There is one Ontario Hockey League game and one Western Hockey League match tonight involving Flyers prospects. Here's the rundown:
* OHL:
Derek Mathers is much better known for his toughness than his offensive prowess, but he has scored goals in two of the last three games, Tonight, his Peterborough Petes team hosts the Barrie Colts. Game time is 7:05 PM eastern.
Broadcast Links: A free
radio stream of the Petes' broadcast is available or you can
purchase a live webcast for $6.99.
* WHL: The Portland Winterhawks have been on fire of late, posting points in each of their last nine games (8-0-1). Tonight, the team is action against the Red Deer Rebels. Left winger
Taylor Leier enters tonight with 8 points (3 goals, 5 assists) in his 10 games since returning from a preseason abdominal muscle tear. Game time is at 10:05 PM.
Broadcast Links: A
free radio stream is available of the Portland broadcast or a
webcast stream can be purchased for $6.99.
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PHANTOMS D NEED TO PICK UP THE PACE
Phantoms head coach
Terry Murray is a big believer in making team defense the top priority. That applies to the forwards as well as the defensemen. Even so, it inevitably the defensemen and the goaltenders who take the brunt of the heat whenever a team has a mediocre goals against average.
The Phantoms put forth a strong all-around effort in Saturday's 4-0 win over the Albany Devils. Hopefully, that's a sign that the 4-5-0 team is starting to settle in to Murray's system and the players sent down from the NHL have shifted their focus from the status of the NHL lockout to the job they have at hand in the American Hockey League.
In seven of the eight games that preceded Saturday's shutout, the Phantoms were not very good defensively. And, yes, the blueline corps deserved its share of the blame. There was a lot of questionable decision making, with and without the puck. Breakouts weren't crisp. Coverages were spotty as too many opposing attackers had free reign to get to the scoring areas without paying a price.
On top of that, the Phantoms defensemen with offensive skills weren't helping out very much on the struggling power play. At even strength, they weren't consistently making good decisions about when to join the rush or when to pinch on the forecheck.
Entering the season, the Flyers hoped that
Erik Gustafsson,
Marc-Andre Bourdon and
Brandon Manning would leave the organization with some tough decisions about which young defenseman was the most ready to stake down a full-time starting job with the big club. Thus far, however, none looks truly ready.
Gustafsson and Bourdon have generally skated as the top pairing, with Manning paired with AHL veteran
Danny Syvret. The Manning-Syvret tandem has been the better of the two. Second-year pro Manning has had some good games and some not-so-good games but he has been a positive difference-maker in his good games. He's also scored a pair of goals, including an overtime game winner.
Gustafsson, in my opinion, needs to get more aggressive. Expected to be the Phantoms' number one defenseman to start the season, he was too tentative and indecisive in the first four or five games. I suppose that some of it can be chalked up to learning Murray's system, but he was also not assertive on power plays (which has been a strength of his at the AHL level in the past).
The good news: Within the last few games, Gustafsson has shown signs of settling in at both ends of the ice. His minus-six rating is unsightly, but plus-minus is more of a team-play stat than an individual stat. If "Gus" and his teammates maintain something close to the level of focus they showed on Saturday, the pluses will accumulate faster. Offensively, Gustafsson has started to connect with some good lead passes and he tallied his first goal of the season in the last game.
Bourdon, who missed two games with injury but has since returned to the lineup, has really struggled at times in the early going of the season. He has had the opposite problem from Gustafsson's earliest games. Rather than being too cautious, he has been a little too overaggressive.
At times, Bourdon has simply tried to do too much and instead ends up turning over pucks or over-committing and winding up out of position. Manning has had similar issues in certain games. But Bourdon has also taken a lot of undisciplined penalties or has been forced into taking "good" penalties to prevent scoring chances.
When I interviewed Bourdon this summer, he said that one of his goals for the season was to begin to show more of the offensive game he was primarily noted for in junior hockey (along with his size and physicality). He has a heavy shot, and he scored four goals for the Flyers last season. However, through his first seven AHL games this season, Bourdon is still searching for his first point.
Syvret is what he is: a veteran minor league defenseman whose number one asset is his ability on the power play while playing adequate defense. Thus far, the Phantoms can use a little more offense from him.
Lastly, the Phantoms defensive depth looked shallow beyond the top four. Despite the mass of bodies that were in training camp -- and the related decision to send a struggling
Blake Kessel to the ECHL -- the team has not been able to find the right combination yet to solidify the third pairing.
On the bottom pairing
Oliver Lauridsen has been serviceable when he is spotted in the right matchups. Hes sometimes get exposed by quicker forwards and still needs improvement in starting the breakout with his first pass. On the penalty kill, he's had a few too many failed clearing attempts where he looked to have time and space. The big Dane has played in seven of the nine games. When he's been on his game, he's blocked shots and shown some toughness. The Phantoms need more of that from him.
The likes of
Cullen Eddy and
Zack FitzGerald have been tried in the number six role. No one has really staked down the job yet.
The 2012-13 season is still young. There is plenty of time for the club to build off the positives and address some of the negatives that have arisen. But the top four defensemen need to be more consistent and the depth has to be bolstered if the Phantoms blueline is to be elevated to above-average caliber. Right now, the Phantoms are a bit fortunate to be one win below the .500 mark.
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Camp Invitees Start in Super Series Opener
The Russian junior national team had little trouble dispatching Team QMJHL by a 6-2 count in the first game of the Super Series last night. The Q team had major trouble dealing with the Russians' combination of size, speed and skill, and were unable to mount much of a resistance. It wasn't for lack of effort, either.
Based on what happened last night in Blainville-Boisbriand, it is hard to foresee Team QMJHL managing a split with the Russians in their two-game segment of the Series. The Quebec team will need to be much, much better and the Russians would basically need to underestimate them after winning so handily in the first game.
There were some tangential Flyers connections to last night's game. Undrafted Blainville-Boisbriand Armada goaltender
Etienne Marcoux started in goal for the Quebec team. Marcoux was an invitee to the Flyers' summer prospect camp and sufficiently impressed management that he received a non-roster invitation to training camp with the big club -- a training camp that never happened because of the lockout.
Marcoux has been one of the best goalies in the Quebec league so far this season. However, he got abused by the Russians last night. He made few if any of the non-routine saves. The team needed Marcoux to outplay Andrei Vasilevski, and that didn't come anywhere close to happening.
Of the six goals Marcoux yielded, four would have been very tough for any netminder to stop, including a point shot directly off a faceoff where there was a lot of traffic and the goalie didn't see the puck until it was too late.
Another one -- Nail Yakupov's goal that made it 2-0 in the first period -- was potentially stoppable. However, the shot from the deep slot was fired by one of the best young snipers to come along in years. Yakupov gets rids of the puck in a hurry and his shots have vicious movement on them.
In the third period, Marcoux gave up a bad goal through the five-hole. But the game was already out of reach for his team at that point.
Another Armada player on the Team QMJHL roster,
Christopher Clapperton, was also an attendee of the Flyers' summer camp. Despite an impressive showing in the two camp scrimmage games -- four goals and two assists -- the Flyers organization elected not to invite the diminutive Clapperton to try out for an entry-level contract at training camp.
The 18-year-old Clapperton, who leads the Armada in scoring (25 points in 19 games), is playing a somewhat different role on Team QMJHL. He's being used as a fourth-line energy player and agitator. I thought he was one of the more effective Q players last night. He did a good job of getting in on the forecheck and also made one picturesque pass that set up a scoring chance.
The Armada's general manager and primary owner is former NHL player
Joel Bouchard, who served as one of the Flyers' summer camp instructors at the invitation of close friend
Ian Laperriere.
Laperriere, the Flyers director of player development, was in attendance at last night's game. Incidentally, both Lappy and
Danny Briere are
minority-interest owners of the Armada, along with veteran NHL goaltender Jean-Sabastien Giguere.
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COMING TOMORROW: A look at the early progress of Phantoms goaltender
Cal Heeter and Titans netminder
Niko Hovinen.
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