Broad and Pattison is moving. Head on over to SB Nation, where we’re now known as Broad Street Hockey. You can read my whole spiel about why the move was made over at the new site.

I know there are a ton of readers here who haven’t commented often or a lot. The move to SBN is for you guys. The new site is yours as much as it is mine, and you can certainly read more about that over there too.

I’m still going to be bringing the same type of commentary and analysis at Broad Street Hockey as I did here at Broad and Pattison. The new site just gives a bigger platform for that.

It’s an exciting time and I hope you’ll join me in continuing to create the biggest Flyers blog on the ‘net.

Travis

http://www.broadstreethockey.com

We had the news about two weeks ago that Luca Sbisa had been sent back down to Lethbridge, but apparently the source out in Switzerland was wrong.

This time, though, it’s straight from the Flyers.

The Philadelphia Flyers announced that they have reassigned defenseman Luca Sbisa to the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the Western Hockey League, according to club General Manager Paul Holmgren.

“We feel that it is in the best interest of Luca and the Flyers organization that he gets back to playing on a regular basis,” said Holmgren in making the announcement. “Luca will join Lethbridge for its game in Portland, Oregon on Wednesday.”

Everything Homer is saying there is correct — Luca does need to play — but couldn’t this have been done two or three weeks ago?  According to the CBA, if you’re on the active roster for 40 or more games, it counts as one season against your contract. If you’re a healthy scratch, you’re still on the roster — you’re just not playing. Sbisa has only played 39 games, but as far as I understand it, that’s not the number that matters. He’s been on the roster for every game to this point, and is a year closer to free agency now because of it.

EDIT (h/t to Mirtle): A little clarification… after10 games you lose a year off of your contract, but after 40 games you become a year closer free agency. Sbisa is now both.

Holmgren made a mistake here.

Two former teammates square off, Aaron Asham v Cam Janssen. Asham keeps it classy at the end with a respectful tap on the helmet. I’d call it a draw.

Right after David Backes made it 3-0, the Captain tried to give his team some jump by taking on Dan Hinote. A couple early shots by Richie added to the take down probably give him the edge in this one.

The Flyers were outworked, outhit, and outscored 4-0 by the Blues tonight in St. Louis.

Possible Excuses

• long road trip (albeit only three games, it was kinda long though)
• second game of a back to back
• team is flu ridden, Randy Jones/Braydon Coburn missed the game
• “the Blues have the same goal horn… we thought we were up 4-0!”

I don’t care. You just lost 4-0 to the worst team in the Western Conference. That cannot happen. Period.

B&P’s Take: The Blues just beat the Flyers in every aspect of the game tonight. Chris Mason was astonishing, stop all 36 of the Flyers shots. Antero Niittymaki wasn’t bad either, but the rest of the team didn’t hustle in front of him.

When you go 0-for-11 on the power play, you don’t win. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is. The special teams, or lack thereof, lost the Flyers the game tonight.

The Blues are a young team with a lot of talent, and if they were fully healthy, they’d be threatening to make the playoffs. They’re a physical team, and boy did they take it to the Flyers tonight.

The flu keeping Jones and Coburn out meant Luca Sbisa and Lasse Kukkonen both got a chance to play. The pairing of Sbisa and Matt Carle was a minus-2.

The officials were busy tonight, and it didn’t help that one of the linesmen went down with an illness before the game. It was interesting watching two refs and a linesman try to officiate the game, though… especially one that featured 23 minor penalties.

This game sucked. I’m done talking about it. Forget it, move on. Three full days to focus on Boston.

Questions With Answers

1. Do the Flyers focus on St. Louis or do they play like they’re looking ahead to Boston? It certainly didn’t look like it. They just didn’t play well tonight at all. As soon as the Blues scored that first goal, which came immediately after they killed a two-minute-long Flyer 5-0n-3, you had a feeling it was going to be a rough night.

2. The Flyers lead the league with 52 fights, but St. Louis isn’t far behind with 43 (fourth in the NHL). Cam Janssen is the Blues leading tough guy. Former teammate of Aaron Asham. Sounds like a fight to me? It certainly was a fight, and it was a good one. I’d call it a draw but it was a little unfortnate the stripes jumped in so early. I’ll throw up the video when it pops up on the YouTubes.

3. Mike Richards broke out of a little slump last night with three big points. What’s he do for an encore? Well, he got in a second period fight with Dan Hinote to try to boost his team. It didn’t work, but at least he tried.

Comprehensive playoff update, as well as a roundup of the rest of the action in the NHL tonight after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

“They’re a team that likes to play physical. If they think they can bully you around, they’ll use that to their advantage. We’re going to make sure, first of all, that we establish our physicality in the game.” — Blues coach Andy Murray

Two of the highest penalized teams in the league tonight. Two of the top five teams in fights. It could be a circa 1970 West Division battle in St. Louis tonight.

Philadelphia Flyers (26-13-9, 61 pts) at St. Louis Blues (19-24-4, 42 pts)
Scottrade Center - 8:30 PM EST - St. Louis, MO
TV: CW57 (HD?), Fox Sports Midwest HD
Radio: 94.1 WYSP FM, XM 208
Check Here for Internet Streams
Behind Enemy Lines: St. Louis Game Time

What To Watch For: The Blues? They’re a hockey team?

Seriously, it’s hard to get up for a game when the team you’re playing is a) the worst team in the Western Conference and b) a team you play once every nineteen years. The Flyers and Blues haven’t met since February of 2007 and they haven’t played a game in St. Louis since 2005. Crazy.

But let’s hope the Flyers do get up for this one, because it’s very similar to last night. There can be no looking ahead to Boston tonight, even though we all want to. They need to take care of business against the teams they should be beating, just like they did against Tampa.

The penalties have to stop. St. Louis, for all of their flaws, are a quality power play team — ranked seventh in the NHL and converting at 22 percent. They take a lot of penalties though, too. Compared to the Flyers, who take 18.7 PIM a  game, St. Louis takes 16.2. The Flyers lead the league and the Blues are fourth.

St. Louis is coming off of a 3-1 loss to the lowly Ottawa Senators, but before that they took two impressive wins on the road against Chicago and Boston. That’s right. Chicago and Boston.

The Blues cannot be overlooked. They’re led by leading scorer Brad Boyes, who has 20 goals and 17 assists on the season. Keith Tkachuk, Patrik Berglund, and David Backes are also scoring threats.

They’re also ridiculously injured though. List time:

• Roman Polak, D, broken foot
  Yan Stastny, C, broken finger
  Eric Brewer, D, back
  Andy MacDonald, C, leg
  Paul Kariya, LW, hip surgery
  Eric Johnson, D, torn ACL/MCL

Yeah, that’ll hurt your chances at success for damn sure. Philly also owns the Blues. How’s 8-1 since 2000 sound? (come to think of it, I think I was at the one loss. check: yup, I was) Five straight wins in St. Louis. The Flyers have outscored the Blues 39-19 in that time. It’s like Niittymaki-on-Atlanta ownage.

It looks good for the Flyers, but I’m sure it did for Boston on the 19th too.

Between the Pipes: Both goalies are kind of up in the air right now. For the Flyers, if you ask me, Niittymaki deserves to play after his performance last night. Ride the hot goalie, as they say. But, with that said, if I were betting money I’d put it on Biron. Stevens uses the logic that, since the Flyers are off until Wednesday after today, sitting Biron would be keeping him out of action for too long. We’ll see in a few hours, I guess.

UPDATE: Antero Niittymaki will go for the Flyers tonight. I was (happily) wrong.

For the Blues, I’m just not sure. It could be Chris Mason or Manny Legace — they basically share the workload. Legace has played in 28 games this season, compiling a 3.21 GAA and a .888 save percentage. Weak. Mason has done a tad bit better, but don’t ask for any trophies, Chris. In 22 games, Mason has a 2.94 GAA and a .905 save percentage. While Mason’s numbers are better, the team sucks when he plays. He’s got a record of 5-14-1, while Legace is 13-9-2. Strange.

Questions To Answer

1. Do the Flyers focus on St. Louis or do they play like they’re looking ahead to Boston?

2. The Flyers lead the league with 52 fights, but St. Louis isn’t far behind with 43 (fourth in the NHL). Cam Janssen is the Blues leading tough guy. Former teammate of Aaron Asham. Sounds like a fight to me?

3. Mike Richards broke out of a little slump last night with three big points. What’s he do for an encore?

A look at the playoff race after the jump…

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The Pride of Huntsville, Alabama and 2009 AHL All-Star Game MVP Jared Ross conducts a chat with theahl.com.

An excerpt:

Q: How does it feel to get to continue to play with former University of Alabama-Huntsville teammate Scott Munroe in Philadelphia? – Virginia from Huntsville, Ala.

Ross: It’s awesome. When I was in Chicago, I thought about getting traded the year I did get traded – thinking if there’s any team I’d want to go to, it’d be Philadelphia just because of the organization and my buddy Scott Munroe’s there. I thought it’d be fun playing together. It’s a thrill to have him playing on the same team as me – we’ve been around each other the last six or seven years now and have become really good friends. Practices are so much more fun being able to shoot on him, and we were roommates on the road. It’s just to have someone that you’re a really good friend with and have known for awhile, and Scott’s a great guy, so I’m really happy to be on the same team with him.

Q: What was the experience like making your National Hockey League debut with the Flyers earlier this season? – Kevin from Boston, Mass.

Ross: It was awesome, everything I thought it was going to be. It was opening night for the Flyers, just playing that game it was unbelievable, wearing the Flyers jersey. Realizing that I was the first hockey player out of Alabama to play in the NHL, I was pretty proud to be able to do that. Just to have everybody calling and texting me from Alabama to offer congratulations, it was a really great feeling.

That’s what I’m talkin’ about, Flyers. The guys waltzed into Tampa and rolled over the Lightning, 6-1. Mike Richards had three points including two goals, and Jeff Carter added two goals himself. Antero Niittymaki made 41 saves to shutdown the Tampa attack.

B&P’s Take: It was a bit of a strange game, with two overturned goals and a penalty shot, but everything went the Flyers way tonight. Mark Recchi DID score on his goal that was reversed (they said he kicked it, he didn’t), but the Steven Stamkos goal that was overturned was tough to argue either way against. The War Room in Toronto has more angles than we do watching on TV though, so these situations are tough to complain about. Why would we, though? They both went in our favor.

And perhaps that helped the Flyers jump out of their cage. It was 1-1 when Rex’s goal was taken away, and it came toward the end of the first period. Philly came out in the second period storming, and Randy Jones scored on the PP to make it 2-1. A few minutes later, Richards scored his second of the night and the Flyers were breaking the game open.

Tampa had a few more chances to get back in it though. They peppered Antero Niittymaki with shots, but the Great Wall of Finland held strong, just as he has in his entire career against the Southeast Division. He’s 19-1-1 against SE teams — unreal. Kimmo Timonen hooked Martin St. Louis on a breakaway about five minutes into the third period and the referees awarded St. Louis a penalty shot. Nitty might’ve gotten a piece of it as it sailed up and over the crossbar. About two minutes later, Stamkos batted in his disallowed goal with a high-stick.

From there on, the Flyers closed the small door Tampa still had open. Carter scored two down the stretch (he passed Ovechkin for the league lead with 32 in the process) and Scott Hartnell added one to help the orange and black to a 6-1 win. It was just what they needed — a strong win against a team they should beat.

Offensively, the Flyers destroyed Tampa. The Lightning defense was pretty much non-existent and Mike Smith had literally no help back in the cage, and the Flyers took advantage.

The only down side for tonight were the penalties, but it’s a serious problem. Thankfully, Tampa isn’t exactly a potent offense, but the Flyers gave them nine powerplays by taking 12 minor penalties. It’s ridiculous and it has to stop.

How overrated was Stamkos in that draft last year, anyway? Man… not impressed.

Also, I don’t miss Steve Downie. At all.

Behind Enemy Lines: Cassie at Bolts Blog has the Tampa perspective on the game.

50 down, only 32 to go….

…

You certainly can’t accuse Tampa Bay’s top line of slacking. Not when those three guys had half the shots for the team. St. Louis had nine shots, Lecavalier eight, and Prospal four. I thought that Prospal had a pretty good game, actually. And St. Louis got a penalty shot attempt, too. Like I’d said, tho, it was one of those games, so they weren’t able to put anything in the net.

But let’s give Niittymaki some credit. I’ve always thought that he was one of the more underrated goaltenders in the league. And he definitely shined in this game.

The Lightning’s defense weren’t helping Smith all that much. And the forwards weren’t helping the defense. The only thing that looked good were their special teams. Which was good, I guess, since they were either on a power play or killing a penalty for a good part of the game.

Questions With Answers

1. Can the Flyers stop taking so many damn penalties? No. It’s bad. Against teams like Boston and Washington and New Jersey, they aren’t getting away with this crap. They’ve got to find a solution and quickly: the Bruins loom on Wednesday.

2. Do the Flyers realize the urgency of this game? It seems that way. Regardless, they got the job done.

3. They should be Tampa. Do they play like they are the better team? They certainly did.

4. The Flyers have always struggled playing in the St. Pete Forum. Is it psychological? It was practically a home game for the Flyers tonight in Tampa… if you watched the game it looked like a whole section to the left of the benches there was an entire section of orange. Clearly, the demons the Flyers usually stuggle with in that building weren’t there tonight.

Playoff race update, after the jump…

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“I considered returning to the Avalanche, but they are struggling (losing six of their past seven) and I didn’t want to take any space under the salary cap. I didn’t want to return to the Flyers after all my foot problems the last time I was there.” –Peter Forsberg, via Toronto Sun

Thank you, Peter. If he ever does get 100% healthy, I’d love him as a Flyer again. But we all know, and it looks like he does too, that it’s probably not going to happen.

Philadelphia Flyers (25-12-9, 59 pts) at Tampa Bay Lightning (17-22-10, 44 pts)
St. Pete Times Forum - 7:30 PM EST - St. Petersburg, FL
TV: CW57 (HD?), Sun Sports
Radio: 610 WIP, XM 206
Check Here for Internet Streams
Behind Enemy Lines: Boltsmag, BoltsBlog

What To Watch For: Tonight’s game, although it’s against one of the Eastern Conference’s worst teams, comes at a crucial time for the Flyers. Coming off of a loss against Florida on Tuesday night, and with New Jersey seemingly unable to lose, and the Flyers staring a daunting home-and-home with Boston right in the face, they need points. Tonight is a key opportunity to do so against a Lightning team that’s had it’s fair share of turmoil this season.

But just because they’ve been the joke of the NHL doesn’t mean they’re complete pushovers. They’re 6-3 in their last nine with wins over Montreal, Buffalo, and the Flyers. That January 15th loss in Tampa is one the Flyers will be trying to avenge this evening.

Martin Biron started that game on the 15th, but Antero Niittymaki will go for the Flyers this evening. Thank God for that, because if you ask me, Marty hasn’t been all that stellar lately and his numbers tell the tale. He hasn’t won a game since January 10th against Toronto.

Tampa played last night and lost to Carolina, 3-2.

Injury Report: Darroll Powe has missed practice the past two days with the flu, so he might be limited tonight. Other than that, it’s the usuals for the Flyers… Briere, Hatcher, Kalinski, and Gratton all out.

Tampa is hurting. Gary Roberts is out with an elbow injury, Marek Malik is sidelined with an ankle problem, and Jamie Heward has a concussion.

Between The Pipes: As mentioned, Niittymaki will go for the Flyers tonight. He’s yet to lose in regulation in 2009. For Tampa it’ll be Mike Smith, and if he were on a better team he’d probably be a Vezina candidate. This guy is that good. He has a .919 save percentage and a 2.53 GAA in 40 games this season for the Lightning.

Questions To Answer

1. Can the Flyers stop taking so many damn penalties?

2. Do the Flyers realize the urgency of this game?

3. They should be Tampa. Do they play like they are the better team?

4. The Flyers have always struggled playing in the St. Pete Forum. Is it psychological?

Playoff Chase: There’s only one other game on the schedule tonight that means anything to us, and that’s Pittsburgh at New Jersey. The Devils are on a tear — seven straight wins, while Pitt is coming off of a big win against the Rangers on Wednesday. A Penguins win could put them tied with Florida for the eighth-spot, but the Panthers still have games in hand. We’re gonna have to cheer for the Pens tonight, as much as it hurts.

A Flyers win and a Jersey loss would put Philadelphia back within four points of the Devils with two games in hand. It would also put the Flyers just one point back of the Rangers with still two games over them. A Devils win and a Flyers loss could be very bad… the Flyers would be eight points back of first place with only those two games in hand.

A bigger game tonight than we may have expected, so let’s hope the team is ready. Go Flyers.