MASON SUSTAINS BROKEN PINKY FINGER
As first reported by TFP's David Strehle and confirmed by the Flyers, goaltender Steve Mason sustained a broken right pinky finger in a ball hockey game last Sunday. The injury to his right (glove) hand will keep him off the ice for two weeks. In the meantime, Mason will continue off-ice workouts.
With about seven weeks to go before the start of Flyers training camp and two-plus months until opening night of the regular season , this injury should be only a minor setback. It should not hinder Mason's readiness to start the 2014-15 season.
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FLYERS TO ADD THREE NEW HONOREES TO HALL OF FAME
The Flyers announced yesterday that there will be three new inductees to the team Hall of Fame this season. The club will honor the three most important players of its resurgence in the mid-to-late 1990s when it inducts Eric Lindros, John LeClair and Eric Desjardins into the Hall of Fame.
The ceremony for Lindros and LeClair will take place on Nov. 20 prior to a game against the Minnesota Wild at the Wells Fargo Center. The Desjardins ceremony will be held on Feb. 19 prior to a game against the Buffalo Sabres.
During his tumultuous and injury-filled career in Philadelphia, Lindros was nevertheless the most physically dominant player in franchise history when he was healthy. Winner of the Hart Trophy winner in the lockout shortened 1994-95 season, he was a finalist again in 1995-96. Lindros also won the Bobby Clarke Trophy as Flyers' most valuable player four times and played in six NHL All-Star games.
At the point Lindros was traded from the Flyers to the New York Rangers in the summer of 2001, he had compiled 659 points (290 goals, 369 assists) and 948 penalty minutes in 486 career games with the Flyers. He averaged 1.35 points per game; a pace that would have ranked him sixth
all-time in NHL history had be been able to sustain that rate of production until his retirement.
Counting only the Philadelphia years of Lindros' career, only Wayne Gretzky (1.92 points per game), Mario Lemieux (1.88), Mike Bossy (1.497), Sidney Crosby (1.398) and Bobby Orr (1.393) have produced points at a more prolific pace than Lindros.
After leaving Philadelphia, mounting concussion problems and other issues marked a premature decline in Lindros' production. Combining his production with the New York Rangers, Toronto Maple Leafs and Dallas Stars, Lindros' production over the remaining 274 regular season games of his career slipped to 0.75 points per game (82 goals, 124 assists, 206 points). As a result, Lindros ended up ranking 19th on the NHL's all-time points per game list (1.138).
During the Philadelphia portion of his career, the NHL had never seen anything quite like the package of brute force and finesse that Lindros brought. Even with a series of early-career knee injuries to both knees, he skated well for such a big man in addition to being almost freakishly strong physically. He also a considerable mean streak.
LeClair came over with Eric Desjardins and Gilbert Dionne in a Feb. 9, 1995 trade with the Montreal Canadiens that ended up being one of the most important trades made in franchise history. Although the Flyers had to part with high-scoring right winger Mark Recchi (who subsequently returned to the team in a March 1999 trade), LeClair blossomed offensively immediately upon his arrival in Philadelphia while Desjardins anchored the blueline for the next decade.
Together with Lindros and right wing Mikael Renberg, LeClair became a prolific scoring power forward on what soon became known as the Legion of Doom line. (To read a retrospective on the dominance of the LOD line that I wrote for the Flyers' official site in 2009,
click here).
In 37 games with the Flyers in 1994-95, LeClair exploded for 25 goals and 49 points. The next season, he posted 51 goals and started a run of three straight 50-plus goal seasons. Before he sustained a serious back injury and his production started to go into steady decline in his early 30s, LeClair rattled off five straight seasons in which he racked up at least 40 goals.
For the Philadelphia portion of LeClair's career, the forward racked up 333 goals and 643 points in 649 games. He was virtually impossible to take off the puck or move from in front of the net. Although he did not play a particularly mean game and tended to be slow to anger, it was a common sight for opposing players to be left sprawled on the ice near LeClair. He simply had to dip his shoulder and it was almost always the opponent who took a seat. LeClair was also blessed with a howitzer of a slapshot and would score about six to eight goals per season by winding up and blasting an overpowering shot past the goaltender from anywhere from the blueline to the mid-slot.
Keep in mind that the height of LeClair's production with the Flyers came during an era in which clutch-and-grab hockey and heavily use of neutral zone trapping systems led to annual leaguewide declines in scoring. This was also the era in which goals were disallowed for so much as an incidental skate in the crease; which meant that a player like LeClair (who scored many of his goals in close to the net) annually lost numerous would-be goals upon video review.
Along with LeClair, Desjardins was a valuable member of Montreal's Stanley Cup winning team of 1992-93. At the time of the Recchi trade, defenseman Desjardins was considered the prized piece of the acquisition from the Philadelphia standpoint. LeClair was mostly expected to be a forechecking, space-creating role player in Philly as he had been with the Habs. Dionne was acquired to add a little offensive depth.
As it turned out, Desjardins came exactly as advertised. LeClair proved to be much, much more than Philly thought it was getting. Dionne never regained the scoring form he had shown early in his career with Montreal.
Hockey Hall of Famer Mark Howe was indisputably the best-all around defenseman in Flyers' franchise history. A good case could be made for Desjardins to be second on that list. "Rico" was very smooth and very smart at both ends of the ice.
In his early years with the Flyers, Desjardins was an outstanding skater. Injuries later robbed him of some of his former mobility, but he adjusted his game a bit in the Ken Hitchcock era and went on to have several more excellent two-way seasons.
Desjardins won the Barry Ashbee Trophy seven times and played in a pair of All-Star Games as a Flyer (he also played in All-Star Game while with the Canadiens). Desjardins was never a Norris Trophy finalist in his career but finished fifth in the balloting in 1998-99 and fourth in 1999-2000.
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20 YEARS AGO: FLYERS END PLAYOFF DROUGHT WITH AUTHORITY IN 1994-95
The Flyers' organization is one that is always very aware of its historical milestones. The inductions of Eric Lindros, John LeClair and Eric Desjardins into the Flyers Hall of Fame this season is timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the season that marked a key turning point in franchise history.
The lockout-shortened 1994-95 season ended up being a major positive shift in the Flyers' on-ice fortunes. That was the year where Philly, after five years of missing the playoffs, re-emerged as a Stanley Cup contender.
Training camp started as scheduled that year prior to the lockout. It is easy nowadays to forget that the team in Sept. 1994 was still considered too suspect on defense and in goal to be a playoff caliber club. New coach Terry Murray and newly rehired GM Bob Clarke had their work cut out for them.
Anyone who complains about the current projected starting defense for the 2014-15 Flyers either wasn't following the team yet -- or has simply forgotten -- what the team had going into that 1994-95 season. The situation in the summer of 1994 was far more unsettled than it is now.
The previous season, the starting defense primarily consisted of Garry Galley, Dmitri Yushkevich, Jeff Finley, rookies Jason Bowen and Stewart Malgunas, tough guy Ryan McGill and various in-season acquisitions such as Rob Zettler and Rob Ramage (a former four-time NHL All-Star and two-time Cup winner who, at age 35 was at the end of the line in his NHL career).
In goal, the Flyers had the duo of Tommy Söderström and Dominic Roussel. Both had been touted for a time as the potential long-term "goalie of the future" -- Söderström had particularly impressed as a rookie in 1992-93 with 5 shutouts in 44 games -- but their ongoing inconsistency was a major concern.
Against that backdrop, Clarke set out to remake the team defensively, while the defensive-minded Murray preached discipline and defensive responsibility:
* On June 29, Clarke traded the offensively talented (9 goals, 52 points in just 67 games in 1993-94) but defensively suspect Racine to Montreal for Kevin Haller; a chippy, defensively reliable puck-mover with good mobility.
* On July 6, Clarke signed veteran checking center Craig MacTavish to a two-year, $1.6 million contract. MacTavish, who had been a key faceoff presence and penalty killer for the Stanely Cup winning Rangers, also owned three Cup rings from his days as a checking forward on the Edmonton Oilers.
* On July 27, Clarke signed free agent left winger Shjon Podein. An offensive star at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and a 30-goal scorer at the AHL level, the Flyers pegged the now-former Edmonton Oilers forward as a role-playing, two-way winger at the NHL level. He quickly blossomed into one of the NHL's best defensive wingers.
* On Aug. 16, the Flyers signed Shawn Anderson as a free agent. A faded former high-end draft pick (selected fifth overall by Buffalo in the 1986 Draft), Anderson had played under Murray in Washington, and the hope was that he could compete for a third-pairing job with the Flyers. That didn't work out very well. He ended up getting banished to the AHL and eventually released.
* After three years of collegiate hockey at Providence and a year mostly spent with the Canadian national team, the club hoped that rookie defenseman Chris Therien could immediately compete for a spot with the big club. He played impressively at camp, but when the lockout was about to hit, got sent down to Hershey. Bundy returned to the big club after the lockout ended and went on to earn NHL All-Rookie team honors.
* On Sept. 22, Clarke traded Söderström to the Islanders and re-acquired Ron Hextall. Hexy was immediately installed as the starting goalie, ahead of Roussel. The Flyers also received a 1995 6th-round draft pick in the trade, using it the next summer to select Russian defenseman Dmitri Tertyshny.
When the season finally got started, the Flyers dropped five of their first eight games, with one tie. It was clear that more changes were necessary. On Feb. 9, 1995, Clarke made what turned out to be one of the most important trades in franchise history. In a blockbuster deal with Montreal, the Flyers sent top-line right wing Mark Recchi to the Habs in exchange for top-pairing defenseman Eric Desjardins, third-line center/winger John LeClair and fallen second-line winger Gilbert Dionne.
As it soon turned out, of course, Murray's decision to make LeClair a full-time winger and play him with Eric Lindros and Mikael Renberg ended up looking like sheer brilliance. With the birth of the Legion of Doom line, the Flyers never missed Recchi's production (despite his back-to-back 100-plus point seasons prior to the trade).
Just as important, the acquisition of Desjardins helped stabilize the blueline. He would immediately become the Flyers' best defenseman for most of the next decade; a seven-time winner of the Barry Ashbee Trophy (including in 1994-95). Despite its lack of physicality, his pairing with Haller was highly effective in both 1995 and the 1995-96 campaign because they were two of the most mobile defensemen in the NHL.
Clarke still wasn't done remaking the blueline.
On Feb. 16, the Flyers and Blackhawks swapped struggling young defensemen, with Karl Dykhuis (a 1990 first-round pick who had been highly touted entering the pros) coming to Philadelphia and Bob Wilkie going to Chicago. Dykhuis immediately stepped into the NHL lineup. While he was inconsistent and sometimes prone to major gaffes, Dykhuis was also capable at times of elevating his game to a high level, especially in his first couple playoff runs.
Just before the trade deadline, Clarke sent a disgruntled Galley to Buffalo in exchange for the mobile and defensively steady (but injury prone) Petr Svoboda. Svoboda helped smooth some of young partner Dykhuis' rough edges.
Thus, by the start of the 1995 playoffs, the Flyers had changed over their starting goaltending and five of their six starting defense slots -- Zettler remained on as the seventh defenseman -- from the end of the previous season. But it wasn't just change for change's sake. Virtually every move ended up being an upgrade.
I know that Clarke has his critics for his work as GM, but his work from the summer of 1994 to the end of the 1995 season was one of the best years I have ever seen from an NHL general manager. Keith "the Thief" Allen couldn't have done it any better that year. Clarke also did it without spending a ton of extra money on salaries that season.
Meanwhile, Murray made the Flyers much more accountable defensively as a team. Some of the forwards may not have always liked it, but they saw the results in the standings and with two trips to the Eastern Conference Final (one of which extended to the 1997 Stanley Cup Final) in the next three seasons.
Short as it was, the 1994-95 season was one of my favorite ones in franchise history. In upcoming blogs to commemorate the 20th anniversary of that season, I will talk about key players on that team apart from Lindros, LeClair and Desjardins. First up will be Mikael Renberg, followed by Rod Brind'Amour, Chris Therien and Kevin Dineen.
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WELCOME TO SWEDEN: FLANAGAN SIGNS WITH MODO
Kyle Flanagan will not be returning next season to play for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms. The diminutive playmaking forward has signed a one-year SHL contract to play for Modo Hockey Örnsköldsvik.
A standout collegiate player for St. Lawrence University, the undrafted Flanagan was signed to a two-way NHL contract by the Flyers in the spring of 2013. He dressed in 13 games for the Phantoms late in the 2012-13 season (one goal, six points in 12 games) and then posted six goals and 22 points in 63 games for Adirondack in 2013-14. The 25-year-old Flanagan became an unrestricted free agent this summer.
Flanagan's severe lack of size has worked against him at times at the American Hockey League level and he did not look he was going to be able to produce at a high enough rate to make it to the NHL with the Flyers. Nevertheless, he is a creative little playmaker and a good stickhandler. He should do well in the SHL-style game.
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