Posts from the Flyers Category at FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

Here's a new feature I've been resisting for a while here at FanHouse, but with the offseason upon us I feel as if we have no choice. Welcome to The Bag Skate, FanHouse's afternoon roundup of everything that's happening on a typical offseason weekday. Why The Bag Skate? Because it's Summertime and you'd probably rather be doing just about anything else than writing about hockey with weather this beautiful. Now, might one be able to say that we're swiping this idea from elsewhere? I'd prefer to call it an homage.

The head turner of the day has to be Rick Westhead's stunner in the Toronto Star revealing that LA Kings owner Phil Anschutz and Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold were the money men behind William "Boots" Delbaggio's purchase of a stake in the Nashville Predators. What's worse, Leipold and Anschutz, who both sit on the league's Board of Governors and are considered allies of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, made this $17 million loan without informing him about what they were up to. I wonder why?

Sami Kapanen, the spunky jack-of-all trades saw the writing on the wall when the Flyers made him a healthy scratch/bit player during their playoff run. After a regular season which saw the little bugger get a whopping eight points in 74 games, it's not as if the Flyers were going to utilize Kapanen in a big role.

Kapanen said "To hell with that!", and decided to call it quits on his lengthy NHL career, returning to play with the club he is a partial-owner of.

Flyers right wing Sami Kapanen has decided to end his NHL career with the Flyers and play in his native Finland next season.

Kapanen, who will turn 35 on June 14, has agreed to return to KalPa Kuopio of the Finnish League, where he played 10 games during the 2004-05 NHL lockout.

Kapanen had one year remaining on a contract that would have paid him $1.25 million next season. That salary will come off the Flyers' books for the 2008-09 season.

Part of me has always thought as Kapanen as a disappointment. Given his speed and smarts, I figured he be able to put up much better offensive numbers than he did. Sure, 458 points in 831 games is nothing to scoff at, but Sami only ever crossed the 60-point barrier twice in his career, and took a huge nosedive in 2002, when he was 29 and still in good shape.

On the other hand, Kapanen has been one of the most flexible and useful players during his later career. How many other players would you be comfortable playing at both forward and defense, and in any situation? Sami could do it all and never put up a fuss about it, unlike Sergei Fedorov.

Flyers fans are probably feeling a bit sad and glad today, given how much Kapanen busted his balls for the Flyers, but also knowing that this gives Philly a much needed bit of cap room to use on a younger player who isn't skating with a giant fork in his back.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Well that was rather emphatic.

For the second series in a row, the young and incredibly talented Pittsburgh Penguins had failed to sweep an opponent out of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And now, for the second series in a row, those same young Penguins refused to let their opponent up off the mat, and put an exclamation point on a five-game series victory. Now all that's left to do is win the Cup. Easier said than done, I know.

For somebody who was alive and ambulatory in the mid-1980s when the Edmonton Oilers rose out of the Canadian prairie to slay the New York Islanders and take their place on top of the National Hockey League for the better part of a decade, this is all starting to look a little familiar -- something that was reinforced for me last night when ESPN's John Buccigross narrated a video roll of teams with young superstars early in their careers that manage to play for a title.

Though I'm not sure Buccigross meant for it, I couldn't help but come away with what's become a common complaint from Baby Boomers about Generation Y, or whatever marketers are calling the 18-25 year old set these days -- that success has come all too easy to a certain generation, and that somehow there's something wrong with all of it.

To borrow a line from more hockey bloggers than I care to remember, I'll just write this: Meh.

Following the Penguins' Game 4 loss in Philadelphia, there were lots of questions going into Game 5. Could the Flyers keep the momentum going? How huge would the return of Kimmo Timonen be for the Flyers? How would the Pens respond to the loss?

As it turned out, it took about two and a half minutes to answer that question. Ryan Malone deflected in a Sidney Crosby pass to put the Pens up 1-0. Then Evgeni Malkin snuck a wraparound behind Martin Biron and things looked really good for the Pens. Then Marian Hossa, Malone (again), Jordan Staal, and Pascal Dupuis kept the avalanche of goals going and by the time it was all said and done, the Pens rolled up a 6-0 win over their rival Flyers to bring the Prince of Wales Trophy to Pittsburgh for the first time since 1992.

With the smoke clearing from this game, it's way too early to worry about the Finals (go celebrate, Pens' fans!), but it's hard to think that the young Pens are going to be overmatched against anyone in light of their awesome performance today to eliminate the Flyers. In the words of Mike Lange: HOP IN THE CORDOBA, BABY! THE PENGUINS ARE GOING DANCING WITH LORD STANLEY!

Hard as it is to believe, the odds got a little bit better for the Philadelphia Flyers in the last 24 hours as the news broke that defenseman Kimmo Timonen, who had been thought to be lost for the remainder of the playoffs, will return to the lineup in time for Game Five.

It's less certain that Braydon Coburn, who still has one eye swollen shut, will get back on the ice, though the Flyers seem to have left the door open for a game time decision.

I'll be firing things up at 2:30 p.m. U.S. EDT, though I'm not quite sure who my fellow panelists might be. James Mirtle might show up at the end of the day, while Pat Lackey, our resident Penguins fan, promises to stop by too.

In any case, you never know just who might show up in the peanut gallery, as yesterday's live blog of the Wings-Stars game helped turn up P.J. from Sharkspage as well as somebody from The Pens Blog. So stop by to chat and get ready to answer some twisted poll questions. I promise a good time will be had by all.

With the Philadelphia Flyers trying to do the near-impossible and come back from a 3-0 series deficit, they got some good news as defenseman Kimmo Timonen was OKed to return to the lineup for Game Five.

The problem? Timonen suffered a blood clot in his leg, and his return is not without some serious risk involved: Amputation.

Yes, Timonen won't just have to deal with numbness, pain, and swelling, but the risk that he could lose his ability to walk and skate properly.

The fear with Timonen is that the clot could break free if he were to take a shot off his foot. If that happened, he might need to have his toes amputated. But the clot has not moved and has not gotten bigger. Timonen talked the matter over with his family, assured by doctors that playing poses no further risk to his health.

"My leg could be better, but it could be worse, too," said Timonen. "But in this situation, you know, it can't get any better. So that's pretty much it."

As Dave Babych and Eric Lindros would tell you, the Flyers have a history of putting their players at serious risk, so this kind of thing is par for the course.

As for Timonen, why is he risking so much? If this was Game Seven, I could kind of understand, but this is Game Five, and the Flyers are serious long-shots to make this comeback complete. This isn't the Finals, either.

Sheesh.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

There may be a lot of you who are surprised there is hockey this weekend.

I'll freely admit to being one of them. I'm even more surprised that there are two games this weekend.

Both the Dallas Stars and Philadelphia Flyers were left for dead after falling behind 3-0 in their respective series. Even though they were playing on home ice, they were heavy underdogs in Game Four.

They both got the job done. Their prize? They're being left for dead entering road games this weekend.

While I think it would be outright lunacy to predict one of these series will be extended, you can't rule it out. After all, most of you ruled out these series even going five games, and here we are.

Dallas tries first, as they face Detroit Saturday in "Hockeytown". We'll be live-blogging the game here at FanHouse, so join us for the action starting at 1pm Eastern.

Can this added confidence carry the Stars to a Game Five upset?

(Still to come: The conference finals indeed continue, NBC prays for a regulation end to Saturday's game, and a YouTube to remember from the incomparable Tie Domi)

It's not as far-fetched as you may think.

Now don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying the broadcast is biased towards the Flyers -- it's not, despite what Pittsburgh may say. Versus is actually doing a pretty good job of covering the playoffs, in my opinion. They haven't really had any major snags, although their studio team is lacking any names recognizable to the casual fan. But that's neither here nor there.

Let's get back to what we were here for in the first place. A business lesson. So, we have the Flyers and Versus, two seemingly separate organizations. Let's do about .01 seconds of research. Who are each of them owned by?

From the Versus website:

VERSUS, a wholly owned company of Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ: CMCSA, CMCSK), is distributed via cable systems and satellite operators throughout the United States.

And from the Flyers website:

Copyright © 1999-2008 Comcast Spectacor, L.P. and the National Hockey League. All Rights Reserved.

See any similarities?

Now it's clear that there haven't been any serious conflicts of interest here. I really don't think that the coverage on Versus has been biased towards the Flyers in any way. It's just interesting what happens -- or what could happen -- in this country when we have so many large conglomerates.

Every day from Monday to Saturday, The Ice Sheet will take a look at the biggest stories in the league that happened on the ice and elsewhere the night before.

Two nights ago, the Dallas Stars turned the tables on their opponents, and last night the Philadelphia Flyers did the same. Maybe it was the magic of throwing jerseys all over every statue in Pittsburgh (I doubt it) or maybe it was an emphasis on crashing the net and their physical style of play (I think so). Either way, we're headed back to Pittsburgh for a Game Five on Sunday.

Probably just as happy as the Stars and Flyers right now are the folks over at NBC. Had both of these series been sweeps, they would have had no games to televise this weekend. Instead, the Wings and Stars play Saturday and the Pens and Flyers square off on Sunday. Now should Sunday's game go into a lengthy overtime, we might have a situation like we did last year during the Preakness Stakes (horse race). If you remember, NBC cut away from Game Five of the Sabres and Sens Eastern Conference Final to air pre-race coverage for a bunch of horses. As you might have guessed, hockey fans didn't like this a whole lot. Sunday, the pre-race coverage is set to air on NBC at 4:30 PM EST, with race time at 6:15. Personally, I'm hoping that the game does go into overtime so that we can see if NBC has learned anything from last year.

But yes, there was a hockey game last night so let's talk about that! The Flyers entered the game, at home, in a 3-0 series hole. They came out of the gates flying, not literally, and took a 3-0 lead after one period thanks to goals from Joffrey Lupul, Daniel Briere and Jeff Carter. The latter two were on the powerplay, as the Flyers went 2-for-4 with the man advantage on the night upping their playoff conversion rate to 23.4%. Now let's skip ahead to the third, but before we do, a little insight from Lupul.

''It's pretty simple, win or go home,'' said Lupul. ''We didn't have to do that much thinking before the game.''

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Thanks for that, Mr. Lupul.

And so we've come to this. What was supposed to be a knock-down drag-out series is looking very dangerously like a Pittsburgh sweep. Except for about ten minutes during the first period in game one and brief stretch in the second period of game two, this series has been almost all Penguins these first three games. Marian Hossa, Sidney Crosby, and Evgeni Malkin have stepped things up big for the Pens while everyone not named Mike Richards has faded into the woodwork for the short-handed Flyers.

Braydon Coburn won't be coming back tonight thanks to his ugly eye injury, but playing to avoid a sweep in front of the home crowd is always a huge incentive (just ask Dallas or New York). Gary Roberts won't be playing for the Penguins thanks to what's being called "mild pneumonia," which I had no idea existed. The Flyers are really going to have to raise their level of play from where it was in Game 3 if they want to make another trip to the western part of Pennsylvania. Can they pull it off? Follow along with our liveblog after the jump.