Once I get a chance to collect my thoughts, I will blog about the dual blockbuster trades the Flyers made today. My head is still spinning.


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Congratulations to Ian Laperriere for winning the Masterton Trophy. I can think of no person who better exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship, and dedication to ice hockey than the 37-year-old veteran of 1,083 regular season games and 67 playoff games. He is universally respected around the hockey world for his work ethic, fierce competitiveness on the ice and for being one of the sport's true good guys off the ice.

Although he did not play in a game this past season due to Post-Concussion Syndrome -- and will probably never play again -- Lappy was still very much involved with the Flyers this past season. He was not on the ice during practices and games, but he stayed plugged as best as possible to what was going on with the club.

Laperriere was still frequently around his teammates and a regular up in the pressbox on game nights. After games, it was not uncommon to see him go down the ice, still clad in a suit and tie, and stand by the boards, passing some pucks around to the kids and young men who use the Wells Fargo Center ice. Quite simply, the man still eats, sleeps and breathes the game, even if his concussion issues prevent him from playing it anymore.

Prior to being forced out of the lineup this past season, Laperriere was the type of player who would play through immense pain and pay just about any price to win. Players who perform his fourth-line role on the ice rarely get much recognition or glory, but Lappy was just about the prototype role player who could provide a spark of energy for his team in numerous different ways: a timely fight, a strong forechecking shift, forcing an opposing player into a turnover or goading him into a penalty. It was almost impossible to outwork him, either at practice or on game nights.

The Masterton Trophy is not an award that is necessarily season specific (although many years, it is awarded for a player's perseverance during a year that was especially challenging for injury and/or personal reasons). Many times, it is used as a sort of career recognition award, and its the only official NHL hardware that a player like Laperriere has a chance to win. He was 100 percent deserving of the honor.

Likewise, two former Flyers, Ray Emery and Daymond Langkow were also deserving of their status as finalists for the award (the Masterton is the only trophy where the term finalist is truly accurate, because every NHL team has a nominee). Some folks have questioned why Laperriere got the honor over Emery in particular.

Emery, of course, underwent experimental hip surgery and a torturous rehabilitation process to play in the NHL in the latter stages of the 2010-11 season. A year earlier, while a member of the Flyers, he was diagnosed with avascular necrosis; a degenerative hip condition that heretofore had always been career-ending for athletes and eventually required hip replacement.

Honestly, I think Lappy won the award over Emery because his career record of locker room leadership, good off-ice citizenship and strong relations with the media earned him some sentimental points over the later-to-mature Emery. It has only been in the last year or two that Emery has begun to alter people's perceptions about him. Just the fact that he was the Anaheim nominee -- and a league finalist -- for the Masterton shows how far Emery has come in terms of proving through his actions how much his hockey career means to him.

Langkow was also a richly deserving finalist. He missed the final ten games of the 2009-10 season after he was struck in the back of the neck by a slapshot; an injury resulted in spinal cord damage. He had a setback last year before the season started. For quite a while it looked like his career was over, and Langkow missed the first 78 games of the 2010–11 NHL season before returning to play on April 1 and suiting up in the final four games of the season.

What hurt Langkow's candidacy relative to Laperriere, in my view, is that he has played out west in the Phoenix and Calgary markets for the last nine years. Correspondingly, his story over the last year hasn't gotten quite as much national publicity in the U.S.-based segment of the hockey media. Also, Langkow is not as gregarious and effusive as Laperriere, and that may have carried a little weight in why Lappy got the nod. Finally, the 2010-11 award was probably Laperriere's final shot at an individual NHL honor (given his career status). Langkow hopefully got over the hump and his ability to keep playing in, is a reward in and of itself.

Any way you slice it, though, there was not a questionable nominee in the bunch.

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The Flyers have shot down the reports of having a done deal with Ilya Bryzgalov that carries a cap hit of over $7 million per season. If you recall, shortly before Jeff Carter signed his new 11-season deal last year, there were media reports that his cap hit was going to be much higher than the $5.25 million he ended up agreeing to.

It would be quite the irony if the Bryzgalov reports prove true and Carter's relatively cap-friendly (and, for right now, trade friendly) deal is sacrificed as a result. But I guess we'll have to see what happens with Bryzgalov and what else the Flyers do over the next 72 hours of NHL Entry Draft weekend.

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