There will be a familiar face returning to the Phantoms this season. The club recently signed free agent goaltender Scott Munroe to a one-year contract. The deal is a straight-up minor league contract, meaning that the 30-year-old Munroe is NOT on the Flyers' reserve list.
Munroe, a native of Moose Jaw, Sask. and an alumnus of the University of Alabama Huntsville, broke into pro hockey with the Philadelphia Phantoms and spent parts of four seasons with the club. He split time with Brian Boucher (who was on a minor league deal) for most of the 2007-08 season, performing on roughly an equal basis.
During the 2008 Calder Cup Playoffs, Munroe opposed the Albany River Rats' Michael Leighton in what would become the longest playoff game in AHL history. The Phantoms prevailed by a 3-2 score at 2:58 of the fifth overtime on a Ryan Potulny goal. Munroe finished with 63 saves on 65 shots, while Leighton stopped an incredible 98 of 101 shots.
The next year, Munroe became the Phantoms primary starter and enjoyed a very strong season, tying a single-season franchise record with a .926 save percentage. He also dressed (but did not play) in one NHL game.
By the time Munroe left the Phantoms, he ranked third in team history in games played (134), career wins (64), and shutouts (10). He went on to play for the Bridgeport Sound Tigers and then spent one year in the KHL with Neftekhimik Nizhnekamsk.
Last season, Munroe returned to North America in a two-way contract with the Pittsburgh Penguins. He spent the entire season in the AHL with Wilkes Barre/Scranton, earning an $85,000 salary. The well-liked veteran played in 38 games, recording five shutouts while posting an overall 2.52 GAA and .908 save percentage.
Munroe's return provides some veteran goaltending insurance for the Phantoms, who have two rookie goalies this season in Niko Hovinen and Cal Heeter. Hovinen, who is coming off hip surgery this summer, enjoyed a strong season in the SM-liiga for Pelicans Lahti in 2011-12. Heeter, an Ohio State graduate, impressed at the Flyers Prospect Camp.
As of now, I would expect that Munroe will start the 2012-13 season splitting time with Hovinen. Heeter may begin the year at the ECHL level with the Trenton Titans. However, that could all change quickly based on the three goalies' performance and health.
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Several people have asked me if the Flyers will still hold their annual rookie camp in Voorhees in September or the annual prospects game against the Washington Capitals prospects in the event of an NHL lockout. I didn't know the answer so I asked Director of Player Development Ian Laperriere.
"We’re not sure yet but we don't think there will be a rookie camp if there's a lockout," he said.
Unfortunately, such decisions are not made by people such as Laperriere and developmental coach Derian Hatcher. They are more or less mandated by the NHL and then enforced by upper management.
If there is no rookie camp this season, it would be unfortunate for players such as 2012 first-round pick Scott Laughton, who was looking forward to his first Flyers rookie camp (the July prospect camp is primarily for skill development and conditioning advice). It would be even more unfortunate for an unsigned invitee such as goaltender Etienne Marcoux, who earned a rookie camp invite after impressing at the July camp.
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Thirty years ago today, Flyers defenseman Bob Dailey announced his retirement as an active player at age 29.
For those who are too young to
remember the Count, he was basically the Rob Blake or Shea Weber of his era, at least when healthy during the Flyers portion of his career. Dailey was a 6-foot-5 beast of the blueline with a 100-MPH righthanded slapshot (in the wooden stick era) and a pretty sizable mean streak to go along with it.
With the Flyers, Dailey was a two-time NHL All-Star and a two-time Barry Ashbee Trophy winner in his five seasons. In other seasons, he dealt with a series of knee injuries and missed a lot of games.
On Nov. 1, 1981, Dailey sustained a gruesome injury that ended his career. In a 6-2 loss in Buffalo, Dailey raced the Sabres' Tony McKegney for an icing touch up. Dailey never made it. Bumped from behind by McKegney, Dailey’s skate got caught in a rut in the ice and he fell backwards into the boards, shattering both his tibia and fibula. His ankle was busted on both sides. The tibia and fibula bones were broken into over a hundred small pieces.
Dailey was placed on a stretcher and rushed to a local hospital. That same night, Pelle Lindbergh -- who was making his NHL debut -- also ended up at the hospital as a result of severe dehydration. The Swedish goalie was released the next morning. Dailey was there for several more days.
Doctors immediately told Dailey that his hockey career was over, and would be lucky just to walk again. He didn't want to believe it, but he announced his retirement on Aug. 24, 1982.
Four years later, Dailey briefly attempted to make a comeback with the Flyers, rehabbing under the direction of Pat Croce and then playing in a few AHL games for the Hershey Bears. Unfortunately, he simply couldn't keep up with the play anymore. After five games, he retired again -- this time for good.
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Throughout their team history, the Flyers have seemingly been cursed to lose many of their best defensemen to serious injuries. Chris Pronger's eye injury and career-threatening concussion issues are just the latest example of a top Flyers' defenseman having his career end or at least severely hampered by major injury.
In fact, Kimmo Timonen's 248-game ironman streak (which came to an end in the latter part of last season) was quite the rarity in the history of top Flyers' defensemen. Serious injuries atop the bluline have long been the rule rather than the exception.
During the 1974 Stanley Cup Semifinals, the late Barry Ashbee (an NHL Second-Team All-Star for the 1973-74 season) was struck in the eye with the puck shot by the New York Rangers' Dale Rolfe. The injury ended his career.
Five-time NHL All-Star Jimmy Watson had to retire shortly before his 30th birthday after undergoing spinal fusion surgery the previous year. Watson attempted to play one season after the surgery, but was no longer the same player. Previously, he dealt with a serious eye injury of his own, suffering permanent retinal damage after an inadvertent high stick by Jerry Butler of the St. Louis Blues caught him in the eye during the 1976-77 season.
Next came the loss of Dailey. Until the Flyers acquired Pronger, they hadn't had a defenseman with the same combination of attributes as the Count. They still haven't had a right-handed D-man quite like him in the last 30 years. If the offer sheet to Shea Weber had not been matched by the Nashville Predators, the two-time Norris runner up would have been the first righthanded-shooting D to bring the same combination of top-rate offense and physical defense that Dailey brought when healthy.
Whenever we recall Mark Howe's Hall of Fame career, we think of his brilliance in finishing as a three-time Norris Trophy first runner-up three times in his first six seasons with the club. But the last four years of Howe's career were marred by a chronic back problem that forced him out of the lineup for very long stretches of each season.
From 1988-89 until 1991-92, Howe never played in more than 52 games. In fact, he never played in more than 60 games again in a season, despite playing in the NHL until 1995.
Seven-time Ashbee Trophy winner Eric Desjardins had to remake his game following a torn anterior cruciate ligament suffered in a March 1999 game against the Detroit Red Wings. He lost a lot of his former mobility and had to learn to play a bit differently.
Later, Desjardins sustained a foot fracture that took away another stride away from him. A wrist fracture and concussion issues forced him out of the lineup frequently by the time he was 33 years old, and he dressed in just a combined 93 games in his final two seasons before retiring.
As Desjardins began to age and the injuries piled up, Kim Johnsson became the Flyers' best defenseman. A two-time Ashbee Trophy winner, Johnsson had the best season of his career in 2003-04. After recording 13 goals and 42 points during the regular season, he had a stellar first round playoff series against New Jersey.
Unfortunately, in the third period of the clinching game against the Devils, Johnsson went down to block a shot and took a Jamie Langenbrunner slapshot off his right hand. The force of the shot created a long y-shaped crack that ran down the fourth metacarpal bone, where the hand meets the wrist. Incredibly, Johnsson finished the game. The next day, he was diagnosed with a broken wrist.
Johnsson SHOULD have missed the rest of the playoffs. Instead, he returned after missing three games of the Flyers-Toronto series and played the rest of the playoffs with the aid of pain-killing injections and a special plastic scaffold and protective rubber tubing insert in his right glove. He basically played one-handed.
As one would expect, Johnsson was not nearly as effective for the remainder of the playoffs after the injury. After racking up six points in the New Jersey series, he had just two points -- one of which was the lone Philadelphia goal in the Flyers' 2-1 loss to Tampa Bay in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final and a minus-four rating over the remainder of the playoffs.
The fickle nature of the Philadelphia sports market was driven home to me again during that postseason. I remember driving to Maryland for a family function that overlapped with an off-day of the Flyers-Tampa series. The Flyers had just lost Game 3 the previous night by a 4-1 score. I made the mistake of turning on a call-in sports radio show hosted by someone without an iota of hockey knowledge. He and several callers ripped heavily into Johnsson, mostly because he was a minus-two in the last game and had flubbed a couple shots when he was in scoring range.
Nevermind the fact that Johnsson was playing one-handed. Nevermind that he had played over 29 minutes in the game due to the rash of other injuries (Desjardins and Marcus Ragnarsson among them) that had decimated the blueline. Nevermind that he'd been the team's best defenseman all year and played a key role in even getting the team to the Conference Final. In fact, nevermind the panic that set in before the Toronto series because Johnsson would miss time with the hand fracture.
Nope. Somehow Kim Johnsson was "killing us out there", "playing scared" and was a "total disaster" of a defenseman who "needs to be scratched for the rest of the playoffs". My favorite caller of them all was the brainiac who called in and suggested the Flyers dress forward enforcer Todd Fedoruk as a defenseman and start him in place of Johnsson.
I liked Fedoruk as an honorable sort of tough guy forward and great guy off the ice, but I think Fridge would be the first one to tell you that it's a good thing that last guy wasn't the one making the lineup decisions!
At any rate, Johnsson only spent one more season as a Flyer after his outstanding 2003-04 campaign. Following the lockout-related cancelation of the 2004-05 season, Johnsson struggled with concussion problems for much of the 2005-06. He departed for Minnesota as unrestricted free agent that summer.
Johnsson remained in Minnesota until the 2009-10 season, when he was traded to Chicago. He played well in eight games with the Blackhawks but then suffered a serious concussion that forced him to miss the rest of the season and the playoffs. The Blackhawks did not request that the 34-year-old defensemen's name be placed on the Stanley Cup -- it was a team option because he played so few regular season games and no playoff matches that year.
Unfortunately, Johnsson has not been physically able to play hockey at any level in either of the last two seasons. He's never officially retired as far as I know, but a comeback is very unlikely and Johnson himself apparently is OK with it because his top concern was being able to lead a normal off-ice life with family. At least -- as is the case with Ian Laperriere and Eric Lindros (for whom Johnsson was traded to the Flyers) -- he's been able to recover a good quality of life without the horrendous issues associated with lingering post-concussion syndrome.
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Coming tomorrow: I will finish my "Flyers Travel Sites" series with a blog talking about Rexy's Bar and Restaurant and the Flin Flon Bombers.
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