Congrats to Ed Snider for being named to the 2011 U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Class!
Also, Mike Emrick becomes 1st broadcaster named to U.S. Hockey HoF.
We have a story on this now at CSNPhilly.com.
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On July 20, we posed the question of whether fans would see Ron Hextall over Pelle Lindbergh as the Flyers' best goalie for their particular era.
There was pretty good debate both here on Hockeybuzz and CSNPhilly.com as to who got the nod, but in the end, most people chose Hextall, who was influential on the game itself and with the Flyers through two, different decades.
It's hard to judge Lindbergh on what he "might" have done had his career not been cut short. I think that's how people looked at it.
Last week on CSNPhilly.com, we stacked Eric Lindros up against Rod Brind'Amour.
I think if you ask people who was "most likeable" between the two, people would answer Brind'Amour, who was simply universally liked and changed the game for an entire new generation of players with conditioning.
While many of today's players aren't familiar with those who preceded them, I've never heard a young player not know who Brind'Amour was and what he stood for in terms of conditioning.
Carolina GM Jim Rutherford told me last year he feels that will be Rod's legacy in hockey - how he influenced an entire generation of players with off-ice training.
Now, back to Lindros ... if Brind'Amour was a fan favorite in that no one had anything bad to say about him, those same people ranked Lindros ahead of Brind'Amour with 10 percent more of the vote on CSN (53% to 43%), when stacked head-to-head.
What that tells me is that as bad as things were when Lindros left town with the fan base have been brutally divided into two sections - those who supported the Flyers position and those who supported Lindros _ enough time has passed so that people can judge Lindros solely on his merits as a dominant player.
I also think Flyer fans realize that concussions has become the single, No. 1 injury in hockey, caused mostly by head shots - legal or otherwise.
Lindros was at the very beginning of what would become a legitimate epidemic within 10 years of his departure from Philadelphia. The Flyers deal with concussions differently now than they did a decade ago.
And in some people's eyes, what they now know of concussions and how all of hockey has embraced change to reduce head trauma, it almost legitimizes what Lindros went through and has given thought among the fan base that "maybe" his side was right all along.
But that's a discussion - or argument _ for another day.
Here's Part 3 of the All-Time Flyers' team on CSNPhilly.com:
click here