CALM BEFORE THE STORM
This week has been the calm before the storm for the Philadelphia Flyers. Taking only one of a possible four points from their last two games has been costly. The Flyers have fallen from second place to fourth place in the Metropolitan Division and eighth in the Eastern Conference.
The NHL's design of the Flyers' post-Olympic schedule was downright ludicrous. There was too much time off to start the month of March. From the span of March 3 to March 14, the team will have only played three games. That's too many nights of inactivity.
Come Saturday, the schedule is going to start going to the opposite extreme. Over a span of 29 days, the Flyers will play 17 games.
What's more, the quality of opposition the Flyers are facing is off the charts. In succession, Philly has to undertake the following gauntlet of opponents through April 5 with no margin for error in the playoff chase:
* a home-and-home with the Eastern Conference leading Pittsburgh Penguins
* a home game against the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks
* a home meeting with the red hot Dallas Stars (who blew out the Flyers in their previous game this season)
* a home game against the Western Conference leading St. Louis Blues
* a home game against the still-dangerous Los Angeles Kings
* a road game against the New York Rangers
* a home game against the Toronto Maple Leafs
* a home game against the defending Eastern Conference champion Boston Bruins
* a road game in St. Louis (the Blues are currently 23-5-4 on home ice)
* a home game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, and
*a Saturday afternoon road game in Boston (Bruins are 25-7-2 at home)
Of course, there is no such thing as an easy game on the schedule. Every single season, there are playoff bubble teams that overlook late season "trap games" against draft lottery teams (such as the ones the Flyers have on April 6 and 8 against Buffalo and Florida) and wind up paying the price for it.
Additionally, if a team is capable of winning in the playoffs, it is going to have to go through tough teams anyway. If the Flyers can't pick off a healthy number of games against high-grade opposition, they won't deserve to be in the playoffs anyway.
Lastly, it sometimes works to a playoff bubble team's benefit to catch the elite teams either at the very beginning of the season (when the other team may not yet be firing on all cylinders) or late in the season (when they already know they are going to be in the playoffs and may feel less urgency down the regular season stretch drive).
I don't know if you want to play against Murderer's Row in rapid succession, but it does give the Flyers a sense of how high they'll have to elevate their game from here on out just to get to the playoffs. The Flyers can use their pre-Olympic road trip through California as the gold standard of how they will have to play on a sustained basis.
Can they do it? We're about to find out.
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THURSDAY QUICK HITS
* The Flyers made a minor league roster move yesterday. They loaned forward Kris Newbury to the Hersey Bears for the rest of the season, while Derek Whitmore will go from Hershey to the Adirondack Phantoms in Newbury's place. This was not a trade. Newbury, who has had a couple of short stints with the Flyers this season, is still Philadelphia property and eligible to be called up to the big club either in the regular season or postseason.
* The process on Tuesday by which the Flyers revealed the upper body injury sustained by Zac Rinaldo and the callup of Chris VandeVelde was rather odd.
First the team announced VandeVelde's recall. Nothing unusual about that, but that of course led to the question of whether it was due to an injury or illness in the lineup.
Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren said that VandeVelde was not replacing anyone in the lineup and his recall was solely as an extra body after the pre-trade deadline roster limit was no longer in effect.
Roughly 15 minutes later, when members of the media spoke with Craig Berube, the coach said that Rinaldo would not be playing and VandeVelde was in. Asked for the reason why, Berube said that he'd leave it to Holmgren to answer.
Contacted for clarification a second time -- roughly 10 minutes after the Berube interview -- Holmgren said Rinaldo was day-to-day with an upper body injury. It would have been a lot easier just to say that in the first place.
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SHERO STATUE TO BE UNVEILED ON SATURDAY, WORK ON SHERO BOOK CONTINUES
Prior to the Flyers' game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on Saturday afternoon, an eight-foot tall, 1300-pound bronze statue of Hall of Fame coach Fred Shero will be unveiled in a free, open-to-the-public ceremony in front of the Spectrum Grill at XFinity Live on the corner of 11th Street and Pattison Avenue.
Flyers chairman Ed Snider and several members of the Flyers' two Stanley Cup winning teams will be on hand. So will members of the late coach's family, including Penguins general manager Ray Shero. The ceremony will take place at 11 a.m.
Now is as good of a time as any to announce that I will be going full speed ahead on my next book project this summer; a biography of Fred Shero. I have done extensive secondary source research off and on for the last two years but this summer, I will be interviewing many of those who knew him best and beginning the actual writing. My goal is completion within the next year.
There have been comprehensive histories of the Flyers written and book-length biographies of members of the 1970s and 1980s teams. However, there has never been a book-length standalone biography of the Fog and how he changed the game of hockey.
Outsider histories tend to focus only on the fighting and the Broad Street Bullies image of the 1970s. That was, of course, part of the story but it's far from a fair or complete picture of the team and grossly understates the multitude of ways that Shero was a man ahead of his time.
Fred Shero was a hockey innovator in his approach to the game and could fairly be described as ingenious. That does not mean someone is immune from failures and missteps along the wayor that they were never influenced by others. Shero's uniques ways and structured approach to the game deserve in-depth treatment. Additionally, his life story as the introverted son of immigrants in Winnipeg who used his considerable intellect as well as his stoic toughness to make good in life is a fascinating story in my eyes.
Shero had his personal foibles and eccentricities but that is true of many people who go on to accomplish great things. My intention is to write a book that puts the man and his contributions in their deserved context.
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