again, but good enough to squeak out a win. Not often does a team give up 3 goals in the third period and win, but last night the Flyer’s did just that.
Is this the turnaround, the confidence the Flyers needed? I’m not holding my breath.

Three stars for the game were Peter Forsberg, Simon Gagne and Mike Ribeiro.

OLN is carrying NHL hockey games instead of ESPN this year. Plenty of people are not happy with it, but since I already get the channel not a big deal for me. OLN allocates 2 hours for hockey games and that is simply not enough time. I learned early in the season that when I need to record the game to also record the post game show since the game always runs over. ALWAYS run over.
Now last night I screwed up. I forget to check OLN for the game, figured it was just on Center Ice. So when I sat down to watch the game, nothing was recorded. I was frustrated at myself for missing the game. But wait, OLN replays the game at midnight. Great now I can catch the game. I set it up to record and watched it this morning.
“NHL on OLN: We believe in hockey” my ass.
Apparently when OLN replays the game at midnight, they make the game fit into the two hour time slot. They cut out the intermission chit-chat and whatever amount of actual play time to make it fit. For a game that went into overtime then a shootout a whole lot of hockey had to be cut out to make it fit into 2 hours. I dare say close to a whole period. Of course none of the commercials were cut. Game goes to commercial comes back 5 minutes later commentators are talking about the potentially bad hit on Gagne that is never shown. Game goes to commercial comes back 10 minutes later in the game and the Flyers are partially thru a 5-3 power play. What? How did that happen? It is hard to follow a game when every time there is a commercial break you lose a couple minutes of game time. What exactly is on OLN at 2am that can not be either pushed back or pre-empted for the game replay? For a network that “believes in hockey” very much bush-league.

The Flyers try to end their 4 game losing streak tonight in Philadelphia against the Montreal Canadiens. This is the fourth and last regular season meeting between the teams this year. The Canadiens won the last meeting, beat the Flyers 5-0 in Montreal on February 5. Canadiens lead the season series 3-0.

The Flyers are coming off a 4-2 loss in New York against the Islanders Saturday night. The Islanders are coming off a 6-2 win over the Lightning in Tampa Bay on Saturday.

Injuries for the Flyers include Michal Handzus, Kim Johnsson, Chris Therien and Keith Primeau. Simon Gagne is expected to return to the lineup.
Donald Brashear also returns to the lineup after serving a one game suspension.

Injuries for the Canadiens include Jose Theodore and Garth Murray.

Robert Esche is expected to get the start in goal.

Pat Kavanagh and Ryan Ready have been reassigned to the Phantoms.

Eric Desjardins needs two assists to reach 300 as a Flyer. Ken Hitchcock needs one win to reach 119 wins as Flyers head coach and tie Bob McCammon for fourth place on the Flyers All-Time List in coaching wins.

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.

Tonight the Flyers try to break out of their slump against the Islanders in New York. The Flyers are coming off a very bad 6-1 loss to the Rangers on Thursday in Philly. The Islanders are coming off a 3-2 shootout win over the Devils on Thursday. The Flyers lead the season series 4-1. The teams last met on February 8 in Philly, the Flyers won 5-2.

Antero Niittymaki is expected to get the start in goal for the Flyers.
Donald Brashear was suspended for one game and will not play. Pat Kavanagh has been called up from the Phantoms to replace him for the game.

Injuries for the Flyers include Simon Gagne, Michal Handzus, Kim Johnsson, Chris Therien and Keith Primeau.
Injuries for the Islanders include Eric Godard and Petteri Nokelaninen.

Eric Desjardins needs two assists to reach 300 as a Flyer.

The Flyers were trounced by the New York Rangers 6-1 in Philly last night. Freddy Meyer scored the only goal for the Flyers on the Power Play.
The story of the game was basically the Flyers could not kill penalties or score on the power play. The Rangers scored 4 goals on 6 power play chances, while the Flyers scored 1 goal on 9 chances which included a 5 on 3.
The Flyers penalty kill has been bad all season, last in the league. The PK had been blamed on the injuries. Once they got some guys back it was going to improve and it did for awhile. But giving up 4 goals on 6 chances? Ugh.

Let’s look at the first PP goal. On the kill were Rathje, Hatcher, Stevenson and Nedved. No rookies here, all veterans. Hatcher was over at the side boards battling for the puck so for whatever reason the other three decided come over and help. All 4 Flyers were within stick length of the side boards. Martin Straka was able to block Hatcher’s clearing attempt and pass the puck over to Jagr who was all alone and practically 3 feet in front of Esche. Whose idea was it to leave Jagr alone in front of the net? Did someone not get the memo that Jagr is leading the league in goals? And it was all down hill from there.

Antero Niittymaki who was scheduled to start, did not. He has been sick recently, so Robert Esche got the start in goal. Esche lasted into the second period giving up 3 goals on 7 shots. Those goals you really can’t blame on Esche. The first was a total defensive break down, the others were one-timers from Jagr and he had no chance. So Esche is pulled and Niittymaki is put in. Twenty seven seconds later Rangers score again. Within a 1 minute and 58 seconds the game went from 1-0 Rangers to 4-0 Rangers. Everything just fell apart.

Brashear racked up 35 penalties minutes mostly aimed at Darius Kasparaitis.
With just less than 2 minutes left in the game Brashear went after Kasparaitis drawing an instigator minor, a fighting major, 10 minute misconduct and a game misconduct penalty. He is also automatically suspended for one game and Ken Hitchcock is automatically fined $10,000. The fine to Hitchcock is crap. The fine was put in to discourage coaches from sending guys out to start stuff. Is that what Hitchcock did? Brashear played 6 shifts in the first, 5 in the second and 5 in the third. Heck Brashear even saw some power play time, something that usually never happens. So no, Hitch didn’t send him out to start things. I have never liked that rule.

Stars for the game were Jaromir Jagr, Martin Rucinksy and Kevin Weekes.

A lot of talk when Forsberg was out on how much that affected the Flyers. I have to say having Gagne out is a bigger deal. Gagne is the leading scorer on the team, Mike Knuble the next highest is 12 goals behind and has played 9 more games that Gagne.
Both Gagne and Handzus have started skating and should be with the team next week.

No rest today, as the Rangers come to town to play the Flyers tonight.
The Flyers come off a 2-1 shootout loss to the Devils last night in New Jersey.
The Rangers are coming off a 4-2 win against Toronto on February 11.
The season series between the two teams is tied at 2 wins each. Rangers won the last meeting between them 4-3 in overtime on February 4.

Injuries for the Flyers include Simon Gagne, Kim Johnsson, Chris Therien, Michal Handzus and Keith Primeau.
One injury for the Rangers, Petr Prucha.

Olympic Silver Medalist and Tournament MVP Antero Niittymaki will get the start in goal tonight. Kevin Weekes will start for the Rangers.

A regulation win for the Flyers would bring them into a points tie with the Rangers.