Attention all you hockey pucks out there, especially my good buddy, Don Rickles ... Danny Briere will be back in the Flyers lineup tomorrow night at the WAC against Tampa Bay.
I kinda felt that was coming when Briere centered Simon Gagne and Mike Knuble at this morning's practice at Flyers Skate Zone. I coulda been a rocket scientist, eh?
If you're are looking at the calendar, like I did, Briere would be back on the ice a full week sooner than the minimal down period that was announced: three weeks. Four was the maximum.
Which makes me nervous. I always get nervous when athletes push the limit on groin pulls or in this case, abdominal tears, that have been surgically repaired. Groins and abs are all tied together, too.
Yet, I also favor the athlete knowing himself better than a trainer or doctor when it comes to determining how he feels. Briere had similar surgery in 2005 in Buffalo. So he should know when his body is saying, 'hey, it's time to play.'
“It feels way better than the first time around,” Briere told me when I asked him if he were pushing the limits on recovery time. “I don’t know why or how to explain it. From what I’ve experienced, I’m ready to go.”
Question is, will the Flyers be ready to go? They were again lethargic at the start against the Senators last night, much like they were against the Edmonton Oilers last weekend.
If you go back 3 years, you will find the Flyers, regardless of how much success they had in the first quarter, always went through slumps where they simply didn't show up at the start of games.
And guess what? They had problem like that late into the season, as well, over the past couple of years.
“We’ve been dealing with this for over a year, the inconsistency, the slow starts, and I don’t know why or whether it’s the makeup of our team,” Briere replied when Ed Moran of the Daily News asked about this recuurent theme.
“It just gets in your head. We play a couple good games, then bad games. We’ve been trying to [solve] this for over a year. It’s a year later and we still don’t understand it."
Which is another reason why general manager Paul Holmgren is trying to sign Brendan Shanahan. He wants to shake things up.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger • 
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