UPDATE 3:30
The Red Wings official site now has the team's lines for tonight posted in their
game preview.
Danny Cleary – Pavel Datsyuk – Jiri Hudler
Patrick Eaves – Cory Emmerton – Drew Miller
Fabian Brunnstrom – Ryan Johnson – Tomas Holmstrom
Tomas Tatar – Chris Conner – Jan Mursak
Niklas Kronwall – Brad Stuart
Brendan Smith – Mike Commodore
Garnet Exelby – Logan Pyett
Jimmy Howard
[Joey MacDonald]
UPDATE 1:30 PM
Here is the Flyers lineup for tonight. They will have to scratch two forwards and one defenseman from available roster.
Forwards: JVR, Jagr, Voracek, Briere, Hartnell, Couturier, Schenn, Wellwood, Testwuide, Kalinski, Read, Rinaldo, Holmstrom, Sestito.
Defense: Meszaros, Carle, Coburn. Kessel, Lilja, Walker, Bartulis
Goaltenders: Bobrovsky (starter), Bacashihua (backup), Leighton (scratched except in case of emergency).
******
The Flyers are back in action for the fourth time in as many nights when they travel to Detroit to take on the Red Wings in a preseason game.
Last night in London, Ont., the Flyers battled back from deficits of 2-0 and 3-1 to take their game with the Red Wings to overtime, courtesy of a pair of goals from James van Riemsdyk and a tally by Wayne Simmonds late in the third period. Detroit ultimately prevailed in an eight-round shootout, on successful attempts by Johan Franzen and Ian White. Simmonds had the lone successful attempt for Philadelphia.
I will update the blog with lineups for tonight's game when they become available later today.
*****
Last night's game was marred by an ugly incident. Simmonds, the Flyers' first shooter during the game-ending shootout, skated out to center ice to collect the puck and skate in on his shot attempt. At that moment, some cretinous subhuman coward in the stands threw a banana at the player, who is black.
Simmonds kept his composure, skated in, and scored a goal. Afterward, he handled the issue -- something that no one should ever have to deal with -- with his characteristic class and dignity fully intact.
Unfortunately, everywhere you go in this world, there will always be a few idiots. Similar incidents to the one last night have happened to black soccer players in Europe. There is little the athlete can do about it, except hopefully to respond exactly the way Simmonds did last night, both during and after the game. Doing so reveals the racist neanderthal involved to be even more moronic than your just your garden variety lowlife scumbag loser who wallows in his own ignorance like a pig in slop.
I hope that the cameras at the Labatt Centre and the fans sitting in the vicinity of the waste of oxygen that threw the banana reveal exactly who did it, so he can be arrested and publicly identified. Unfortunately, the idiot would then probably feel proud that he got his name in the papers and on television.
*********
Now that I got that off my chest, following are some observations and notes from last night's game:
* It was rather remarkable that the game even got to a shootout, because the Red Wings severely outplayed the Flyers for most of the game. Give James van Riemsdyk huge credit for lifting the team -- which is something he's going to have to do on a much more regular basis now that he's a third-year player skating on the top line. Also give Michael Leighton credit for making some very tough stops and stopping 6 of the first 7 shots during the shootout. The goaltender gave his team a chance to win.
* The webcast of last night's game was tough to follow. For one thing, it was delayed by a full period from the live action, so NHL.com and Twitter posts were way ahead of what you were watching. Even worse, the feed itself was poor. It was not a smooth moving stream, even on fast internet connections. The video quality was also fuzzy. As a result, I gave up on the internet broadcast and listened to the third period onward on the radio.
* Flyers radio commentator Chris Therien got all over Claude Giroux last night for his lackadaisical play in both preseason games he's played so far, but especially in the first period of last night's game. Giroux has pretty much been a terrible preseason player throughout his still-young NHL career. He played his way right off the opening night roster as a rookie, was just so-so the next year and only came on at the tail end of last year's preseason. Hopefully he will finish the exhibition slate this year as he did a year ago, because it's only really the final tuneup that matters for a veteran. The Flyers know Giroux will bring it once the season starts --- so a mediocre preseason for him is the least of their worries. It's just interesting how he's never been able to self-motivate during the preseason (even when he was a rookie), yet is one of the team's most self-motivated players when the bell rings.
* Harry Zolnierczyk quietly -- well, not so quietly on the ice, because he's a bit of an agitator, but quietly in terms of media notice -- has continued to have a fine preseason for the Flyers. He is far from the biggest player on the ice but he throws his body around and wins a lot of battles. Even with the poor internet feed, it was easy to tell which Flyers players were skating with energy and which ones weren't. Harry Z was one of the ones who most definitely was among the first group.
*****
You won't get any complaints here about the 10-game suspension handed down by Brendan Shanahan to the Flyers' Jody Shelley. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion -- and justified -- that the league would come down hard on a repeat offender such as the Flyers' enforcer. I liked that there was also a video explanation from Shahanan explaining exactly why the hit was so dangerous.
Unfortunately for Shelley, the suspension could not have come at a worse time for him, because he entered camp trying to keep his job. At age 35, carrying a $1.1 million cap hit as a fourth line player on a club that is tight to the cap, and trying to fend off younger, cheaper and faster-skating players in the battle for the 12th forward spot, Shelley knew he had to go all out in camp.
The results were not what he intended, I'm sure. In his lone preseason game, he left his team shorthanded twice -- the enforcer's measuring stick is that the penalties should always balance out unless he is taking an instigator penalty in defense of a teammate. He also got himself suspended for the sixth time in his NHL career, and the third time within a calendar year.
Being a good locker room guy, a hard worker at practice and a well-established member of the NHL's enforcer fraternity can only offer so much protection to Shelley when it comes time for the final roster decisions to be made. He's not going to get a chance to redeem himself for his hockey team, and I'm sure that (along with the remorse for potentially injuring another player in a preventable situation) stings him more than the suspension itself. But Shelley has only himself to blame here.
******
Last night, as I was trying in vain to watch the 1st period of the delayed webcast of the Flyers-Wings game, my son, Benjamin, stopped watching Blues Clues long enough to come over and jump up on my lap on the couch.
"What's that, daddy?" he asked.
"The Flyers and Red Wings are playing hockey," I said.
He looked up at me, smiled and said with all the 2-year-old authority he could muster, "Noooooo! That's not hock-eeeey!"
Given the very sloppy play (especially by the Flyers) in that period, I would have to say that Benji called it right. That was a pretty brutal period. At least the tempo picked up as the game went along.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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