PREVIEW 4 AM EST
Looking for their third consecutive victory and fourth in the last five games, the Philadelphia Flyers (36-21-7) return to home ice tonight to take on the always-dangerous Detroit Red Wings (43-20-3) at the Wells Fargo Center on Mark Howe Jersey Retirement Night. The ceremony will take place prior to the start of tonight's game at 7 p.m. EST. Both the Howe commemoration and game will be broadcast on CSN Philadelphia.
This is the second and final meeting between the teams this season and the lone one in Philadelphia. On Feb. 12, the Red Wings set a home winning streak record (20 in a row) when they defeated the Flyers at Joe Louis Arena.
The game in Detroit was a seesaw affair in which the deciding factor was Philadelphia's inability to kill penalties. The Flyers trailed 1-0, led 2-1 (courtesy of back-to-back goals by rookie Brayden Schenn) and 3-2 (Max Talbot) but ran out of gas in the third period at the tail end of playing for the third time in four nights and seventh time in 11 nights. Niklas Kronwall (PPG), Pavel Daysyuk (PPG), Henrik Zetterberg and Johan Franzén scored for the Red Wings.
The Flyers enter this game riding back-to-back wins over the Islanders (6-3) and Capitals (1-0). Ilya Bryzgalov played arguably his best game as a Flyer in Sunday's win over Washington, while rookie Eric Wellwood scored Philadelphia's only goal of the game. Detroit pounded Columbus (5-2) last Tuesday and Minnesota (6-0) on Friday but then suffered a 2-1 home loss to Chicago on Sunday.
The Red Wings have not been nearly as successful on the road (16-16-1) as they have at home (27-4-2) this season. Then again, the Flyers have not been as good at home (15-10-5) as they have away (21-11-2) from the Wells Fargo Center. Overall, Detroit has won six of its last 10 games while the Flyers are 5-5 in that same span.
Both clubs enter tonight's game dealing with a host of injuries. In addition to their players on long-term injured reserve (Chris Pronger, Tom Sestito), the Flyers will be without forward James van Riemsdyk (broken foot, out 4-to-6 weeks), starting defensemen Kimmo Timonen (lower back injury, out indefinitely) and Andrej Meszaros (lower body, out indefinitely). Claude Giroux (bruised hand) took a "non-injury maintenance day" yesterday but will be in the lineup tonight, while several other players are dealing with nagging minor injuries their own.
Detroit's injury list is even more extensive. Future Hall of fame defenseman Nicklas Lidström is out with a bone bruise in his right foot. Superstar forward Pavel Datsyuk is out until the middle to latter part of March after undergoing arthroscopic surgery in his right knee. Veteran power forward Todd Bertuzzi is out with a groin strain. So is starting goaltender Jimmy Howard. Jonathan Ericsson will miss several weeks with a fractured wrist. Jakub Kindl is out with an upper body injury and forward Patrick Eaves remains on injured reserve with post-concussion issues.
PROJECTED LINEUPS (subject to change)
FLYERS
Hartnell - Giroux - Jagr
Read - Briere - Simmonds
Talbot - Schenn - Voracek
Wellwood - Couturier - Rinaldo
Carle - Kubina
Grossman - Coburn
Gustafsson - Lilja
Bryzgalov
[Bobrovsky]
RED WINGS
Filppula - Zetterberg - Hudler
Miller - Abdelkader - Franzén
Mursak - Helm - Holmström
Cleary - Emmerton - Conner
Kronwall - Stuart
Quincey - White
Smith - Jannik
MacDonald
[Pearce]
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Before there was Nicklas Lidström or Brian Leetch, there was Mark Howe. In many ways, Howe was almost the perfect defenseman.
He could play massive numbers of minutes, was a tremendous passer, possessed a deadly wrist shot, skated like the wind, was extremely savvy defensively and did not take many penalties. He was also a team leader. The only knock on Howe was his problem with injuries. Even his lack of size was rarely a hindrance.
It has taken 20 years for Howe to have his #2 jersey retired in Philadelphia. Once it is hoisted to the rafters, he will have virtually completed every major post-career honor that an American-born Flyers player can earn: Hockey Hall of Fame, U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, Flyers Hall of Fame and jersey retirement.
Over the last several days on Flyers.NHL.com, I wrote a series of three articles in honor of my all-time favorite player. The second installment, entitled
A Decade of Greatness, ran yesterday. This piece is a season-by-season capsule breakdown of Howe's Flyers career. For the final installment, slated to run today, I have compiled new and archival tribute quotes about Howe from many of his former Philadelphia teammates.
Sometimes in both hockey and real life, the truest measure of a person is how he or she steps up in tough times. For all of his accolades during the Flyers' gravy years in the mid-1980s, if you really want to get a sense of how much Mark Howe meant to the team, I suggest looking at the team's performance with and without him during the lean years at the end when the Flyers were in the midst of missing the playoffs for five straight years and Howe was out of the lineup due to chronic back problems more than he was able to suit up and play.
In Howe's final three seasons in Philly, an otherwise awful team had a combined 49-45-7 record when he was in the lineup, and he had a combined +43 rating in those 101 games.
When he was out of the lineup (140 times) over those three years, the Flyers were a combined 46-68-26. Beyond the winning percentage difference, note that the team actually won three fewer games in 39 MORE tries.
The only major Hall of Fame for which Howe is a serious candidate but has not yet been chosen is the IIHF's International Hockey Hall of Fame in Switzerland. I strongly believe he deserves to be there as well, representing the USA.
Howe first burst onto the hockey scene as a 16-year-old member of Team USA's silver-medal winning squad at the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. He later played in the (non-IIHF sanctioned) 1974 WHA-Soviet Summit Series for Team Canada and for Team USA at the 1981 Canada Cup. Howe also scored a goal in the Flyers' 1983 exhibition game loss against the Soviet national team.
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