What a Birthday Present…

The Flyers winning on May 4th for my birthday, how satisfying. Before you quit of comment however on my bad time keeping skills. I write this from the UK and the game started at midnight, therefore, May 4th, not May 3rd.

The Flyers are going to the Eastern Confrence Finals. That’s a satisfying phrase isn’t it? I just can’t stop smiling because for once, I’m just glad to be wrong: I predicted Flyers in 6, they did it in 5, defying the odds for a second time.

You couldn’t ask for more in a hockey game, the NHL should be using stuff like that for their marketing – the teamwork and effort that players put into these sorts of game, not Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin. That was one of the most dramatic games I’ve seen in Hockey. 1-1, then 2-1 Habs, then 3-2 Flyers, then 3-3 Habs, finishing 6-4 to the Flyers. I’d like to point out right from the start – The Flyers didn’t drop a 2-0 lead!!!! The Canadiens did!!!! The planets have aligned!

Anyway, I’ve got alot of respect for Carey Price despite what i’ve said up till now, he had a fantastic start to the game despite it trailing off towards the end. A “Nice Job” to the Habs fans at the game too – I am very impressed. I doesn’t forgive you for what happened at the end of the 1st series, but cheering Price while he was down and cheering your team after the game was finished, that’s something special.

The Flyers had a slow start to the game, letting the Canadiens dominate for most of the first which ended in a 2-1 lead for the Habs. The beggining of the Second was much the same, with the Habs quickly taking a 3-1 lead. At this point, I was ready to turn my TV off and call it a night. But Lo! Mike Richards slips one in using his glove and the magnificent R.J. Umberger putting one in with a wrister. The Flyers found a new energy and blitzed on, with Scott Hartnell scoring. In the third period, I think I found religion…about 2 seconds after Kostitsyn scored for the Habs. I was in a state of distress throughout this period (as I’m sure was the mood in many bars around Philly). Scottie Upshall, man of the hour, put one in the back to almost seal the deal before Mike Knuble scored an empty netter – Forget Soap Opera’s, Game 5 was PURE drama.

Biron again continued to lay down a level of shock-and-awe with magnificent goaltending. Some may say: “4 goals aint magnificent goaltending”, but the Habs were doing what they should have done since Game 1 – Getting traffic infront. I’d praise the rest of the team aswell, but I don’t think you wan’t 20 paragraphs of love (plus coaching staff), so I’ll just focus on what lies ahead.

It’s a safe bet to say that the Flyers will play the Penguins in the Eastern Confrence Final (I can’t get enough of saying that…) and we know that the Flyers can not only beat them, but demolish them, both home and away. I imagine Steven’s will use a similar contaiment tactic on Crosby and Malkin as was used on Ovechkin earlier in the playoffs. However, I think the evil penguins (Oh boy will I be biased in the next series) will have gotten over confident, picking up 7 straight wins, hence why the Rangers suddenly knocked them down for no aparant reason. I still think the Penguins will win, but will be badly bruised from the first two series and will not look forward to a series with the hardcore physical Broad St. Bullies. As we all know, the Penguins dropped the last game of the regular season just to avoid Philly inorder to play Ottawa. They have no choice now, they must play us and suffer the consequences of not playing us earlier.

Should, by some magical comeback of amazing proportions, the Rangers win, the Flyers would have a harder time, especialy with Jagr and the Rangers goalie Lunquvist (I think that’s how it’s spelt). But it’s so unlikley that I’m not gonna dwell on it further. It would be good however for either the Sharks or the Rangers to hold on a little longer to give the Flyers a rest, maybe take their series to 6 or 7? If they do, I’ll send them a dollar.

Also, if there is bias amongst the Referees and Gary Bettman, it will be revealed in this series, the one Mr. Bettman wanted to avoid at all costs.

I think there was something else, but I can’t remember, so the prediction…

My Predition is: Flyers in 5, with Crosby dead in 2.

It’s 3-1 Flyers, and this post is late!

I apologise for not getting this up sooner. It was a combination of laziness and the inability to reach a computer because I was in London (UK) for most of today. I could go on and on and on about game 4 but I’m sure you’ve had enough of that. If I had waited till Saturday to write this, you would haven’t of gotten much because of my “Don’t speculate on the game, the day of the game” policy. It’s a superstitions thing.

However, It’s still Friday in the UK for 3 hours and 8 hours in the US, so I shall begin speculating…

Saturday’s game will only finish when the 3rd Period ends. The Canadiens will bring their A game and so will the Flyers. They will take it down to the wire and I’m not sure if i can predict who will come out on top. At least not without a certain level of deep meditation and words from God if I’m going to make an educated prediction. The Megadeth bouncer in me says the Flyers will win, but the cynical part of me believes that the Habs will be able to do one better over the Flyers.

So lets break it down into sections. We’ll start with Goalkeeping. Biron has been hot. I swear the picture I have of him in my study started smoking recently. If he can keep it up, the Flyers are in a great position. Carboneau himself admitted the Habs have tried everything to put the puck behind Biron and have failed at every turn. I am forced to wonder if I’m putting too much trust in him. I remember putting alot of trust in Robert Esche, and we all know what happened then. The Canadiens goalkeeping has been fairly poor this series. Price is totally shell shocked from the first three games, and his confidence won’t be great after Carboneau dropped him. Halak put up a better job than Price in game 4, but the Flyers still found ways of scoring.

Offensively, The Habs are consistent in outshooting the Flyers, which why I’m nervous about Biron. If the Canadiens can score early in a game, keep up a good pace and continue to out shoot the Flyers, things may make a turn for the worse. However, the Flyers are very good at matching the pace of the Habs and are so physical in their style of play, they are keeping the Habs relatively at bay. The chemistry in each of the Flyers lines is also helping to score, despite the shooting defecit.

Defensivley, the Flyers are doing better than what they were doing in the rest of the season. Yes, there is a shot defecit but for the most part, the Flyers are closing them down. The Habs seem to be quite happy to let the Flyers repeatedly dump the puck in and play it from there. This is a plan that has been working well for the Flyers but Carboneau seems determined to ignore it.

Penalty wise, the Flyers are in bad shape. They are getting far too many penalties which is resulting in opportunities and goals for the Habs. Need I mention Game 3 or 1? I’m not saying the Flyers penalty kill isnt any good, on the contrary, it has done excedingly well considering the circumstances. The Habs are getting fewer penalties in contrast and aren’t suffering as hard. However, their penalty kill has been poor recently, allowing the Flyers to score at critical moments.

I won’t comment on the fans. There very similar in their fervour and zeal that I would be wasting my time (Also, my response would be higly bias)

I imagine some Habs fans are looking at the First Round for hope. I will now shoot it down in the style in which I am famous for.

Some believe that The Habs were forced to a Game 7 after being 3-1 up against the Bruins. It is a belief, one taken by Carboneau, that the Canadiens can emulate this. I don’t think so – The reason for the Bruins sudden leap forward was because of poor goaltending on the Canadiens part (Price in particular). There is also a belief that the Habs could emulate the Caps in coming back against the Flyers. To begin with, The Canadiens don’t have Ovechkin and Federov. Also Huet was a much better Goalie than Halak OR Price. So there.

If the Flyers fail to close it out on Saturday, the deed will be done on Sunday, I am sure of that.

Flyers Go 2-1 Up

My fingernails will never be the same again. Towards the end of the Third period of game 2, I can’t even start to explain how I felt. I think it would be easy enough to say that the butterflies in my stomach turned into tigers who hadn’t eaten for a year.

I wouldn’t call it a best of for the Flyers, but maybe for Hockey as a sport. I don’t think I’ve been able to put so much trust behind a Goalie like Biron since my belief in Roman Checkmanek (I had only just become a Flyers fan and was little naive). I cannot even begin to sing his praises, He was supreme, I don’t think I can say much else without spoiling the moment.

Anyway, The Flyers now have the advantage, carrying the momentum, after a fairly demoralising loss for the Canadiens, into another home game. I don’t think we’ve seen the best out of either teams however, and it could still go either way. But the Flyers carry the momentum and Carey Price is now most definetly shell-shocked. The Canadiens Coach (I can’t remember his name, It’s something like “Carbonara” but don’t qoute me on that) seems quite happy to leave him in for game 4, showing great belief in the rookie. I imagine he could come back from that, but the goals he let in would knock the confidence out of Patrick Roy.

All the Flyers goals were superb, They were all set up beautifuly. My favorite had to be Upshall’s first goal. There was a gap in the Habs defence from a bad line change and Jofrey Lupul blitzed forward, giving a quick pass back to Upshall who fired it over Price’s leg, who never saw it coming. I would add my own little analysis to the Habs goals, but I missed them because I really needed the bathroom.

The Flyers did almost throw it away because of a silly penalty, specificaly Derian Hatcher, who got a little medieval with his hit and recieved a 5 minute major and a game-misconduct. I think it could have been avoided, like many of the Flyers penalties so far in the Playoffs. The penalty gave Montreal two goals, taking the Flyers from 3-0 to 3-2, shocking. Another lead almost dropped. The Flyers need to control themselves a little. Should the Flyers win and go through to play the Rangers or the Penguins, I am terrified of what could happen in terms of the penalties. But back to the present, I shouldn’t dwell in one penalty causing all this damage, the Flyers did hold on and I’m proud of them for that.

I think the Flyers will take their momentum into the next game and win at home.

Despite the Flyers holding a strong advantage, my original prediction of Flyers in 6 still stands.

Here’s some highlights from the game

Flyers and the Media

I’ve noticed in some areas of the Media, and some of the blogs I read around and about, is the horrifying portayl of the Flyers, the way they play, and the fanbase.

I refer to evidence A, an article by Mike Wise of the Washington Post, which can be found here. The article was written during the Flyers-Caps series, after the series was 2-1. If you can’t be bothered to read it, here’s a brief summary. The first page refers to the Flyers and the Caps play in the Games 3. Wise states “The tenor of this rugged series is terrible news for hockey progressives everywhere“. To this I point out that the leader of the so called Hockey progressives is none other than Garry Bettman himself, our loveable NHL commisionar who is slowly destroying Hockey. By trying to make the sport less violent and more skillful to attract new fans, Bettman has shot himself in the foot by turning away alot of long-standing fans who enjoyed that level of action. That is what Hockey’s all about! I was at the season opener in London and their were a couple of Irish guys that were gonna demand their money back because their was only one fight (If you could call it that). The Flyers have seen through this plan and ignored it, as the number of suspensions shows, and has kept the physical game going – something the Flyers are famous for.

The next line in Wise’s little article shows the amount of Bias floating around in US sport coverage: “the way the Flyers have punked a nice bunch of free skaters…” I am I the only one who see’s this for the bias it is? Where can I get a decent website for some unbiased hockey articles?!?!?!?!. The local papers are all heavily biased, the NHL articles focus on one team or a player, the SI website links back to the local papers, all the blogs are biased (I admit mine is no better), and ESPN denies the NHL exists. Only the Canadians (I mean as a nation) seem to know how to commontate on a Hockey game. I watched a regular season Caps-Flyers game that had Washington based coverage. Between the periods, I expected some nice Hockey analysis, looking at the goals, the saves, the plays, the good points and the bad points of either team. I was upset to discover after 5 minutes of analysis (looking at Caps saves, goals and a Flyers misktake), there was an little piece on the Caps first cars. First cars?!?! I was disgusted. What real hockey fan would want to know about Federov or Green’s first car for goodness sake? I understand that Flyers television coverage will also be biased and I’m a little dissapointed at that aswell. All coverage of sport should be unbiased (except of course for things like Blogs etc. because they are personal opinion.)

On to the second page of Wise’s article. It was focused on the Flyers fans. Wise states: “For most of the evening, there was this unmistakable air of testosterone coming from the Flyers’ direction that just reeked of physicality, a way of exerting their mauling style on the Capitals that just sent their denizens into some medieval state of euphoria.” I only have one thing to say to this: Mike Wise is obviously what I call a “fair weather fan”, only interested when the Caps are doing well and as such, doesn’t understand what it means to be a true fan. The worst I’ve known Flyers fans to do is get a *little* mouthy with popular chants including “Crosby Sucks” and “F*** Ovechkin”. If Mr. Wise ever went to a soccer match in Britain, particularly a Heart of Midlothian match in Scotland, he would suffer a combination of a heart attack, stroke and 5 or 6 bloodclots from what he would hear. The popular chant, which comes up regularly in a match is “Oh the Hibees are G*y!” sung to the tune of White Stripes: “Seven Nation Army”. Then he should go to a London soccer match…

I could go on and on and on about this article, but I should start to cut it short with comments about other teams. Mr. Wise’s precious Captitals and their fanbase threw trash at the Flyers. You will find me ranting about this alot as I find it disgusting, it is the lowest of the low. The only reason these types of actions don’t recieve criticism from the upper echelons of the NHL is becaused the Caps (And the Penguins) are two of Bettman’s favorite teams, he’s admitted it so there’s no point arguing it.

I can take enjoyment from what the Flyers did in response to Mike Wise’s article. They decided to distribute it at the next game. The Washington Post stopped the Flyers from doing this, in fear of retribution. As such, the Flyers put it on the big screen, which I just think is classy. Also after Wise’s comments “Many of the women and children looked as if they could work security for Megadeth“, one of the members of the Flyers marketing department dressed in a black wig, torn jeans and a black tee-shirt that had “MEGADETH” stamped on the front of it. I still can’t stop laughing.

The image below, has little to do with the Flyers or the NHL, but If someone does this and is able to prove it, I would send them a dollar!

Martin Biron est extraordinaire!

Just like what it says on the tin. Martin Biron had an amazing night in goal – He’s probably the best goalie the Flyers had since Roman Checkmanek (Saying Hextall might be a bit excessive). With 34 saves and 1st star, it just continues to prove my argument that Marty is on form and will take the Flyers far. The two goals scored against the Flyers both have stories behind them – The first was unlucky: Biron was distracted by Lasse Kukkonen getting caught in the face by a Hab skate. You could argue he should have been concentrating, but that kind of thing would catch out anybody. The second goal, I grudgingly admit, was pure class from the Habs. The rest I have to say about them is negative but that’s further down the post.

The Flyers as a team also showed their stuff. 4 great goals from Umberger, Carter and Briere gave the Flyers the win. They were also able to push their game to another level, matching the pace of the Canadiens for most of the game and using their classic physical play to keep the Habs down.

I also must complement Coach Steven’s for his tactical thinking. Alot of coaches would sit back after that Game 1 and say: “We were unlucky, I’m going to leave the plan as it is and hopefully we’ll have some better luck in Game 2″. Coach Stevens however, looked at his tactics and decided to change some of the lines around, the important one was moving Scott Hartnell up along side Briere and Prospal. It gave both Briere and Prospal space to work their magic, resulting in a goal.

I’m sorry to say it’s not all positive however – The Flyers need to stop picking up silly penalties! If they do that, the Habs will score 1 or 2 less goals a game. After picking up a 2 minute minor for having too many men on the ice, Randy Coburn cross-checked a Hab after Biron had freezed the puck, making a 5-3 situation for a minute. It could have been worse, Jeff Carter did the same thing on the same play. Mercifully, the Referee recognised that the Canadien went down fairly easily. Also, remember I praised the Flyers for their pace? It wasn’r entirley consistent as the Canadiens remained on the attack for most of the 3rd Period.

Now to start looking at the Habs. This game was fairly poor for them – Price had a very poor game, all of the goals were mistakes either caused by himself (sitting too deep in his goal) or his teammates (blocking Price’s view). These were some fairly rookie mistakes that may come back to haunt him later in the series (Remember the 5-1 trouncing against the Bruins?). Also, I noticed for most of the 1st and 2nd periods, the Canadiens would choose to dump the puck in rather than set up a proper offensive zone passing play. I must also bring up what will appear on a few blogs before the next game: Sportsmanship. I don’t know what is defined as “unsportsman like” in the US, but in Britain – Tom Kostopoulos, the Habs Hero from Game 1, hitting Kimmo Timmonen in the back during Jason Umberger’s second goal was unsportsman like. He should have been sent off. It does make me chuckle however as the NHL constantly looks to put the Flyers down, and in the process sees other teams like the Habs or the Caps do silly things like what Kostopoulos did.

Anyway, I think this will go the same way as the series against the Caps – The Flyers have picked up a little momentum and confidence walikng into two home games, which is always huge with the Flyers. Also, the Flyers know what they need to work on and have got the Habs figured out. My prediction remains Flyers in 6.

I also appologise for the poor use of French

1st Post

Welcome to The Orange and Black, an unofficial Philadelphia Flyers blog.

It may seem unusual to start this up half way through the playoffs, but I’ve got thoughts and ideas that need expressing about the Philadelphia Flyers, most of them positive. I did have a blog that was hosted on the Fan Nation website which I’ve decided to set up here. I don’t know if any other blogs have update schedule, but this one won’t have an official one. Because it’s the playoffs, I’m going to post after EVERY game. During the season, It’ll probably be weekly and the offseason: Monthly. But that’s still up in the air right now.

On to the Hockey.

The Flyers won the first series against the Washington Capitals 4 Games to 3 after a stunning game 7 OT goal from Joffrey Lupul. The whole series was a testament to both teams and how much they’ve achieved this season. I feel it was extra special because it silenced the Flyers critics and those that are too quick to praise the Capitals. This is especially important after criticism from the Washington Post about Flyers Fans actions during the series when Capitals fans bombarded the Flyers with trash and rubbish during their celebrations. That however, is in the past.

Now we are facing the Montreal Canadiens (whose fans have proved themselves no better) and we are already 1 game down. I am not disheartened however! The Flyers proved they can face the Habs and are settling in for the long run. Coach Stevens’ game plan worked for the most part, with regular line changes to meet the rested Canadiens’ offense. The players themselves are also showing the grim determination that the Flyers are famous for. Luppul and Smith skating playing despite injuries. Biron is also on form with an amazing pad save on a penalty shot. There are negatives though which Coach Stevens and the team need to look at quickly. They had a 2-0 lead in the 1st and dropped to 2-2 by the beginning of the 3rd. The Flyers then lost another lead which brought the overtime. I believe that was simply unlucky, but the first 2nd period could have and should have been played better.

Now we wait for Game 2. If the Flyers learnt their lessons from Game 1, they should win. I still believe the Flyers will win the series in 6.

Note: In Game 2, Jaroslav Modry will be unavailable as he will be attending his father’s funeral. He will be replaced by Lasse Kukkonen. The full story can be read at: “Flyers defenceman Modry to return to Czech Republic for father’s burial”