Flyers bits...

...on the off day.

First, something that only seemed to escape notice until the Lightning came to town on Tuesday - the number of close games the Flyers have played in already this season.

More than once on the all-too-rare network TV broadcast Saturday night at Carolina, Jim Jackson and Keith Jones openly campaigned for some games with a little more breathing room.

As it stands now, the orange and black have played 26 games this season. An amazing 21 of those have seen a result within two goals, including each of the last eight. Last year, at this juncture, the club played 27 contests with a mere 16 of them within two goals. Even the misery of two seasons ago saw 18 of the first 25 games decided by one or two tallies.

Call it parity, call it coaching, whatever. It's going to catch up to clubs playing so close to the vest one way or another - and soon. If this is the way the NHL is going, it's not going to bode well.

It's not like there are a spate of back-and-forth 6-5 or 7-6 games. The majority have been low-scoring slugfests where each team gives their all for 65 minutes plus shootout. It will wear on them and the quality of play will be affected in March, April and beyond.

There is no shame in a blowout. More goal-scoring talent has to be revealed in these games or else the league is going to totally revert to what the Minnesota Wild have been doing since 2000.

There's still hope that once the mythical fully-healthy lineup does come to the Flyers, their collective talent can separate them from the pack on more than a few coming nights. Until then, it's going to be white-knuckle time at the Wach and other arenas.


Simon Gagne's departure from this past Thursday's game due to dehydration raises all sorts of suspicious questions, except this one seems to have gone unasked: How can a finely-honed athlete, with capable training staff which is supposed to monitor fluids, allow this to happen? Flu or not, if Gagne is ready to play, he's gotta be taken care of by staff well enough to be out there for the whole game.

I don't think there's any truth to conspiracy theories linking that to his prior concussions, but the times are long past over when a player says he can play and nobody bats an eye until something goes wrong.


The club is in the middle of a great stretch which should be the biggest boost yet in their quest to rise in the Atlantic Division and the Eastern Conference.

From November 28 through December 20, Philly will see eight of 11 games played on South Broad Street. Thus far, it's been a dicey 3-1-1, and in each game you could say there were turning points which could have turned the wins into losses, including Saturday's fluke OT winner by Jeff Carter.

Tomorrow begins a stretch of four in a row on home ice, facing the Islanders, Hurricanes, Penguins and Avalanche. Three wins would look awfully nice on the ledger, and points in all four are obviously acceptable.

At 13-7-6, the club is third in the Atlantic and sixth in the East. They are only six points behind the punchless (and largely goalless) Rangers with four games still in hand. It's possible that they could make it out of this month with 20 wins.

The scenario of having Randy Jones and Ryan Parent back on defense echoes on from the 1999-2000 season.

Keith Jones and Rod Brind'Amour missed the start of the season and the club foundered without much offense or toughness. Jones came back after 6 weeks, Brindy arrived in early December and the club began to roll from the holidays on. The 2008-09 team probably has more raw talent and definitely more youth than that one.


Finally, a personal recollection.

When I was in third grade, it was the second week in December when I caught a horrible case of the flu and missed school for an entire week. It was also the first time I ever failed to watch or listen to more than one Flyers game in my life (excluding late West Coast games).

Back then, from December 7-14, 1986, the Flyers sliced through Edmonton (5-2), Vancouver (6-3) and Calgary (5-3) at home, then lost to Minnesota (4-5) and beat Winnipeg (4-1) on the road. I have zero first-hand recollection of any of those. I have the Vancouver game on tape, thanks to my grandparents and it happened to be Bob Froese's last start in goal here.

Even when I got hit with the flu during my junior year of high school in 1995, I caught all four games during the illness, including the 7-0 rout in Montreal where John LeClair scored a hat trick in his first game against the Habs.

Lucky for me, the first post-codeine haze contest happened to be the night Dave Poulin and Tim Kerr rained destruction on the Islanders, 9-4, at the Spectrum. Plus, that Christmas, I got a TV in my bedroom so after that, sick, well or sleepless, I caught every game broadcast on Channel 57 until I went to college.