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Quick Hits: Season Eve, Flyers Czechs, Warriors, Ed Snider Mural & More

October 3, 2019, 5:24 AM ET [113 Comments]
Bill Meltzer
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • RSSArchiveCONTACT
Quick Hits: October 3, 2019

1) The Flyers held practice in Prague on Thursday in preparation for Friday's regular season opener at O2 Arena against the Chicago Blackhawks. The line combos were as follows:

28 Claude Giroux - 13 Kevin Hayes - 93 Jakub Voracek
23 Oskar Lindblom -14 Sean Couturier - 11 Travis Konecny
25 James van Riemsdyk - Scott Laughton - 81 Carsen Twarynski
12 Michael Raffl - 82 Connor Bunnaman - 18 Tyler Pitlick

9 Ivan Provorov - 61 Justin Braun
6 Travis Sanheim - 15 Matt Niskanen
8 Robert Hägg - 53 Shayne Gostisbehere

79 Carter Hart
37 Brian Elliott

Projected healthy scratch: 5 Sam Morin.

Injured non-roster: 18 Tyler Pitlick (until officially cleared), 19 Nolan Patrick, 3 Andy Welinski.

Additionally, the Flyers announced officially on Thursday that Giroux will be the team captain for the eighth consecutive year; the longest single tenure in franchise history. The alternate captains will be Couturier, Voracek and newcomer Hayes.

Lastly, Flyers general manager Chuck Fletcher said on Thursday that Joel Farabee will likely join Morgan Frost, German Rubtsov and Isaac Ratcliffe on the AHL's Lehigh Valley Phantoms to start the regular season.

2) During training camp, the Flyers have shuffled around their defense pairs repeatedly, beyond just the normal need to get early-camp work for prospects and AHL defensemen in addition to the regulars. The one pair that had been almost a daily duo at practice and preseason games was Shayne Gostisbehere with Justin Braun. However, during the final practice in Lausanne, one (early) morning after the 4-3 loss to Swiss team Lausanne HC, Braun was with Ivan Provorov and Gostisbehere was with Robert Hägg. Actually, Alain Vigneault shook up all four forward lines and every defense pair in the practice before the team left for Prague. The combos used in Thursday's practice may be the ones the team takes into Friday's game.

3) On the new "Therien's Take" blog on the Flyers website, Chris Therien argues that one of the biggest needs for the Flyers this season is to establish a set top defensive pair that stays together most of the time. Ideally, that would become a long-running pair that lasts beyond one season, but in lieu of that and given the presence of two veterans in their 30s who are being slated to play primary roles, shorter-term stability may have to be the goal.

Therien, in his third season in the NHL, was paired with Flyers Hall of Famer Eric Desjardins, and they remained together as a regular pairing for much of their careers in Philadelphia. Noting that the partner for the No. 1 defenseman needn't be the team's "true" No. 2 defenseman but the one whose style best complements the top guy -- such as the pairings of Chris Pronger with Matt Carle and Kimmo Timonen with Braydon Coburn -- Therien says that it's easier to slot the remainder of the defense once there is stability on the top. He also discusses the keys to developing and maintaining chemistry with a defense partner through strong verbal and non-verbal communication.

For more, click here.

4) Speaking of Eric Desjardins, "Rico" will be inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame on Thursday Nov. 27 as part of the organization's Class of 2019. The event will take place at the SugarHouse Event Center in the SugarHouse Casino, starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.

Other inductees this year include Donovan McNabb, Troy Vincent, Rasheed Wallace, Fran Dunphy, Jayson Stark, Matthew Saad Muhammad, the late "Pope" Paul Owens and the late Frank "Home Run" Baker. Tickets start at $50 for general admission and $323 for an inductee meet-and-greet, VIP reception and preferred seating for the induction ceremony. For more information, click here.

5) Trivia Question: Can you name the NHL team that has featured the most players who are natives to the Czech Republic or the Czech portion of the former Czechoslovakia?

The answer, according to the Czech Hockey Hall of Fame, is the Philadelphia Flyers. Entering the 2019-20 season, the Flyers have featured a record 26 different Czech players who have dressed in at least one NHL regular season game for the team. This total does not include players from Slovakia or the Slovak portion of the Czechoslovakia, such as Michal Handzus, Andrej Meszaros, Branko Radivojevic, Radovan Somik and Stefan Ruzicka.

On the Flyers official website, in conjunction with the Flyers trip to Prague for the regular season opener, I have authored a three-part history of the Flyers' relationship with Czech and Czechoslovakian hockey. Each part contains a series of short stories highlighting both little-known stories and oft-forgotten aspects of more well-known ones. For purposes of the article series, both Czechs and Slovaks are mentioned during the pre-1989 era, and Czechs alone are the topic after the dissolution of communism and the eventual split into separate Czech and Slovak republics.

Part 1 covers the period of 1974 to 1977. Topics include:

* Fred Shero's admiration and study of European hockey -- especially Soviet and Soviet-influenced -- and the Flyers being the first NHL team to draft an Iron Curtain player and among the first to employ a part-time scout in Europe.

* The tragic -- but fascinating -- story of "Rudy" Tajcnar: a 29-year-old Slovakian defector and former Czechoslovakian national team defenseman who became the first European born and trained player signed by the Flyers (1977).

* The Flyers vs. HC Pardubice game at the Spectrum (Dec. 26, 1977). While most every Flyers fan knows the story of the game against CSKA Moscow (Red Army) in January 1976, much less remembered is the Super Series that saw two of the top teams in the Czechoslovakian league -- reigning champion Kladno and former champions Pardubice -- play several exhibition games against NHL teams in late 1977. Although Pardubice had quite a few notable players, including the late Ivan Hlinka, international star goaltender Jiri Crha (later a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs) and an entire line of forwards who were regulars on the national team, the Flyers won handily by a 6-1 count.

Part 2 looks at the period from 1978 to 1989 (the year of the "Velvet Revolution" and the end of communist party rule). Topics include:

* The Flyers all-out but ill-fated pursuit in the summer of 1978 of trying to get all three Stastny brothers -- Peter, Marian and Anton -- to defect and join the team. The Flyers selected Anton in the NHL Draft (a selection later voided by the NHL because Anton was underage by the regulations of the era, which required a player to be 20 years of age by Sept. 15 of the calendar year), and had lucrative five-year contracts awaiting all three brothers if their defection could be secured to come to Philadelphia and join the likes of the LCB Line, Rick MacLeish and top prospect Ken Linseman. As history shows, the venture was unsuccessful. Two years later, Peter and Anton defected and joined the Quebec Nordiques, who had redrafted the now-eligible Anton in 1979. Subsequently, Marian joined his brothers.

* The Flyers first Czechoslovakian success story: The late Miroslav "Cookie" Dvorak, who was allowed to leave for the NHL at age 30, won a Barry Ashbee Trophy and forged a lifelong friendship with Flyers defense partner Brad Marsh that lasted long after their playing days together in Philadelphia ended.

* The Flyers first two young Czech players to join the team shortly after the end of the communist era in Czechoslovakia: defenseman Jiri Latal and forward Martin Hostak.

Part 3, to be published later today, looks at 1990 to the present. Stories in the final section:

* 1990: Clarke covets Jagr, Farwell covets Nedved. Per the 1990 THN Draft Preview issue, several before being fired as Flyers general manager, Bob Clarke told the publication that, in his opinion, Czech forward Jaromir Jagr was the best player in a deep draft after seeing him at the World Junior Championships. New Flyers general manager Russ Farwell openly coveted a different Czech, defector center Petr Nedved,whom Farwell knew well from their time together with the WHL's Seattle Thunderbirds. Drafting fourth overall, with Nedved off the board, Farwell went with a safer option (Mike Ricci) than the still-available Jagr.

* 1992: Only the most diehard of scouting/draft nerds know much about the work of Vaclav Slansky Sr., whom the Flyers hired in 1992 as their first full-time scout based in the Czech Republic, but it was the start of more than a quarter-century working relationship that produced some notable results over the years before he retired at age 71. Slansky's sons, Vaclav Jr. and Ezven, later became a long-tenured NHL scouts in their own right. Vaclav Jr. has been with the New Jersey Devils since 2004. In 2018, the Flyers hired Jan Slansky; thus continuing the legacy.

* 1993: Vaclav Slansky's first two finds were a pair of Flyers 1993 third-round picks -- playmaking center/winger Vaclav "Vinny" Prospal and offensive defenseman Milos Holan. Prospal went on to join the NHL's coveted 1,000 games played club and his career included two stints with the Flyers. Holan had defensive issues but was a prolific point producer whose NHL career was cut short when he took ill with a form of leukemia. However, Holan's story had a happy ending, as he beat cancer after a successful bone marrow transplant, and later returned to the ice to play portions of two additional seasons in Europe before going on to a lengthy coaching career. At age 48, he is doing well and is still coaching in the Czech Republic.

* 2010s: Acquired in the summer of 2011, Jakub Voracek has become longest-tenured European player in Flyers history. A little-known fact is that, leading up to the 2007 Draft, the Flyers weighed an offer from Edmonton to trade down from the second overall pick in exchange for two of the three first-rounders (including the sixth overall pick) that the Oilers held. Flyers GM Paul Holmgren held fast to a demand for all three Oilers first-rounders, and Edmonton backed out. Had the Flyers picked sixth, according to Holmgren, Voracek was the likely pick. Instead, the Flyers chose James van Riemsdyk with the second overall pick and, four years later, ultimately traded for Voracek and the 2011 first-rounder used on Sean Couturier.

Note: The original draft of the article went through the tumultuous tale of Roman Cechmanek and Jiri Dopita's (ill-fated) decision to finally play in the NHL with Philadelphia after rebuffing no fewer than three previous organizations -- Boston, the Islanders and Panthers -- who held his NHL rights over the years. However, keeping those sections would have resulted in a need to go to a fourth part in the series, so I removed those stories and kept the concluding section that focuses on Voracek.

6) Flyers Podcast Central: All of the podcasts that appear on Flyers Radio 24/7 (FlyersRadio247.com are now chronically stored for easy on-demand listening access on the new Flyers Podcast Central page on TuneIn.com.

Yesterday, Chris Therien and I recorded the
opening night preview edition of the Bundy and Bill Show. Last Friday, the latest Broadcasters' Roundtable, featuring Tim Saunders Jim Jackson, Steve Coates, Bundy and me, discussed training camp surprises and observations ahead of this week's trip to Europe.

7) Early tomorrow morning, I depart for Las Vegas to cover the Philadelphia Flyers Warriors participation in the 2019 USA Hockey Warrior Classic, featuring teams of wounded and disabled veterans from across the country. We will have ongoing coverage, photos and videos posted over the weekend on the Flyers Alumni's official website, Facebook, and Facebook pages. I will be back in Philadelphia one day before the Flyers' home opener against the New Jersey Devils.

8) On Saturday (Oct. 5) from noon to 1 p.m., the Philadelphia Mural Arts program is dedicating a mural devoted to Ed Snider and Snider Hockey at 10th & Snyder Sts. The muralist, Jared Bader, is a big Flyers fan and greatly admired Mr. Snider.

Much of the Snider family will be in attendance, and Sarena Snider will be among the speakers. Virlen Reyes, Councilman Mark Squilla, and Mural Arts founder Jane Golden will also be speaking. Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux are slated to visit the mural in a few weeks.

9) AAA is the presenting sponsor of the 2019 Gritty 5K on Sunday, Oct. 13. Participants who are AAA members have the exclusive option to join Team AAA and receive $10 off their registration by using the code AAA2019Gritty5K. As an added bonus, Flyers Alum left winger Scott Hartnell will serve as the official captain of Team AAA. Those who sign up to run with the team will receive access to a private meet and greet with Hartnell.

The 5K gets underway at 8:30 a.m. Afterwards, fans and participants can enjoy a free Flyers Fan Fest highlighted by the Flyers Community Caravan (featuring free photos and autographs with Flyers Alumni), hockey games, and inflatables. All proceeds benefit Flyers Charities.
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