One of the biggest differences between this year's Flyers team and the club at the same point last year is the way this year's team responds after a loss. They have consistently found ways to rise to the occasion and prevent losing streaks. There was a lot to like about the team's performance in Chicago yesterday:
* Peter Laviolette threw a different defensive wrinkle at the Blackhawks early in the game, and Chicago wasn't quite sure how to respond. After waiting out Chicago in the first period, the Flyers began to assert themselves offensively.
* On a day where the Danny Briere line didn't score and James van Riemsdyk (who had scored in the two previous games) was out with a lower body injury, it hardly mattered because Claude Giroux, Jeff Carter and Nikolay Zherdev were so dominant. The Flyers create a lot of matchup problems for opposing teams because of all the depth.
* Sergei Bobrovsky turned in his fifth consecutive strong game in goal. As I said when Bobrovsky was on his run in November, we'd learn more about him by how he handled his first significant adversity than from his strong start. Well, he's passed that test with flying colors so far. He never got down when he struggled a bit (possibly due in part to a little fatigue) in December and Brian Boucher got hot to earn a run of consecutive starts. Instead, Bobrovsky kept plugging and is now once again poised to get the lion's share of playing time for awhile.
* Dan Carcillo played one of his best games of the season, even apart from his fight. It's never a bad thing to have hungry players competing for playing time. That's another way how contending clubs are able to sustain their energy level through midseason.
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Tomorrow night's home game against Montreal will be the Flyers' final game in January. As a matter of fact, the schedule is going to be extremely light until mid-February. Here's a sneak preview of what's ahead:
* After tomorrow's game, the Flyers do not play again for a full week. Their next game will be a road tilt in Tampa Bay (let's hope that the Flyers return to the ice this time goes better than their first game back after their eight-day Christmas hiatus).
* Starting with the Tampa tilt on Feb 1, they play a moderate schedule the rest of the week, with one day between games at home against Nashville (Feb 3) and Dallas (Feb 5).
* After playing the Stars, the Flyers only play one game the next week, facing off at home against the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday Feb. 10.
* After two days off after the Carolina game, the Flyers conclude their stretch of 8 of 10 games at home with a game against Terry Murray's Los Angeles Kings on Sunday Feb 13.
* Only then does the schedule start to get packed again. The Flyers will go on the road for a three-game-in-four-night southern trip (in Tampa Bay on Feb 15 followed by the Panthers the next night, with a game in Carolina in Feb 18). The next week, the Flyers have four games, leading them into the start of the stretch run in March.
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The three-star selection process in the NHL is often a joke. The selecting media member quite frequently either just hurriedly picks three players late in the game -- usually dictated by who scored the goals and whether a goalie allowed no more than one goal or faced an unusually high number of shots -- or else makes the picks while there's still lots of game to be played. There is also a tendency to make sure that at least one home team player is chosen (barring a blowout loss).
Yesterday's three-star selection in Chicago was one of the worst I've ever seen. It simply defies explanation how Claude Giroux -- who would have had a tremendous game even if he didn't get on the scoreboard, much less one in which he racked up four legitimate assists -- didn't get chosen as even the third star.
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The
profile article I wrote for the Flyers official Web site on defenseman Andrej Meszaros is now online.
Entitled "Andrej the Giant", the piece was completed in late December. Some of the material in there (such as Chris Pronger's then-current absence from the lineup) is a tad out-of-date. But the key information still applies.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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