With the uncertainty of Keith Primeau’s health, the Flyers have named defenseman Derian Hatcher the 14th captain in franchise history. Hatcher, who was signed as a free agent by the club this summer, will wear the “C” until (if) Primeau returns from his concussion.

Keith Primeau – “Clarkie and Hitch pulled me into Clarkie’s office, and said that the team is kind of a lost ship at sea right now and kind of floundering and we need some direction. As good as the guys have been to find ways to win hockey games, right now we’re at a tough patch and we need that direction.
Without knowing what my status is and my availability, we need direction now. I agreed, and temporarily they are going to pass the captaincy to Derian Hatcher and make Sami Kapanen and Simon Gagne permanent assistants, and I’m okay with that.”

So Hatcher is now the Captain, at least temporarily. This is a good move for the Flyers with the recent lack of effort from the team, something had to be done. Hatcher was Captain for the Dallas Stars under Ken Hitchcock. He is the only American Captain to win the Stanley Cup.
Simon Gagne was offered the C earlier in the season but declined it. Maybe Gagne is a little like Desjardins, a guy with hockey skill but doesn’t have what it takes to be a Captain. I’m not trying to criticize either of them, some guys have it and some don’t. Desjardins was named Captain after Eric Lindros was stripped of the C in the 99-00 season. Eric gave up the C within the year with it going to Keith Priemeau.

The Flyers were pummeled yesterday afternoon losing 6-0 in Philly to the Tampa Bay Lightning. I guess the team meeting didn’t help much.

Fredrik Modin of the Lightning had a hat trick. Two games in a row now the Flyers have given up a hat trick. Former Flyer Sean Burke earned the shutout for the Lightning. He didn’t have to be spectacular, but with the Flyers play spectacular wasn’t needed.
The Flyers top line took 6 penalties. They also gave up 3 power play goals on 9 kills, one in each period. This against the Lightning who’s power play is 29th in the league. Flyers were also 0-4 on the powerplay unable to get a PP shot on goal until a minute left in the game.

Any good news for the Flyers from this game? Not really. The majority of the goals Nittymaki gave up were deflections or odd man rushes. The team in front of him was more responsible for the goals then he was. No energy, no drive, looked like they just didn’t care. Kim Johnsson left in the second period, he was feeling a bit dizzy. Chris Therien was a healthy scratch.

“I think we’re in a tough state right now. We have some adversity. Every mistake is in our net. We are not able to score on the chances that we get. We took too many penalties especially in the offensive zone. I don’t think it’s one thing. We were a team going very well for an extended period of time. In the last 10 days we have not played near as well as we are capable of. We didn’t match the level of intensity on a consistent basis. We had some players that played very well tonight but we didn’t match the level of intensity.” – Ken Hitchcock

Looking at the larger picture, the Flyers are just playing like crap. It has been longer than 10 days. Since the January 5 win over the Rangers, the 4 wins the Flyers have are against teams at the bottom of the conferences. Penguins 12 wins in 52 games, Capitals 17 wins in 49 games, Blackhawks 17 wins in 50 games. Every other game they have played they lost, against teams either in or close to being in the playoffs.
Instead of having another meeting to talk about what’s wrong I propose a different method. Take a page out of Herb Brooks coaching manual, run em.
Today at practice line them up along the goal line and just run them the entire practice, sprints, lines, herbies whatever you call them. Sore groins, elbows or shoulders, doest matter. Maybe that would wake up the team, a team desperately missing their captain. The gang of seven is apparently not doing a good job.

Stars of the game were Modin, Burke, St. Louis.

The last time the Flyers allowed hat tricks in two consecutive games was October 1999 Peter Bondra and Brian Savage. The Lightning have beaten the Flyers in seven consecutive regular season games. April 4, 2003 was the last regular season win the Flyers had against the Lightning. The last home loss this bad was against the Devils 7-1 on January 18, 2001. Seven games left before the Olympic break for the Flyers, it can’t get here soon enough.

Last week I gave NBC a thumbs up with their coverage of the game, the goalie cams were quite cool. This week I have to give them a thumbs down. No goalie cams this week, but that really wasn’t a big deal. What was a big deal was the horseracing. Between the second and third period instead of having highlights, commentary, etc there was horse racing. I don’t want to watch F-ing horseracing! It has absolutely nothing to do with hockey. This just strokes my pet peeves of TV broadcasts of hockey, mainly commercials. There is no reason to have commercial timeouts during the period. If they have enough time to show a F-ing horserace there is plenty of time to show all the commercials they want between periods. Players know when the timeouts are going to occur, happens around the same time every period. Ice the puck? Not a big deal, have a TV timeout coming up. Another little pet peeve is how close NBC (OLN does the same) cuts the game. If you have a Dvr/Tivo and are going to record the game to watch later make sure you also record whatever comes after the game, because if you don’t, 90% of the time you will miss the last few minutes of the game.

The Lightning come to Philadelphia to play the Flyers in another Saturday afternoon nationally broadcasted game. The Lightning lead the season series 2-0 last beating the Flyers 4-2 on November 22 in Philadelphia.
The Flyers are coming off a 5-3 loss to the Canadiens on Wednesday. The Lightning are coming off a 1-0 OT win over the Devils on Thursday.

Injuries for the Flyers include Eric Desjardins, Peter Forsberg, Keith Primeau and Branko Radivojevic.
Injuries for the Lightening include Martin Cibak, he is listed day- to-day.

Antero Niittymaki will get the start in goal today. He has also been named starting goaltender for Finland in the Olympics.

With both Kim Johnsson and Joni Pitkanen returning today, Alexandre Picard was sent back to the Phantoms and Chris Therien is expected to be a healthy scratch. Potential defensive lines are Pitkanen-Hatcher, Jones-Rathje, Johnsson-Meyer.
Ben Eager was called up from the Phantoms to replace injured Radivojevic. Potentional forward lines are Nedved-Gagne-Knuble, Handzus-Brashear-Kapanen, Carter-Umberger-Eager, Richards-Savage-Stevenson.

The Flyers were beat by the Montreal Canadiens 5-3 in Philadelphia Wednesday night.
Simon Gagne scored his 34th goal of the year, a new high for him. Freddy Meyer and R.J. Umberger (power play – R.J. standing for Rick Junior) scored the other two goals.
The Flyers controlled a lot of the first period. The Flyers weren’t really dominating, the Canadiens just looked bad, Huet in goal looked shaky. Looking at the fact the Canadiens losing 17 of their last 19 road games I thought to myself this would be a good high scoring win for the Flyers.

But after the Flyers took a 2-0 lead the Canadiens woke up and played a good game. Apparently the Flyers decided to take the rest of the night off. You’re not going to win many games giving up 5 goals on 15 shots. Robert Esche didn’t look the sharpest, but the loss was hardly his fault. Too many turnovers, too many odd man rushes.

Got to give credit to Jan Bulis scoring 4 goals on 4 shots, impressive, his first career hat trick. Interesting though that Bulis wasn’t scheduled to play in the game at all.
Peter Forsberg left in the second period with another groin injury. Branko Radovojevic left in the 3rd period after sliding into the boards hard with a lower body injury.

Jan Bulis, Craig Rivet and R.J. Umberger were the three stars.

The last player to score 4 goals against the Flyers was Mario Lemieux in a 9-3 win by Pittsburgh on March 20, 1993. The last Canadien to score 4 goals in a game is current Flyer Brian Savage

Montreal Canadiens come to Philadelphia to play the Flyers tonight. Canadiens lead the season series 1-0. They beat the Flyers 3-2 in overtime at Montreal.

The Flyers are coming off a 4-2 win over the Penguins on Monday. The Canadiens are coming off a 7-3 loss to the Hurricanes in Carolina on Monday.

Injuries for the Flyers include Keith Primeau, Eric Desjardins and Kim Johnsson. Joni Pitkanen is questionable for the game.
If Pitkanen can’t go then Alexandre Picard will be called up from the Phantoms.
Andrei Markov is the lone injury for Montreal.

Robert Esche will get the start in goal.

The 2006 US Paralympic Sled Hockey Tam will be honored at tonight’s game as “Flyers Community Teammates”. The Paralympic Games will be held in Turin, Italy from March 10-19.

The Flyers won at home for the first time in about a month against the Penguins 4-2 last night.
Petr Nedved scored his first goal as a Flyer, on the power play. Michal Handzus, Mike Knuble and Simon Gagne (empty net) also scored for the Flyers.

Antero Niittymaki played a very solid game. The first goal was a great deflection by former Flyer Mark Recchi, the second was an across the crease pass on the power play that he had no chance on.

All three defenseman call-ups Meyer, Jones and Picard played well.
Mike Richards and Shane Endicott fought after the game. Richards did pretty well and dropped Endicott.

Three stars for the game were Mike Knuble, Petr Nedved and Mark Recchi.
Mike Knuble also was #3 star overall for the NHL last night.

Turner Stevenson was a healthy scratch for the game, reason given was that he needs extra conditioning. Also, scratched at game time were Joni Pitkanen and Kim Johnsson.

Lines for last night were Forsberg-Knuble-Gagne, Handzus-Nedved-Radivojevic, Umberger-Carter-Savage, Richards-Brashear-Kapanen.

Kim Johnsson has withdrawn from playing for Team Sweden in the Olympics. His wife is expected to deliver their second child next month. The Flyers have sold out 23 of 25 home games so far this season. Simon Gagne tied his career high of 33 goals set in 01-02.

Mike Knuble has updated the Flyers Player Blog. He talks about the back to back home-and-home games against the Penguins and playing sled hockey with some paralympians.

I love the back to back home – home games, gives the regular season a little bit of the playoff feel. The Flyers play the Penguins tonight in Philadelphia. They played each other on Saturday in Pittsburgh. The Flyers won 2-1. The Flyers lead the season series 4-1.
Antero Niittymaki will get the start in goal for the Flyers. Peter Forsberg is expected to play after missing two games with an abdominal strain. Kim Johnsson and Joni Pitkanen are probable for the game. Both will skate today and be game time decisions. Johnsson recovering from a head injury and Pitkanen is recovering from a sports hernia.
The Flyers have not won in Philadelphia since December 22.
The Flyers need to do well in the next few games to build some confidence for the rest of the schedule. The Flyers play both the Rangers and the Devils 5 more times each this year