Today, I will continue the all-decade Flyers team series with a look at left wingers. Unlike the center position, there can be little debate about the best left wing to play for the Flyers from 1999-2000 to 2009-10.
FIRST TEAM:
Simon Gagne
This one was a no-brainer selection. Gagne’s two-way play and speed were a constant throughout a decade of change. People forget that Gagne was a center during his junior career and played center his rookie season (1999-2000) with the Flyers before moving to the wing. He had his problems with injuries and a tendency to recover his game slowly upon returning, but far and away, he’s the clear-cut choice as not only the LW of the decade but as the club’s player of the decade with his 259 regular season goals and 524 points in 664 games plus 32 goals in 90 playoff games.
Second team:
Scott Hartnell
Hartnell had an awful regular season in 2009-10 but turned it around with a strong postseason that saw him play better and better as the playoffs progressed. In his two previous campaigns, he produced 24-goal and 30-goal seasons. The tradeoff for his aggressive play has been a tendency to take awful penalties without regard to time, place or score.
Honorable mention:
John LeClair, R.J. Umberger, Vaclav Prospal
John LeClair suffered the frequent fate of power forwards once he passed his 30th birthday: his once-indestructible body began to betray him. The 1999-2000 season was the last All-Star caliber one of his career, as he produced 40 goals and 77 points and dressed in every game. Nevertheless, it marked the start of his decline from three straight 50-plus goal seasons and five consecutive seasons in which he averaged better than a point per game.
The following season, back surgery limited him to 16 regular season games. Upon his return, he was never close to being the same player again that he was during his heyday in the mid to late 1990s and his decline was painfully obvious by the time he played his final Flyers season. The club bought out his contract after the 2004-05 lockout.
R.J. Umberger came up to the NHL as a center and produced a 20-goal season with the Flyers his rookie year. Thereafter, he split time between left wing and the middle. His regular season numbers dropped the next two seasons, but he capped off his Flyers career with an outstanding playoff run in the 2008 postseason.
He was a one-man wrecking crew offensively in the Flyers’ five-game win over Montreal in the Eastern Conference semifinals. Pittsburgh native Meanwhile, Umberger often seemed to save his best regular-season games for when the Flyers played the Penguins. A salary-cap casualty after the 2007-08 season, Umberger has become a mainstay in Columbus after his departure.
Vaclav Prospal broke into the NHL with the Flyers in the 1990s and returned briefly at the 2007-08 trading deadline. He was not especially anxious to uproot his family from Tampa Bay but Flyers GM Paul Holmgren made a deal with him: come back to Philly and help out for the rest of the season and the Flyers would scratch his back after the season.
Prospal gave the Flyers solid production (14 points in 18 games) during the regular season stretch drive and had an outstanding first-round playoff series against Washington before playing ineffectively the remainder of the playoffs (he still finished with 13 points in 17 games). After the season, the Flyers traded his rights back to Tampa.
Next time: Right wingers
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Some quick hit updates on Flyers Euro prospects in preseason action today:
* Joacim Eriksson has been named the top star of the game in his first two preseason starts for SAIK. He backed up today in his team's game against Södertälje SK but has been tabbed to start against VIK Västerås tomorrow.
* Simon Bertilsson's Brynäs IF team is idle today. They play AIK Stockholm tomorrow.
* Traktor Chelyabinsk has been experimenting with Andrei Popov on the top line after he started training camp on the fourth line. He was held pointless today in a 3-2 loss to Ak Bars Kazan.
* Goaltender Jakub Kovar has taken over as the number one goaltender for Ceske Budejovice following the retirement of former NHLer Roman Turek. He started today in an 8-2 victory over Mlada Boleslav.
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Today on NHL.com’s
”Across the Pond section, I take a look at the story of Emil Alengård and the national team of Iceland.
Several years ago, a Canadian sportswriter decided to have some fun with his readers, telling folks about a mysterious hockey prospect from Iceland who had the NHL scouting world abuzz.
The player was raw in terms of skill development had a remarkable combination of size, speed and shooting ability that overwhelmed the low-grade competition he faced. The player's name: Sloof Lirpa (read the name backwards), who was supposedly Iceland's answer to Mario Lemieux or Wayne Gretzky.
The 22-year-old Alengård isn’t an NHL prospect, much less the second coming of Gretzky or Lemieux, but when playing against the grade of competition Iceland faces in international hockey, he may as well be. At the Division III Under-20 World Championships in 2006, he racked up an outstanding 20 goals and 29 points in four games. The dual Swedish-Icelandic citizen then followed it up with 13 points in four games at the senior level Division III Worlds, as the Icelandic team earned a promotion to the Division II level.
The following season, in addition to averaging over a point-per-game on Linköping's top junior team (18 goals, 44 points in 41 games), the 5-foot-11, 194 pound center scored 6 goals in five games at the Division II World Juniors and also gained his first Division II senior international experience.
After playing a couple years in the Swedish minor leagues and enrolling at New England College, where he played for two seasons and posted 25 points in 26 games during the 2009-10 season, Alengård decided to accept an offer to return to Sweden to play for Mjölby. All the while, he has continued to play for the Icelandic men's team. At the 2010 Division II World Championships he compiled 6 goals and 12 points in five games and helped lead the Icelandic team to a bronze medal.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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