Flyers Scripting Dream Season
Jean-Claude Van Damme is making an action movie that features the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Chicago Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup finals.
Shows how much Hollywood knows about the NHL.
The stars of the best real-life drama in the league this season are the Philadelphia Flyers, once-proud champions struggling to recapture their greatness. Now that’s a plot.
And the characters are just as appealing.
Handsome Eric Lindros is the league’s youngest team captain and the game’s most engaging superstar.
Harried Bob Clarke is the muchloved former star now charged, as general manager, with turning fiveyear losers into winners.
Anxious Ed Snider is the resilient owner who has sunk millions into a grand new arena across the street from the current one and yearns for another championship.
Then there is the supporting cast. Ron Hextall, the excitable goaltender back for his second stint with the team, has won his old job back by making just enough big saves to win 11 of his first 23 games.
Forwards Mikael Renberg and John LeClair have scored more goals than anyone could have expected.
Two young defensemen - Chris Therien and Karl Dykhuis - have developed unexpectedly.
The success has captured the attention of Flyers fans. The sellout at the Spectrum for last Sunday’s game against the New York Rangers was the club’s seventh in a row, and tickets for the remaining six home games are scarce.
Ticket scalpers, absent in recent years, are back in full force, and the team’s public relations department is dreaming up playoff seating charts for the press box.
However the plot develops, the Flyers are likely to make the playoffs and maybe win a series or two.
But the Flyers are unlikely to produce a real Hollywood finish. Here are three reasons they will crumble in the playoffs, if not sooner:
If anything happens to the top line of Lindros, LeClair and Renberg, the Flyers are in big trouble. No teammate has more than seven goals.
The Flyers are streaky. They lost three straight. They won three straight. They won eight straight. They lost three straight.
Even if the Flyers beat Boston, the Rangers or whomever they play in the first round, they probably will run into one of the two best teams in the East - the Penguins or the Quebec Nordiques - in the playoffs’ second round.
Trades finish with action
Friday’s NHL trade deadline spurred the usual last-minute activity. Nineteen deals were made by midafternoon, bringing the week’s transactions total to 26.
Among the familiar names, Dallas unloaded disgruntled winger Russ Courtnall; aging Denis Savard was reunited with the Blackhawks; Tie Domi became a Maple Leaf; and, in the biggest deal, the New York Islanders sent Pierre Turgeon and Vladimir Malakhov to Montreal for Kirk Muller, Mathieu Schneider and Craig Darby.
Buffalo comes to life
The Sabres finally are getting healthy, and their offense is coming alive. Prior to Thursday’s 1-1 tie at Boston and Saturday’s 4-2 loss to Hartford, Buffalo was on a weeklong scoring binge, with 22 goals in four victories.