History is unwritten

I was looking for some insight, maybe even someperspective. It’s for good reasons, too, considering I like to have some level of knowledge before I pop off about something. That’s not a popular sentiment in some areas of our popular discourse these days, but whatever. I’m old fashioned like that.

So in digging through my archives, I set out to try to figure out if there is a connection between the 1987 Flyers that lost the Stanley Cup Final to the Edmonton Oilers juggernaut in seven games, and the Flyers team that will face off against Chicago on Saturday night. Are those teams and this group at all similar? Is there anything tying together their trips through the playoffs?

In a word, no.

First of all, it’s incredibly odious to compare teams from different eras. Don’t believe me? Then go watch the HBO documentary on the Broad Street Bullies or are a classic hockey game from a decade ago for comparisons sake. What you will find is that today’s game is so much faster. It’s almost like watching Borg and McEnroe play tennis with wood rackets compared to Federer and Nadal with modern equipment.

Even though the game is different, the drama has not changed a bit. In 1987, the Flyers dropped the opening two games to Edmonton and were trailing 3-0 in Game 3 at the Spectrum before winning three of the next four games to force Game 7. Rookie Ron Hextall, the losing goalie, won the Conn Smythe Trophy, and was suspended for the first eight games of the following season for teeing off on Kent Nilsson as if he were a Titleist and his goalie stick were a 3-wood.

The game moves too fast now, but it would be difficult to draw any comparisons with the Oilers team that won the Cup. There were seven future Hall-of-Famers on the Oilers that season, including Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier.

Seven Hall of Famers on one team is an anachronism from the days when there was no such thing as a salary cap, so it’s wise to leave it in the past.

Which is probably a good idea considering the way guys like wrote off the Flyers at the end of the regular season. For instance, on this very site I reasoned that it might not be a bad idea for the Flyers to fall flat on their faces and regroup during the off-season. Playoffs?

Check it out:

Is it simply a matter of trimming some payroll and adding some different players? Were the injuries too much to bear? Is the chemistry all wrong? How about all of the above?

Would a collapse that results in the Flyers not making the playoffs be the best tonic for the long run?

We’ll find out soon enough.

Guess what? Bad idea. Perhaps it shows that the Flyers were a team constructed for May and not October. After all, Chris Pronger has a certain knack for getting to the Stanley Cup Final, and the injured masses have a way of healing really quickly when no one would fault them for hanging it up for the season. That stuff definitely defines the character of the guys on the team.

Or maybe it says something about a sport when three of the four times a team rallied from a 3-0 series deficit to win came in the NHL. In hockey, anything can happen and the regular season is pretty much meaningless. Just look at how the Flyers, as the No. 7 seed, got to the finals. They knocked off the No. 2 seed in five games, rallied from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Bruins, and then hosted the conference finals against the lowest-seeded team in the tournament.

What?

“We haven’t done anything conventional all year,” captain Mike Richards said. “We’ve gone against the grain the whole way.”

But does that add up to the Flyers hoisting the Cup in a week?

That’s the difficult question. The law of averages and logic has to catch up sooner or later… right? After all, the Blackhawks went through the top seed in the West to get to the finals and have won eight of their last nine games. Moreover, the Blackhawks haven’t lost back-to-back games since the end of March.

Are the trends going to fall apart in the Stanley Cup Final?

Let’s just say something that has not occurred since the Kennedy Administration will go down at the Wachovia Center next week.

Sorry, I’m going with the Blackhawks in six games. Why start betting on the Flyers now?

The Pronger Effect

For those of us with a goofy, gapped-toothed grin, the subconscious takes over a lot. Those tight-lipped or mischievous grins are as much a byproduct of a genetic flaw as they are a representation of the personality.

Oh sure, Letterman and Madonna are always flashing those pearly whites, and a gap between her teeth never limited Lauren Hutton, but for the rest of us it’s just another way to build character.

Yet for Chris Pronger it’s more about being a character as it is showing character. And certainly both traits are in full force for the spiritual leader of the Stanley Cup Final bound Flyers. See, Pronger has no problem flashing a goofy, gap-toothed grin because maybe it’s a prideful thing for a professional hockey player. More than 16 tears into his NHL career, Pronger still has his teeth and he has a tough time refraining from showing them off.

How do we know they are real? Simple… who gets crooked false teeth with a gap between the front ones? Remember that classic, toothless smile Bobby Clarke beamed while gripping the Stanley Cup circa 1974? Yeah, well take a look at Clarkie’s smile now—they’re straight as an arrow and whiter than a model in toothpaste commercial.

So what’s the deal with Pronger and that wacky sense of humor that makes him want to show off those chiclets? Is the guy ever serious, or is it that he just can’t help himself? Whatever it is, good or bad, it’s as clear as that goofy smile that Chris Pronger loves to play hockey.

“You can’t get too focused on one game,” Pronger said, flashing a wry smile at a reporter. Then again, that’s pretty much how every interview with Pronger goes. They are partially a battle of wits mixed with an exhibition of ironic humor and some astute hockey knowledge mixed in. The guy knows how to work a room and wear you down.

The funny thing about that is it’s almost exactly like Pronger’s style on the ice. Maybe a player can’t get too focused on the ice, but for the playoff veteran, his intensity is as sharp as a laser. Over the course of a long series, chances are Pronger will just wear out the opposition. Considering that he has been is playing a league-leading 28:48 of ice time per game and is one of three players to average better than four minutes a game on the power play (4:30) and penalty kill (4:25) throughout the playoffs, Pronger knows a thing or two about how to focus.

Exemplifying this point is that during these playoffs, the Flyers are 8-0 after Game 3s. Don’t think that this doesn’t have something to do with Pronger back on the blue line.

“He's a big body right there on the ice,” teammate Simon Gagne said. “He’s tough to beat one-on-one. He blocks shots and plays very well on the power play. He’s the full package. Now that it’s playoff time, he's able to play more minutes right now.”

The result is that 8-0 as a series wears on, and a down-to-earth perspective that seems a bit extraordinary for a guy with two Olympic gold medals, a Hart Trophy, a Stanley Cup and a chance to add a second one with his third appearance in the finals with his third different team.

When the Flyers traded for him, a lot of hockey pundits penciled the team into the Stanley Cup Final. But after a disappointing regular season that saw the team sneak into the playoffs by the skin of their crooked teeth, it’s hard to be surprised that the team has come this far.

Some have labeled this “The Pronger Effect.” For whatever reason Pronger’s teams are always a tough out this time of year.

“He’s the one guy I want to be playing with, not against,” forward Danny Briere said.

Well, yeah. Considering that Pronger is often voted as the league’s dirtiest player, he’s not one to tangle with. The same goes for reporters with questions, too. No matter what the circumstance, there will be a joust of some sort with Pronger stirring the pot.

Now how is it that he still has his real teeth?

Nevertheless, with an anticipated matchup with the Blackhawks’ 260-pound Dustin Byfuglien looming, Pronger has to be ready for some bone crunching and teeth rattling. But that’s the easy part. The difficulty for Pronger is trying to compare all three of the Stanley Cup Final clubs he’s played for.

The thing is, he says, the 2006 Edmonton Oilers, 2007 Anaheim Ducks and 2010 Flyers are all unique.

Do they have anything in common?

“No,” he said with the grin disappearing. “Each team has its own identity. Each team has to forge its own path.”

Once again, Pronger’s path has led him to another Stanley Cup Final. Funny how that happens.

Ian Laperriere: Hockey player

NEWARK, N.J. — It happened so fast that no one reallyknew what happened until they saw the blood. Even then it took a second for it to register that, yes, it was blood from a man’s face that was dropping onto the ice at the Prudential Center on Thursday night as if it were being released from a squeezie bottle.

We saw the Devils’ player unleash a shot and Ian Laperriere go down to the ice to block it, but no one expected what we saw next.

Interestingly, one of the best ways to remove blood from an article of clothing or fabric is with an ice cube. According to one of those helpful hints web sites, the ice will melt through the fabric and take the blood with it. However, blood stains on the ice require a little more elbow grease to come out, and the trail Laperriere left on his way to the Flyers’ dressing room took a stoppage of the game and the ice crew to skate out with tools to chip it away.

Nevertheless, it only took 60-to-70 stitches over Laperriere’s eye to stop the bleeding. Who knew a piece of vulcanized rubber traveling approximately 100-mph could cause so much damage to a man’s face. Moreover, who knew a man would be so crazy enough to put his face in the way of something traveling so fast all because he felt it would be beneficial to his teammates? Or, after the stitches and the gut reaction that he had lost his right eye, why would the guy boast that he would do it again if needed?

“I do what I do and I don’t think twice about doing it,” Laperriere said. “The next game, if I get a chance to block a shot I’ll go down, because that’s what I do. The day I stop doing that, I’ll retire. Call me dumb, call me stupid, whatever. I block shots.”

Laperriere is a hockey player. There is no reason to delve more deeply into the reason why he endangered his life than that.

“He would have been back on the bench if they could have gotten him stitched up in time,” Flyers coach Peter Laviolette said.

Laviolette is speaking with the knowledge of precedent since Laperriere, a hockey player’s role player who thrives on his work in killing penalties, took a puck to the face earlier this season that opened up his mouth as if it were a piñata. In that case he needed more than 100 stitches to close the wound, and since it occurred early in the game, Laperriere was back on the ice by the third period.

Hockey player.

Just don’t equate the term “hockey player,” with “stupid.” Though his eye was stitched back together, swollen and presumably full of anesthetic while blood stains and scratches from past battles were flecked on his face, the hockey player didn’t want to hear about the inanity of his act. In fact, still dressed in his uniform undergarments and soaked with sweat and blood, Laperriere asked a scribe who questioned his mental capacity if he wanted, “to take it outside?”

Then he relented that he will wear a face shield in the future so he doesn’t have to continue to go back home and have his kids see him with his face all chewed up. After all, he’s not going to stop blocking pucks with his face if needed.

Laperriere’s teammates just kind of shrug off his talk. Broken bones, stitches and pucks to the face are just an occupational hazard.

“You’ve got a good-looking guy like Lappy throwing his face in front of one there,” he said. “Sometimes blocking one with your face is what it takes. When guys see that on the bench, that only makes them want to push harder and sacrifice more.”

Said goalie Brian Boucher: “You don't win when guys aren't paying the price. Without him, we're not going to the second round. We'd be dead.”

Hockey players.

Presumably there will be some damage from this style of play in the future. Charming and astute, Laperriere understands this and told us after he the game that he wanted to be able to see his “kids with both eyes.” Similarly, 10 years prior in the Eastern Conference Finals against the Devils, Keith Primeau got into a fight with Randy McKay in his first game back after a concussion sent him to the hospital.

Primeau thought his team needed a spark, he said, noting that his actions were probably stupid in the grander sense.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time, noting that he envisioned Lisa sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do. I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… ”

Ultimately, Primeau’s career was cut short because of too many concussions, and it appears likely that Laperriere will have to undergo some sort of procedure on the orbital bone surrounding his eye. Isn’t that a bit of irony? It took approximately 70 stitches to close up the wound and it will probably just have to be reopened so a surgeon can fish around in there.

Hockey player.

Living in the past

Note: This was written last night, but I didn't think it would work as a regular column for sports fans after a hockey game. Rather than scrap it, consider it like the alternate cut or DVD extras.

Wouldn’t it be funny if George Santayana could neverremember where he put his car keys? I’m sure he had a big bowl or hook near the front door to stash his keys and wallet, but always ended up leaving them in his pockets or maybe he took them out of his pants and put them on the desk near his study and went crazy blaming everyone for taking them out of his bowl.

Maybe we should back up a step… the reason why that would be so funny is because Santayana is the author of one of the most famous and quoted sayings ever.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” 

Born in Spain and educated at Harvard, Santayana wasn’t known as a philosopher as much as he was for creating future clichés. Still, if he could have been classified as anything it would have been as an aestheticism. Santayana loved beautiful things so much that he was inspired to put his feelings into words. Lots and lots of words, too, judging from the breadth of his literary legacy.

The guy could write like you can pile up out-of-control credit debt.

Nevertheless, all anyone ever talks about in regard to Santayana is being condemned to repeat the past because of a faulty memory. That has to be like The Clash being known for “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” and “Rock the Casbah” amongst the mainstream listeners when the rest of their catalogue is so much more superior.

They made London Calling and Sandinista for crying out loud.

Yet if I had a nickel for every time I trotted out Santayana in a story about sports, I’d have a handful of nickels. Why not add another one to the pile right now and check with Brian Boucher about what he remembers from the time he was in a playoff series against New Jersey with a 3-1 series lead.

It’s unlikely he wants to repeat that week from nearly a decade ago.

“It’s hard not to think about it,” Boucher said. “Hopefully this time the script is written differently. Ten years is 10 years ago and certainly there are experiences you can learn from—good and bad. If there is one thing I know it’s the series isn’t over until it’s over.”

The Flyers have had two 3-1 series leads against the Devils in the last two times they met in the postseason, and they finished the deal in five games in the 2004 Eastern quarterfinals. However, when Boucher and teammate Simon Gagne were rookies, they came one win away from going to the Stanley Cup Finals.

That one win proved to be so elusive.

Boucher and the Flyers dropped three straight games, including two at the Wachovia Center, as the Devils carried that momentum to win the Cup. Two of those losses—games 6 and 7—were 2-1 defeats in which Boucher matched future Hall-of-Famer Martin Brodeur with a series filled with highlight-reel saves.

That was a long time ago, though.

“My career has been kind of crazy,” Boucher said. “I put all that behind me and I’m not worried about what went wrong or whatever. I’m happy to be back here and grateful to be back here, I signed back here with good vibes and the position I’m in right now is what I remembered and what I hoped for. I’m excited and I’m trying to enjoy the moment.”

So far it’s been perfectly enjoyable for Boucher and the Flyers. Better yet, there are some interesting superlatives to go with the latest playoff run. For instance, Boucher’s last playoff win heading into the series with the Devils was May 20, 2000, a drought that ended after a nine-year and 327 days span. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, Boucher’s “streak” between Stanley Cup playoff victories is the third longest in NHL history behind Boston’s Jim “Sugar” Henry (1942-1952) and Sean Burke (1988-1998), whose wins, coincidentally, came for the Devils and Flyers.

Meanwhile, Boucher’s 14 career playoff wins is the third-most in franchise history. To put that into perspective, only Ron Hextall and Bernie Parent have more, which could mean that despite the gap in wins, Boucher could go down as one of the best playoff performers in team history.

Of course that sample size consists of just two years, and of one of those years Boucher is a little reluctant to open up about. Can’t really blame him—after all, how many folks like to talk about the things they did or thoughts they had when they were 23? Truth is, most people would prefer to forget what was going on when they were 23 and just starting out in a career. Boucher is no exception there, though in his line of work people are constantly reminding him of the things he did a long time ago.

“I was a wide-eyed kid and was just trying to enjoy the moment,” he said. “I’m still having fun with it.

“You can’t look ahead and you can’t look behind. You have to live in the moment, and that’s all I can do. Whatever is going to happen will happen.”

That’s usually how it works, though that's probably not what Santayana was talking about. But for the point of argument, let's just see how Boucher's playoffs play out before his legacy is defined. Twice he's been in a playoff series against New Jersey with a 3-1 lead...

He still needs that one elusive win.

Down but not quite out

Let’s call this upcoming week the quiet one before it all goes crazy. After all, next Sunday is Easter followed by Opening Day in Washington and the NCAA Basketball Championship on Monday. Needless to say there are going to be a bunch of things to keep us rapt for a very long time.

And that’s just the least of it. When April gets into full swing, not only will the Phillies begin their march for a fourth straight visit to the playoffs, but also the Philadelphia Union play before the home crowd for the very first time (April 10), the Penn Relays descend on the city, the Flyers could (maybe) have some playoff games, and the Eagles will attempt to plug in some players to all those empty spots in the draft.

Yes, it’s going to be busy.

But it’s not like we were just sitting around with nothing to do this past week. Oh no, far from it. In fact, we spent this weekend watching one of the strangest NCAA tournaments unfold as well as what could be a Hindenburg-like ending to the Flyers’ season.

Really, what in the world is going on with the Flyers?

Riding a five-game losing streak at the absolute wrong time to be riding anything, the Flyers have been outscored 18-7. Worse, with just one game remaining in March, the Flyers have scored more than three goals in a game just twice and one of those was in a 7-4 loss.

Needless to say, the Flyers have to get it together very quickly because with seven games to go in the season nothing is guaranteed. The 80 points put the Flyers in the last spot in the Eastern Conference playoff race just two points ahead of Atlanta, a team that swept a home-and-home from Philly last week. If the standings hold up, the Flyers get to play Washington, which might result in nothing more than an extra two home games before the season ends.

Of the six teams remaining on the Flyers’ schedule, only three are locks to make the playoffs. Though the fans and some of the media seem to believe the officials have it out for the Flyers, at least the schedule makers gave them a break. Then again, with the way the Flyers have been playing does it really matter who they play?

Besides, after the loss in Pittsburgh on Saturday the team seemed most wrapped up in a woe-is-us attitude. Goalie Johan Backlund was injured in his first NHL start, while a disallowed goal that would have given the team a one-goal lead seemed to ruin some would-be momentum. Of course they didn't score the rest of the game, but that kind of ruins the story.

The only bit of momentum conjured from the loss to the Penguins was the idea that the league, the officials, that slippery ice and maybe even the Rand Corporation were involved in a conspiracy to “get” the Flyers.

Yeah, that’s it—they’re out to get the Flyers. Maybe they are out to get them because they aren’t good enough, appear to be lacking in heart or character and seem to turtle up when the going gets tough.

Otherwise, this picking on the Flyers must stop!

OK, sarcasm aside, what’s the answer here? Is it simply a matter of trimming some payroll and adding some different players? Were the injuries too much to bear? Is the chemistry all wrong? How about all of the above?

Would a collapse that results in the Flyers not making the playoffs be the best tonic for the long run?

We’ll find out soon enough.

Say cheese

Walking around the office this morning we stumbled upon a few company employees posing for their staff photo. Take a look: