I have been tracking the career path of Danish defenseman Oliver Lauridsen for about five years (click
here for a December 2007 article on Danish NHL prospects that I wrote for NHL.com). He's a player who passed through two NHL Entry Drafts unselected and was finally chosen by the Flyers in the 7th round of the 2009 draft after he moved from Sweden to the U.S. in order to play collegiate hockey for St. Cloud State.
In many ways, the hulking Lauridsen (6-foot-6, 220 pounds) reminds me of Swedish defenseman David Printz, who briefly played for the Flyers after originally being a 7th round pick playing at the lower levels of North American hockey. Both players were late-blooming project defensemen skated well for men of their size and were willing to play a physical style of hockey. Neither one was expected to put up many points as pros.
When Printz was drafted, it was said the hope was that he'd someday become a better-skating version of Kjell Samuelsson. As it turned out, he was a better-skating version of Samuelsson minus Sammy's innate defensive savvy and shot-blocking prowess (the guy didn't play 815 NHL games by accident after being a 27-year-old rookie). There are similar hopes that Lauridsen turns out to be a solid pro. We'll see.
Lauridsen turned pro late last season and played two games with the Phantoms before getting injured in a fight. I know that he was one of the more impressive-looking players at the Flyers' summer prospect camp. But he's also fully developed physically and, age 22, is among generally younger players. Those summer prospect camps are a poor gauge of a player's actual potential as a pro. The camps are really more about gauging conditioning and physical strength than about looking at skills and hockey development.
Let's at least see him play some pre-season games before he's declared to be one of the players in the mix for the sixth defense spot with the Flyers. I would not be shocked if Lauridsen eventually sees some NHL games in Philadelphia. However, if he cracks the top six on a long-term basis this season, I would be very pleasantly surprised.
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The other day, while sorting through some old books, I found the 1979-80 edition of the Complete Handbook of Pro Hockey. I used to look to forward to the new edition of the book. Edited by Zander Hollander, the annual Handbook contained capsule scouting reports/bios on 10-12 players per NHL team, as well as predictions, statistics, rosters and collections of new and vintage hockey stories.
To say that the 1979-80 Handbook was not optimistic about the Flyers' chances that season was to put it mildly. The Flyers were pegged as being -- at best -- a middle of the pack team that was simultaneously too old and too young to win and which had an identity crisis in goal after the injury-related retirement of Bernie Parent. It was said that the club lacked scoring depth, had a lumbering defense and could not expect "Myre-acles" from newly acquired goaltender, Phil Myre.
The team was pegged for third place in the Patrick Division (behind the Rangers and Islanders), and it was said they could even fall all low as fourth if the Atlanta Flames' nucleus started to gel. Instead, the Flyers went on to rack up a record 35-game unbeaten streak and come heartbreakingly close to their third Stanley Cup before losing to the Islanders.
In looking back at the 1979-80 Handbook, it made me think about just how often pre-season predictions are made to look utterly foolish by the end of the next season. As a matter of fact, three of the Flyers' best seasons (1979-80, 1984-85 and 1994-95) were ones in which they went into the season being written off as potential contenders.
In 1984-85, the Flyers had the youngest team in the NHL and a rookie head coach (Mike Keenan) behind the bench. Similar to the 1979-80 preseason, it was said the Flyers could finish as low as fourth in their division. The club no longer had Bobby Clarke or Bill Barber on the ice and an array of unproven players. With the Flyers coming off four straight years of first-round playoff exits, few if any pundits expected them to go further in 1984-85.
The Flyers went on to win the President's Trophy with 113 points and reached the Stanley Cup Final. They took Game 1 from Edmonton behind the goaltending of Pelle Lindbergh and then lost three straight close games before the Oilers blew them out in the Cup clincher.
A decade later, the Flyers were coming off five straight years of missing the playoffs. The majority of prognosticators had the team missing the playoffs yet again. Instead, the re-acquisition of Ron Hextall and the blockbuster trade that sent Mark Recchi to Montreal for Eric Desjardins, John LeClair and Gilbert Dionne helped spur the Flyers to first place in the Atlantic Division after the lockout wiped out the first half of the season. The team has usually been in contention ever since.
Oddly enough, the preseason predictions for the Flyers before the 2006-07 season were generally positive. The club was at least viewed as one of several teams capable of coming out of the East. Instead, the season turned into the biggest fiasco in franchise history.
What am I getting at? If you take a look at the current Flyers team, they may not be as good on paper as they looked a year ago at this time. I suspect that the preseason predictions will have them slipping in the standings, and will inevitably question whether the team is able to overcome the loss of so much key personnel from last year and the Cup finalist team of the previous season.
Things could turn out poorly for the Flyers in 2011-12. But there is also plenty of potential for the 2011-12 Flyers to gel and take fans on a ride every bit as thrilling as some of the "transitional season" clubs of the past.
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