EHM The Blue Line

June 13 2019

The Philadelphia Flyers have a big announcement to make today. Managing Director Bob Clarke takes his place behind the microphone.

“Good afternoon all. Today is a big day in the history of the Flyers. As you all are very very aware of, this organization has absolutely sucked in the last decade and a half. We have tried to fly on the cheap ever since the death of our great, wonderful, and amazing super owner Ed Snider. Man I miss Ed…he was like a father, and husband to me. I know all of you are going to be skeptical of anything I have to say. I have been around here for so bloody long, and never won a darn thing since my playing days. However…I sure as hell know what I am doing, and I am going to reprove it to you all. Yes, I had pictures of Ed. And yes, I know this is my last chance”

"So….we are hopeful today that the hiring of our new General Manager, a kid from Saskabush Manitoba, who has absolutely no experience in the game of hockey. By the way, how the hell is that possible? He is from freaking Manitoba, and I have known him since he was born. Anyway, sorry my dementia is kicking in. Here today to talk to you about his plan for the Flyers…is our new GM…20 year old Archie C. B. Philamal. Archie…up you go, have fun in the cross hairs of all these wonderful media people. Oh…and hey Paulie (sees Paul Holmgren) how ya doing? Should we go for a drink and maybe dancing tonight? I have missed you bud."

Arhcie C B Philamal heads to the microphone amidst an incredibly long hug between Bobby and Paul.

“Good afternoon folks. I am here today to say that the Flyers need to return to their glory of almost 50 years ago. I expect this team to win, and I know how to make it happen. First of all, I would like to invite all of you to come up here and get a lollipop. That way if you buy into anything I say, I will know you are all SUCKERS".

"Moving on, I would say thanks to Bobby for this job, but I have seen the roster already. Oh boy I have my work cut out."

At least I have the core of this team in place. There is no question to me players like Jeff Carter,Drew Doughty and Nikita Zadorov will take the Flyers to the promised land...I think. I hope. .... Ummm okay maybe not. These guys might be 90 when we win. Thankfully Bobby gave me, like he does with all recreation hockey players who drink during their 2nd period intermission, a nice fat 10 year $2 million per year contract. What's that? Oh...you say I should have been a goalie, and I would have got a 10 year 500 million per year deal?" Oops."

"Now, the work that lies ahead. The coaching staff is a mess. I mean how does Bill Laurie (no offense Bill, I know you are watching on a couch in the furniture section of one of your stores) get a job coaching in the NHL? Dude runs Wal-Mart!! What the???
And why does this team have two goalie coaches?

"And why, in the name of Don Cherry and Mike Milbury, has this team not resigned Cody Hodgson, Sam Reinhart, Zigmus Girgensons, and David Clarkson just to name a few of our soon to be possible Free Agents. I am going to do my damnest in the next few days to get those guys under contract for the next couple of years. I just do not understand it. We gave Elliott a two year extension, but these guys got nothing? OH well…

Also…what is going on with scouting. This team is clearly too Don Cherry and Bobby Clarke. Wal mart guy must love those two. Sorry Bobby, but when it comes to winning hockey as a GM or leader…you are an idiot. I mean I am 20, play in a fantasy hockey league with you, and you freaking trade Gote Stenstrom (Vancouver superstar from Sweden) for freaking Alex Burrows? What? You are a moron, and not to mention you can never find a bloody goalie even in fantasy hockey. Gonna pick up Bryz for the 100th time? I mean the guy is only 50 and playing in Germany as a third stringer. Good luck Bob.
{Clarke looks furious}

“Any way guys…got to get moving here, tons of work to do. Have to sort out my coaching, scouting, trainers and players quickly and get ready for the draft. By the way…turns to the table of scouts….How the hell come you morons have no reports for me on the draft? You are bloody lucky I am watching TSN and know what Button says….I mean the guy has been to 2 games all year and he knows more than you. Not to mention, you seem to think Sportsnet and Kypreos know what they are talking about. Hey Bobby…how come you did not hire Maclean? I hear he knows what he is doing. He has only been fired by Florida, Columbus, The Islanders, Pittsburgh, and Chicago in the last 15 years.

Off we go to work…..see ya.


Philamal heads to his office.

First up calls in Laurie… "Hey Laurie, we would like you to take a bit of a demotion here, and work off your contract as an assistant coach for us. John Stevens over there, is chomping at the bit to get a head coaching gig, and you and I both know he does not know much, but he knows more than you. So it is time to see what he can do. We have not had him as head coach for awhile. Time for another chance. Oh...and here: Take this deal home (3 years for 1.6 per) to the old lady, and sit in the Wal Mart shoe section and figure out whether you want to stick around. No big deal either way."

Next…Rejean Lemelin comes in. Philamal fires him on the spot. "Reggie you suck poutine. Sammy (St. Laurent) may be old, but he knows rubbish way better than you about goalies. We do not need two. You are gone. Maybe the Flames will hire you, but I do not think that even they are that dumb."

On the phone…. I need a new assistant. I know, my dad's old buddy in England. What was his name? He has been coaching Bracknell over there in England. Team has been doing really well. Won the 2019 Premier League and the 2019 Premier Cup. Maybe just maybe he will sign on to be an assist here. But it will cost a few bucks. Meh…Bobby can pay em in teeth. Oh yeah, it is Wren, like Ren and Stimpy. Heh, hope he is a little smarter. I mean he hung out with my old man for a long time.

Wren Moreland knows his stuff. I offered Wren a deal as an assistant, and will gladly pay Bracknell a few bucks for him. Stick it Bobby!!

Next up I need a scout in Europe and some players.

4 HOURS PASS....

I am getting ready for bed now. Which means, a beer and some beef jerkey and a pack of skittles.

The thoughts for my diary in my head: Oh…wow. That was a busy day. I am exhausted. I do not think I have been up so early since I was 8. I just offered 16 contracts. 12 to pending RFAs who have not even had a qualifying offer. Bobby…what the hell were you and Wal-Mart doing…a Dale Tallon? Jesus.

God I hope Hodgson, Girgensons, Reinhart, Nikitin, Clarkson, Colliton and Oleksiak sign up. Or we are going to be in even bigger trouble than I thought.

At least I have got a couple offers in to scouts. Not much to choose from. All the good ones have deals already. Offered a deal to a dude in Sweden, one in Finland, one in Slovakia, one in Czech and one in Austria. I really hope I can sign the dude from Sweden or Finland, but I cannot even recall their names…so darn average and useless. But we need someone over there, be damned with Bobby and his idiocy. I can only afford to hire one of these guys. Hopefully I get one that speaks English.

Man, Wal Mart guy was not happy I wanted to move him down to assistant, but …. Duh…you think you can diagram a practice by moving around which aisles you have open. Moron. Oh well, he will learn from Johnny I hope. That is if Johnny has learned anything. He sure was happy. Thought he was going to.... right in front of me. Thank god he did not. Wish I could have canned Billy, but I have at least a couple other idiots to go before him. He can at least teach something out there. I think.

Falls asleep and spills beer all over the floor.

June 16, 2019

Ah got a few things sorted. Signed a few of the minor guys that were RFA and Nikitin. Thank god. But that Reinhart is being difficult. Did not want 2 year deal, we shall see. He seems to think alot of himself, but maybe if I offer a couple more bucks, maybe he signs up.

Still need to hear back From Wal Mart Billy. Better get in touch soon or may just leave him hanging. And where are my darn scouts at? I need some kind of report. I do not even know who the hell is any good on this team, never mind the draft or next year. Cartsy and Grigs are fine, Doughy, Claude and Zads,but the rest I have no darn clue. Hurry the heck up.

Oh yeah, found out for sure I have the 14th pick in the draft. Wonder if there are 14 players even in the draft? These moron scout. Freaking Pens won the draft lottery, guess they will get Crosby part two or something. Hate those buggers. Devils got 2nd. What the hell? I hate the top 2 picking teams. Ugh. Then it is the freaking Hawks (meh other side at least) and the Islanders. How the hell are all these teams from my division so darn bad? I mean my team looks horrible, and they are worse than me? God…Boston and Florida pick in the top 10 too.

June 18th. Thank god. Wren decided to sign. Here ya go Bracknell $4k..pass it to the queen. What is that 5 pounds 6 pence? Oh who the bloody hell cares.


June 21st—Big sigh of relief for me today (hahahaha). Wal Mart Billy has agreed to move to assistant coach (guess he knows no one else would hire his 67 year old fat ass). So now Johnny can move into the head coach office, at least once we get all this processed food and all that garbage hunting gear out of there.

And oh yeah…. signed this guy to a deal, which allows me to you know, actually scout Europe without spending $2 mill to fly guys over and back. Only issue with Bulychev is his Russian is excellent, but nothing else is. So he will stay in Russia and Belarus. Refuses to go to even Finland. Kazakhstan he will go to, and maybe Czech and Slovakia, but I only really trust him with the Russians and Belos…so even if he goes to the other places, likely will not listen to him. His voice grates, going to be a lot of turning the volume down on this guy. Dah. Yes dah. Russia player good. That is all he speaks in English. Maybe Wal Mart Billy can translate for me. Could have picked something up on his trips to sweatshops around the world.

Billy says dah is the same as duh, and that Russia player good is really code for Blow em up. What a moron. Wall Mart Willie ( I like that better than Billy) heads out looking for his shotgun and mumbling about commies to himself.

Gee thanks Billy. Oh and good god, what is going on in Vancouver? Somehow that team is winning all the darn time. That guy they had there, what was his name was a god. But now he retired and right now Hakan Andersson is on a trade spree. But he will not even speak with me. Not that I would understand anything but “BJORK BJORK BJORK…pass the meatballs Swedish chef stuff”, but he has moved 4 guys for picks already. Young guys too. Laurila, Lapierre, Segla and Hornak all top 5 round picks have moved out for 7 mid round and late round picks. Five this year and two next. Wow…talk about liking a couple of drafts. I guess this must be a good one. Where the hell are my scouts? Still no freaking reports on the draft or ANYTHING. UGH.

June 22 2019

Oh yay! It is draft day. And not one of my scouts has told me a darn thing about the players out there. Well at least I have a bit of a clue. HF Boards is all over this guy named Jesse Zajac out of Calgary..say he is the next Gretzky. And they really really hate the guy ranked 2nd by ISS some kid whose name is Lucien Tessier who plays in the Q. Well some of em hate him, and then the Frenchies get all riled up. They love this guy and say….he is Mario…Mario. English guys say he is Claude. Oh well we shall see. I do not think I will see those guys anyway. Just going to have to pick the best player available. Oh wait…no one here knows who the best player available is. May just have to go with what HF Boards tells me to do.Great!!

The other thing the pundits seem to agree on is that the 15th ranked player



may be the steal of the draft. With me picking 14th this could be interesting. Especially since he can play all three forward positions.

One more thing before I go to the draft. I managed to get all the guys I needed to signed. I am letting 6 of the guys who were not signed for next year go, and holding on to 14 of the 15 I gave offers to. Colliton is just not in the plans.
By the way..Claude Giroux came to see me today. He was not too happy I did not mention him in the press conference. I apologized, and just said that I was really nervous. I mean that was the first time I ever spoke in public, and I did not pee myself. Thank god.

off to the draft we go:


 
Philadelphia Flyers 2019 NHL Entry Draft.

Archie was not a happy man heading to the draft. The scouts he had assigned to the draft had seen exactly 10 kids prior to the draft occurring, and for some unkown reason could not recall anything they had done during the 2018-19 season. Did the old guard actually have them out scouting anyone? Was Craig Muni completely incompetent in his GM position? He had been a good scout back in the day for the Vancouver Canucks until he had priced himself out of the Nucklehead range. Or was this staff just so widdled that this 20 year old kid had been hired they refused to do anything.

I have some thoughts about the draft and went in with one thing in mind. Tell me what you think that is.

In the first round things went according to plan at least for the first little bit. Zajac went first to Pittsburgh, but Tessier dropped to 4th to the ISlanders behind two other French kids to New Jersey and Chicago. Things were looking good.

Round 1….Selection #14. The Philadelphia Flyers are proud to select from the Kitchener Rangers of the Ontario Hockey League:


Cory was ranked fourteenth overall. He has good size and skills, and appears to be a physical player, and should be a great fit for our team. Our AGM quickly ranked him as our #2 prospect behind only Jake Peterson (our 5th round pick in 2016 who is developing very well). He is a strong animal, and cannot wait to see him in camp.

We decided to pass up on O'Keefe just because he is not as good a skater as McAvoy. We feel we did the right thing here. This kid McAvoy looks good to me.

Round 2: Selection #44. The Philadelphia Flyers are proud to select from the Windsor Spitfires of the Ontario Hockey League:



Tim is expected to play a big role on our blue line in the future. He is a big man, and can play either side. He is going to have to work on his mobility and skating, but he was most definitely the best player available at this spot. We will be working with him on his shot, and can only believe that the sky is the limit for Tim. Ranked at 85th, we stepped up early to take him, knowing full well that by the third round some other team would have grabbed him. This kid is going to be a stud. I liken him myself to Chris Pronger, and Scott Stevens two players who have had major impacts on the history of this organization. I expect Tim will do the same.

In round 3, at 74th overall I decided to listen to the very gentlemen who did not file any reports on potential draftees. They were unanimous in their decision and really really wanted me to select a young man from the Kitchener Rangers. I questioned this, as the Rangers did not exactly have a top of the podium season, and we had already taken a Ranger in McAvoy in the first round. But…. In the end I selected the young man they wanted:



Now we got to sit around for quite some time, as we did not have another pick until the 5th round. During this time I outlined my scouting expectations for the 2020 draft, and the guys seemed to get it, although a couple of them, most notably Rich Thibeau, a very old and crotchety 59 year old, with limited talent, looked very upset and angry. Oh no…you might have to work for your job. Cry me a river!

5th round—At 146th overall, the Flyers finally left the Ontario Hockey league in their draft selections. A kid from Vancouver BC (really? Vancouver has hockey players?) struck the fancy of myself and a couple of the scouts. Moe Mantha bragged that this kid is going to stun everyone and be in the show in 2 years…a remarkable feat for someone taken in the 5th round. And even more remarkable was that Mantha had something to say. I mean, he never filed a report on ANYONE never mind this kid. My mind is whirring. We really think we got a steal here. To Moe, this kid should have been selected well before this, but because he was from Vancouver everyone steered clear. So many Vancouver kids are spoiled, entitled brats. Likely because those bloody Canucks win all the darn time. I mean that city has not had a riot since 1994. Wish that were the case here. Back to our pick. He is playing his junior hockey on the Prairies in a town where the temperature can reach -50 Celsius with the wind chill on a regular basis. So maybe all will be fine here. Introducing a great young man Kurtis Reed:



Finally, our 7th round pick is another kid who really has a ways to go to get to the big club. However he is strong as an oxe, and the guys think there is some upside here. He is a good religious boy and is heading off to play for Notre Dame this coming season. We shall see how he does there. Interestingly he is not from a hockey hotbed, coming from Tennessee so at the very least his accent will entertain all of us, eh.



SO that is it for the 2019 NHL draft. McAvoy, Irwin and Wallace have all gained spots in Sakeri Pietela’s top 10 Flyer Prospects list, and we shall see how they do. We are all excited and expect these kids will be playing for us in the near future.

The other part about this draft was that during the 4th round we already had an offer for one of our picks. Buffalo was willing to deal us their 4th round pick for this year, 3rd next year and a player who I believe will never see the NHL for one Mr Tim Menard. It took me all of 2 seconds to tell them no chance. I really believe Tim will be a star, even if my AGM and scouts think he will not. Kid is a force!

So there you go,…. Now we just sit back a bit, get our practice on, and get ready for the 2020 season. I do not see us doing anything in Free Agency this year, but one never knows if something presents itself, you have to take a good look at it.
Catch ya in July. Off to the beach! Glad I got all the coaches, scouts and player deals sorted out, now I can take a few days off. This first two weeks has been a grind for me, I am used to sleeping til 3PM and heading to the bar at 5. So…we shall see. Loving it though, this is a dream come true.Hmm…maybe I should learn how to skate properly.

June 28 2019

Well I am enjoying my vacation. I will head back home to Philly, well to my hotel in Philly on the 30th. Needed a few days off, after I had put in a lot of hard working days in a row. I mean that was at least 4 days it took me through the draft. The day before the draft and the draft itself felt like 5 days. It was just so long and hard. I am really going to have to work smart if I want to get the time with my buddies, and play Call of Duty. Oh well, relaxing with the paper today, and I hear on the radio here in Miami (no it was not a Miami station) that the Vancouver Canucks replaced their old, retired 7 time Stanley Cup GM, 10 time President Trophy Winner Unknown User, with get this. CRAIG MUNI. The guy Bobby Fired when he hired me. I wonder if the Canucks owners know something. Maybe Bobby made another mistake. You know…he has made one or two. Or maybe Vancouver got lucky last time, and this time they are back to being as dumb as always. One can hope, as they look like a dynamite powerhouse for years to come.

Today is a big day in Sweden and in Detroit. Henrik Zetterberg has retired and was named to the Hall of Fame. He played as a superstar for most of his career in Detroit, and he racked up 1125 games and 985 points. Never reached 500 goals. So close..only needed 65 more. Two seasons for him. Here is to wishing Big Hank the best.

July 1 2019.

HAPPY CANADA DAY! Have a beer on me. If I ever see you remind me and I will pay you back for it. Maybe.

Oh boy. Today is my first Free Agent frenzy day. Bob and Doug, okay just Bob (as in Mackenzie) is calling me every 10 minutes. Making me nuts. Guy is a hockey insider, only because he keeps pestering GMs. He is calling me from several different phone numbers. One even came up with Brian Burke as the call display. What?

So, leaving the Flyers today were a few guys. Jeremy Colliton (I still own his rights but may make that 31 year old useless muppet head to Europe to play out his years. Dimitry Yashkin, Kyle Medvec and Gregory Robitaille are all gone now.
The Free agent market seems big to me this year. There are some names out there for sure. The UFA list includes the likes of Nicklas Backstrom (Was), Thomas Hynek (Hasek regen from SJ), Zach Parise, Tuuka Rask, Ryan Kesler, Tyler Myers, Jonathon Huberdeau, Alex Edler, Duncan Keith, Brent Seabrook and Marc Staal. Wow…and that is just a few.

When I look at what I need for my team (other than every one of those guys), Sakari (AGM) tells me that I am really only in need of a few parts. He for some reason thinks this team that has not made the playoffs in forever only needs depth and prospects. He thinks we need a depth dman, a depth LW and a depth RW with a dose of a defenseman project. I do not completely agree, but will follow his advice for now, as I have told Bobby I would give these guys on the roster and the coaching staff every opportunity to show me what they have. For depth defense there are a couple of options out there. Wondering who I should go after. Do I really need a dman this year, or could I use someone on the left wing a little more.

After speaking with Sakari and my Head Scout Al Hill, we have decided that we should be targeting someone on the back end, preferably a Left Hand shot. With our roster shaping up for next season, we need someone to play a few minutes for the next two seasons, until our younger guys are ready. So we decided we needed to speak with the agents of two gentlemen.





Both players are coming off average seasons in the NHL. Grossman has played 9 years for Tampa, the Islanders and most recently St Louis. With the Blues last year he only got in 8 games, and had one assist.
Gilroy has been a bit of a journeyman throughout the league, and has played 8 seasons. He would be returning to the Flyers after a deadline deal sent him to Florida last year. Split between the Panthers and Flyers he played 60 games and averaged just over 15 minutes of ice time, scoring 4 goals and adding 3 assists in that time period.

Both players are asking for two year deals, both are the same age. Grossman is only asking for the league minimum and Gilroy is looking for $665K. Both players are averaging low 7 and high 6 ratings throughout their careers. Either would be a decent fit, and both have advantages and disadvantages. Of course, I will only be offering a contract to one of them, as do not need both accepting. I will seek the advice of my scouts on this immediately, so that we can make the offer today. This is actually the only move I intend on making during Free Agency period.

But man…there are a lot of stars out there. I want em all!!!!

July 1st continued.

So, after much discussion with the scouting staff, the Philadelphia Flyers have made two moves on the opening of Free Agency day. The Flyers have decided to offer Nicklas Grossman a two year deal worth a total of $1,050,000. The salary cap hit of $525K. Also, Jeremy Colliton has been released.

On this the first day of Free Agency, there are a couple of players receiving offers galore.Tyler Myers has four offers on the table. Dallas, Los Angeles, those bloody Devils and Phoenix have all made multi year offers to the gargantuan defenseman who spent most of his career in Florida and the last two seasons with the Maple Leafs. At twenty nine, this dude still has lots to offer.
Duncan Keith was also a flavor of the day receiving offers from Atlanta, Colorado, LA, the Rotten Rangers, and the pansy arse Capitals. Keith at age 35 seems to pushing into the twilight of his career after spending eight years with the Hawks, five with Carolina and the last two playing in Ottawa. He is likely going to get over the 1500 game mark this season, and is a sure fire Hall of Fame player.
Finally, after fourteen seasons in the NHL, all with the Anaheim Ducks where he has put up incredible numbers, 1338 games, 439 goals 599 assists and 1038 points, Corey Perry looks like he is about to move on. The Ducks did not resign him for some unknown insane reason, and he is fielding offers from five teams as well on the first day. The Preds, Sharks, Capitals and the two teams the busiest on this day trying to reshape the form of their clubs New Jersey and Los Angeles have offered him great deals. Not shocking that the other two California teams San Jose and LA are after this guy, since he has dominated them for over a decade.
Others with big offers, Thomas Hynek (formerly of San Jose) and a stud Czech goalie, who when you watch play you think could not stop a beach ball, but is insanely competitive and strong, former Panther and Canuck Martin Hanzal, Conn Smythe Winner Ryan Kesler, Norris Trophy winner Alex Edler, and former Penguin superstar Robin Charbonneau. Charbonneau is only twenty five years old and has already played eight seasons in the show (all with the Pens) and is averaging 38 goals per year. God I wish I could afford this guy.
Teams are really going after it right now. I hope this laid back strategy of mine pays off. Loyalty sometimes wins you friends, but sometimes kicks you out of the world. Today there are more than 30 offers on the table for more than 20 Unrestricted Free Agents. My guess is most of the league’s stars are going to be getting big dollar raises.

July 2

Schedule came out today. We get to start the year on our Western Swing. Should be fun with games in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Dallas. Nice and warm and sunny. Should get a good tan, while hopefully beating these guys to death. The Red Wings have been announced as the host for the 2022 NHL Draft. Who cares about that far away anyway. A few players were put up for grabs today, none of which I have any interest in. Anton Babchcuk is on his way out of Carolina, Ryan Whitney is being made available in Tampa Bay, and the big trade prize of the day, Vancouver Canuck right winger David Backes. Boy the Canucks sure are looking to cut some costs. Backes has averaged 30 goals over his career in St Louis, Boston and Vancouver and is now at age 35 making 3.6 million. Not someone I want, as we are pretty set on Right Wing with Giroux, Clarkson and Naumov.
Wow two trades done already. Nashville got Whitney and a 7th from Tampa in exchange for super sieve Chet Pickard and a third round pick. Then Dallas stepped up to the plate and has made the big deal of the day. What a steal! This Muni guy is nutso.



July 5 2019

Wow guys sure are taking their time with decisions this year. Kesler just got another offer today. Noone is signing yet. So weird…..just waiting waiting waiting. Everyone is so quiet right now that I am hearing rumours from the media about Philippe Lefebvre signing. I mean it is not just my guys who do not know who he is. Noone does. How can there be rumours about someone so insignificant. Who cares.

Oh yeah, and there is this goalie out there that is HUGE. Six six. 240 pounds I think, and no one is even offering him a deal. Some Swedish bum who won 35 games for Columbus last season. Nothing to do with him, he only had a 910 save percentage.

July 6
Finally the first UFA has signed a bloody deal. TJ Oshie leaves the Flames for the Thrashers. He has a new four year deal at 1.31 per year. Pretty good for a guy who in 12 years has only scored 20 goals twice. Later in the day a whole bunch more signings.

Super goalie Thomas Hynek has signed with the ROTTEN RANGERS. Flyer fans everywhere cry. But he does carry with him an over 6 million cap hit. So there is some saving grace. Yeah sure…jesus why the Rags?? Corey Crawford has signed on in San Jose to replace Hynek, Michael Boedker who averages 28 goals a year, leaves Nashville where he spent the last two years to return to his former team where he first broke the 30 goal barrier New Jersey. Yay another good one on one of my favorite teams. And finally, Thomas Plasko 54 year old super trainer has signed a deal with Washington. Only reason that this is of note is he got $100K per year. My guys are being paid $40K each. Yay I can smell the greed.

And last but not least I have some reports from my scouts. It is actually possible for them to watch hockey. Two have reviewed our team, one has been in Russia where he lives and says he has found 17 players. Wow..he worked hard for the last month. Not even one per day. And only two of those players even come close to looking like they can play. Great stuff. Have some more vodka.

July 7 to 10th

Signings around the league”

Rangers sign Dave Tippett as coach. GREAT

Tyler Myers goes to Hollywood with over 6 million reasons, Cody Franson signs in San Jose, former Canuck and Duck scout Ed Herneison has a new job as Head Coach in Atlanta. The Los Angeles Kings have hired former Oiler Coach and two time Jack Adams Coach of the Year Award Runner Up Craig Mactavish as their assistant GM. Nick Pageau signs a 2 year deal in Edmonchuk, caeer San Jose Shark Mark-Eduoard Vlasik has signed a deal in Detoilet. He is 32 and got a 4 year 4.2 million per deal. Marc Methot has signed in Colorado, Martin Hanzal goes to Toronto, Duncan Keith has signed a one year deal with the Thrashers worth 5.5 million. Great deal for the old man, wonder if he has anything left? James Wisniewski heads home to Chicago. After seven seasons in Dallas Jeff Skinner jumps to the Calgary Flames with a big 2 year deal worth the league minimum. Ryan McDonough moves to his 4th team in the last 4 years signing on with Atlanta, and Cory Conacher signs on in Nashville after underwhelming in his previous stops in LA, and Chicago. Last year Conacher had a career high 12 goals and for that gets a two year deal in Nashville.

Ryan Clowe signs in Ottawa for 2.2 million per. What the heck? He started his career in San Jose, spent 7 years there, then moved on to Ottawa for three, then back to San Jose for four and now returns to Ottawa in a hell of an overpayment. Clowe is 36 years old, and has a career high of 25 goals which he has done exactly once in the last decade. He is averaging 18 goals per year. 2.2 mill for him? Wow I got Hodgson and his 15 at 1.1. Rip off Ottawa. And this San Jose-Ottawa-San Jose-Ottawa thing just cracks me up.

JS Giguere and Martin Havlat both finally retire, and are put into the Hall of Fame, I think these guys are 200 years old combined.

During this time period a whole bunch of guys who are old were put on the block by their teams. Guys are spending way too much in Free Agency and now have to cut salary. Vancouver was the only team that put a good player up…again….Nick Bjugstad, who just won the Conn Smythe, was runner up for rookie of the year and is averaging a point per game over his 6 year NHL career has been made available. Again…what on earth is going on in Vancouver? Are they trying to destroy their dynasty?


Finally….Nicklas Grossman has decided to sign with us, and has inked his two year minimum salary deal. Welcome to the Flyers Nick, and I hope you are prepared to contribute, we know you are capable of doing much much more than you have done in your career so far. Nick has chosen to wear number 24 in his debut season with the Flyers, as his usual number of course is retired for the great Flyer Barry Ashbee.

July 11-20

Ryan Kesler has made his decision. The superstar centre, who has spent his entire career in the West with Vancouver, then Dallas and LA, has signed a big one year deal…with yeah, another Conference rival of mine! Washington gets Kesler. Guess that means Backstrom will not be back with Ovehckin.

And the next thing the league finds out? Cory Perry has left the Ducks and guess what he has signed for 3 years at 5.2 million per year with…wait for it….THE WASHINGTON CAPITALS. Perry-Kesler-Ovechkin. Oh boy. George McPhee has gone all in, and may be Batshit crazy. His top line is now making 20 million, and Mike Green is making another 5. How on earth are they going to fill out their roster.



The most interesting news of the day. Philadelphia Flyer assistant coach William Laurie, former head coach, and of course the CEO of Wal-Mart Inc has retired from PRETENDING to coach the game of hockey. In Philadelphia, there was a party held…but not in the honor of Laurie, in the honor of his 1.6 million dollar contract being gone! Flyers fans everywhere unite in excitement, and one or two even vow they might shop at Wal-Mart again. This however, will make life somewhat interesting for us as we have now lost our conditioning coach, and only have John and three assistants, one of whom is a goalie coach, and one who is completely useless. So useless, we do not even tell him when practice is. We will make do this year, Wes will be in charge of conditioning, and he and John will work together on every other aspect of the game, save Sammy and his goalies.

Some more minor signings. Grabovsky and Petr Prucha to Montreal, former Nashville head coach who kept them in trouble for years has signed on as Chicago’s assistant GM, Tomas Tatar signs in Chicago, and Alex Kuchin is now a desert dog, Lee Stempniak joins his sixth team, and 4th in four years in Ottawa (wow the Sens are sure busy signing new players), Travis Zajac signs on in Dalls for 2 years, Dustin Brown to Calgary, and 36 year old Tuomo Ruutu and Kris Letang to San Jose. Adam Tambellini signs on with Colorado, likely as fodder for their farm team the LUCK LESS Monsters. Chris Kreider also gets a deal in Colorado. Matt Smaby and Chris Higgins sign in …you guessed it Ottawa.
Boy are San Jose and Colorado almost as busy as Ottawa.

BAH—Johnny Boychuk a hard hitting physical dman signed with the freaking Rags. Rags are doing real well in free agency. Clearly Sather\s retirement and subsequent death from Mark Messier overload a couple of years later has made the Rangers a better organization.


Big relief…Alex Edler has left the Eastern conference and signed with the Colorado Avalanche for the next three years at 6.2 million.

Former Vancouver Canuck Henrik Sedin retires 3 years after his twin Daniel after not signing a deal anywhere for 2018-19 and hits the Hall of Fame. Poor Henrik came up just short of his 1500 game goal, playing in 1327. His assists total is totally amazing with 743. Henrik finished his career with 1111 points. A perfect number for the former #33, whose brother wore 22.

Also retiring along with Wal-Mart Willy, is Per Backman the GM of the Detoilet Dead Things.


That is all for now. See you at Training Camp.Free Agency is basically over.

July 20-Sep 1

Dany Heatley retires and enters the Hall of Fame. He had an amazing career, scoring 1179 points in 1140 games for various teams. Enjoy life Dany. Roberto Luongo after a long and exciting career also decides to call it a day, and join his former teammates Henrik, Daniel, and a few others in the Hall. Nineteen Seasons with 557 wins and 101 shutouts. Also hanging up their skates and going to the Hall of Fame are Joe Thornton, Brad Richards and Vinny Lecavalier.

Retiring but not reaching the Hall of Fame, which to me is a bit of a surprise since he had a very good career in the NHL, Cristian Erhoff. He retires at 37 due to a nagging groin injury. Interestingly, he never played a game for the Detroit Red Wings, who from what I have heard had a horrible training staff from about 2009-2015 when the trainers both died under mysterious circumstances. Rumour has it that an upset fan went to the rink and poisoned the skate sharpener.

Brandon Dubinsky has joined his 6th NHL team signing on with the Calgary Flames after years with the Lightning and short stints with Boston, the Islanders, Anaheim and his last season in Detroit. Meanwhle Alex Burrows, has joined his 9th NHL team. Wow…atta boy Brent Ashton, signing a 1 year deal with Carolina at age 38. Burrows has never scored 20 goals in a season, yet somehow keeps his career going. I have no idea how. No way I would want that guy. He is too slow, too dumb and not physical enough. Plus he is a bit of a Brad Marchand rat. Eric Condra who has been around for years, but never makes the team he signs with, and has only played 74 NHL games over 10 years, has signed with Chicago. Frans Nielsen, who like Burrows has managed to carve out an NHL career without actually performing like an NHLer, signs on with his 8th team, the Chicago Blackhawks. Nielsen is only 35 so he has at least 3 years of mediocrity to go to catch Alex and his record for long term futility and destroying coaches and teams. Tim Connolly, a player of no repute has signed with Columbus. Why do the sucky guys sign out of my division? Jiri Hudler excitedly signs with Columbus as well. Wow an exciting week for all.
Also making something out of nothing, is Thomas Pock. Pock is 37 and has never managed to play a full season in the NHL in his career, getting sent down to the minors or stapled to the bench for at least half a season the entire time. He is moving on to his 9th organization an ties Alex Burrows for the record in mediocrity, when he signs with Tampa. Oh wait…no he does not…he already played there for 2 years, and in Norfolk the same two years. Sorry Alex you are still the gold standard. Phew that was a long page on hockey db. Pock has also played for 5 AHL teams and spent a season in Sweden with Djurgarden. So 17 teams in the last 15 seasons. Hope he got to keep his jerseys.

The Detroit Red Wings have found their new General Manager. This is a guy I am going to have to deal with on a regular basis. He comes to the Wings after a few years with the AHL Peoria Rivermen and two with Cincinatti in some basically useless league.



Anyone ever wonder why Bobby Clarke and the Flyers have gone through 6 General Managers and 10 coaches in the last 13 seasons? Maybe this will tell you a story.



Mr Brady here, just signed a great entry level deal with Columbus for $925K. Twelve days before I was hired, Mr Brady had his rights expire with the Philadelphia Flyers and became an Unrestricted Free agent. What is interesting about this, is that in 2017 the Philadelphia boys won the draft lottery, picked first and Rich Sutter, the GM at the time (uber genius now a scout in the oh so useful league ECHL with Pensacola) actually made a good decision and drafted Mr Brady at 1st overall. Guess who chose not to sign him? Yep…the new Canuck GM Monsieur Muni and even another idiot GM who was in between Muni and Sutter (I believe his name is John Tortorella). No wonder you cannot find a goalie Bobby, you let the ones under your nose go for nothing! What a nightmare. Thankfully I think we have a decent one in the works for 2 years or so from now, when Elliott is done.

On August 1, 2019 Bill Irwin, my 7th round pick decided to shun his religious beliefs completely. He will not join Notre Dame, and has signed on with the North Dakota Dakotans. The Dakotans came about as the name a few years ago, after the University had some difficulty with the press and some members of the ridiculously Politically correct people out there who were very upset with their previous nickname, the North Dakota Rockpile. Apparently, not all of Dakota is rock, and the people were quite upset. My understanding now is there is a protest next week about the new moniker “Dakotans” because the people of South Dakota are not well enough represented. This just goes on and on and on. If I was the Athletic Director there I would just call the team the North Dakota Toews, or go back to the name that came the first time it was changed from the Fighting Sioux to The Fighting Sues (Brian Burke and George McPhee made big noises about that one, they did not like the connotation about lawyers).

Check out who got Chuckie Weber’s old job in Peoria. More mediocrity.



Amazing that this is only his second job since 2006. He was finally fired in Long Island (or Brooklyn, or Harlem or wherever the Islanders play now in 2019)

Wow, some crazy cap and budget issues out there as we get into August. This guy just became available on the trade market. He is about ready to bust loose, after scoring 30 goals each of the last two years. He could be a very interesting addition to our team, if the team does not get out of the gate well in October. Time will tell.



With the addition of Grossman in free agency period the Flyers are looking fairly set going in to camp. John Stevens thinks he needs some depth at the centre position, and would like to see us acquire a younger dman and goalie in order to bolster the prospect pool. IN other words, this team is looking good right now. As we head to September we have sold almost 12,000 season tickets, which considering the recent history of this team is amazing. Flyer fans are so supportive, even if they do expect a lot and boo the living daylights out of us when we lose.

So we are now two weeks from Training Camp. The boys have been working hard over the summer, at least I hope they have…and we should be ready to go. Up over 13K in season ticket sales now. I have invited all my unsigned prospects to camp, save for my little friend at North Dakota. Setting up to be a good sized, exciting camp. Exhibition schedule is now set as well:



We also have one final game in October vs Pittsburgh on the 2nd of the month. Nine games, 18 days. We will learn a lot about the boys In that time. Camp this year is to learn who competes and who does not.

September 10, 2019

In preparation for training camp, the Philadelphia Flyers call a press conference. Coach John Stevens is at the podium

“Good afternoon all, thank you for coming today. Today is a big day for the Flyers. The last 5 seasons have not been typical Flyer hockey and I plan to bring that back to our club. The guys are ready to battle and compete during camp for spots on the roster. Virtually every thing is open, and I expect the guys to compete, hit, back check, fight, battle and battle some more. As you all know I love to have teams that score, but the teams that score the most …. Start by protecting their own zone, and then battling and out working the other team. Pretty comes from hard work. You cannot score pretty goals without putting in 100 percent at all times!!!”

So today, I am going to quote the once great Brian Burke: This team will be TRUCULENT. No matter what. Truculence and aggression win games.

Now…..I would like to introduce to you our new Captain and our assistants. You know them as the three greatest Flyers over the last decade.

First, welcome our captain ….. MR CLAUDE GIROUX.



Claude at the mike: “Thanks John. You know gang, I may not be the most truculent player in the world, but darn it John is right. The guys here are going to do absolutely everything we can to make sure this is a Flyer team you can be proud of. We will hit and I will hold the guys accountable. A chance to intimidate the other team, MUST not be missed. We have to go hard and we will be mean and nasty. Thanks John and let us bring that Stanley Cup back home where it belongs.

John now introduces the two assistant captains, Jeff Carter and Drew Doughty.





Jeff and Drew…put down their beers and approach the mike, Jeff starts to speak and Drew interrupts”

“ Yeah what Claude said”

Jeff and Drew return to the back bench and their beers. Jeff is heard mumbling something about Scott Hartnell and Mike Richards. Reporters however are used to this, and nothing is asked.

John tries to end the Conference with a LETS GO FLYERS chant, but no one is listening. The 4 reporters leave the building.

Cut to Clarke and Stevens in Clarke’s office with Philamal:

Bobby” “looks like we have a great crew this year Johnny. Better make the playoffs with that group. Claude, Jeff and Drew will be the utmost in leaders. Outstanding job preparing for camp.”

John: “Yeah will I am not too sure about Drew…seemed a little out of shape, and perhaps a bit drunk maybe?”

Bobby and I at the same time “Bah, that is just Drew … he will be fine.”

Philamal "Just relax Johnny you have seen the act. And do not worry about Cartsy either, he is still wishing he had been a little better behaved as a kid, and that people think he is a goof off now. But no one does. He leads by example. We will get there. Just coach hard!”

The coach, manager and Pres are all on the same page, and they clink glasses. This is going to be a great year, even if only 4 guys show up to cover the team.

The invites have arrived, and camp is ready to get going.

The rosters for the first few days of camp will have a few of the vets sit out, just so we can get a look at the young guys.

Here are the rosters:

TEAM BLUE

G-Jens Rouhlainen, Darren Flick
D-Mark Fistric (Tryout), Garrett Curry, Aaron Gretzky (Tryout), Brodie Riddell (tryout), Vasily Nikitin, Grigori Kuchin.
LW-Jean-Yves Hamel, Brock Radunske, Sebaastien Brodeur (tryout), Paul O’Donnell
C-Darren Helm, Tom Kapanen, Bryant White, Anttu Lehto, Sam Reinhart, Jack Petersen.
RW-Anatoli Fokin, Logan Woolf


TEAM RED

G-Charles Boutillier, Joacim Eriksson
D- Johann Oulett, Nicolas Ogren, Tim Menard (Tryout), Colby Cohen, Radim Prohaczka, Rasmus Andersson.
LW-David Wallace (tryout), Kurtis Reed(Tryout), Jaako Moilanen (tryout)
C-JC Laberge, Rasmus Vuohtoniemi, Mikhael Grigorenko, Zybenek Suchanek, Zemgus Girgensons, Cory McAvoy (1st pick of draft on tryout),
RW=Cary Leach, Jakub Galvas, Nathan Perkovich

Sitting for the first little bit, will go into lineup as Cuts are made.

G-Brian Elliott
D-NIcklas Grossman, Drew Doughty, Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak, Nikita Zadorov, Dustin Byfuglien, Nicklas Wrobel (inj)
LW-John Mitchell, Mattias Tedenby, Zdenko Pucher
C-Jeff Carter, Cody Hodgson
RW-David Clarkson, Andrei Naumov, Claude Giroux.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2019

Camp is ready to go. Extremely excited to see what the boys can do. We have so many great leaders and some real young up and coming studs. Coaches are in love with most of the guys here on tryout, with Mark Fistric being the only real exception. The coaches feel we need not sign him for next season, as he is no better than our young blueliners who need a chance to play. Personally, I am feeling that Fistric is borderline, and we will see how this camp goes for him, before making any kind of decision.
We have 56 guys attending camp, with 10 of them on tryout contracts only. I highly expect that the tryouts will be sent back to their actual contracted teams shortly in to camp, but one never knows…surprises happen.

TRAINING CAMP DAY 1.

The boys reported for their fitness testing, and played their first camp scrimmage game today. It appears that Philamal and Clarke were right about Doughty, at least, as he has shown up at camp in the best shape of his life. Our blue line looks to be in great shape as Nikita Zadorov has also reported in great condition. Off to a great start in the new regime here in Philly. Yes. I am happy dude.

The first camp scrimmage is an outstanding game, ending 3-2 for Team Blue with all the scoring being done by the four minute mark of the second period. Great games for JY Hamel of team blue (1-1) and Grigorenko and and Oleksiak showing well for team red in the loss. There were only 29 shots total for both teams, so the defensive systems I am putting in place seem to be getting some love from the players. Our goaltending though…5 goals on 27 shots….leaves something to be desired.



All of the kids performed reasonably well, considering it was for many of them their first go around in an NHL pace game of any kind. We shall see how things go tomorrow in our exhibition game. The tryouts will play, and a few of the younger guys. No one from last season will be on the roster.

SEPTEMBER 16.

Ex game 1 vs New Jersey Devils

Philly Line up


This is a very young roster, nobody over age 24, save for Fistric. We shall see how it goes. Three first rounders (McAvoy, Leach, and Nashville 2018 1st rounder Laberge) are in the lineup. A couple of 2nd rounders, 3rd rounders are also dressed. Should be a good test and great experience for the youngsters.


Flyers lose game 1 in shootout

Report by Alex J Jackalope

The new Flyers era under GM Archie Philamal has begun with their first exhibition game vs arch rivals New Jersey.
Game 1 is in now the books. Philamal and the gang are happy with what they saw from the young up and comers who are hoping to gain a spot on the roster, but the final result was much the same as it has been for the Flyers the last few seasons. New Jersey started strong getting a 2-0 lead with goals from veteran Matt Carle and youngster Zach Proulx. It was looking like the night may be a long one for the Flyers and rookie hopeful goaltender Jens Rouhiainen.

But then, youngsters Woolf, Prochazka and Wallace went to work. Wallace ended the game with a goal and an assist, but missed in the shooutout. Proachazka looked like he has a shot at the big team this year scoring a beauty power play goal with a laser like shot from the slot. And Woolf…well despite being -2 in the game he scored on a great rush up the right wing. As undersized as he is, this guy competes.

GM Philamal was very pleased with the power play which went 2-2 on the night, and not so happy with the PK, saying that the youngsters had as much of an idea about how to kill a penalty as Alexander Semin does. Philamal said “Lots of work to do there, but we are generally very pleased with this game. Losing in a shootout is a big step up from the 5-1 losses this team suffered last year. Really hoping this team comes together, and tonight it appeared we will."

David Wallace, the third round pick of 2019 looks as though he is going to be a star in the league. The goal and assist is a great start, although he will likely still be returned to his junior team, in Kitchener where with fellow Flyer pick Cory McAvoy the Rangers are expected to challenge for the OHL title.

Just notes: A solid performance, and next up for the Flyers are another arch rival, the New York Islanders on the 18th. Tickets for the game are available, and if you ask nicely you might get them on the cheap.

The Flyers do have some cuts to come and it appears that with poor performances in this game the standout from the first camp training session,2018 Nashville 1st rounder JC Laberge could be on his way to the Phantoms as well as Anatoli Fokin (18 2nd rounder). Both looked slow and very much caused problems for the team in their own zone tonight.

September 17

Anatoli Fokin who really struggled in the first game with New Jersey has been reassigned to Trenton of the ECHL. Fokin struggled last season to keep up with the Phantoms, and since he is still only 19 years of age, I figure a year in the ECHL will help him a ton. So he is the first and only release of camp so far. In his place, John Mitchell will suit up for the Blue team at camp.

The second game of camp was exciting, at least for Team Red. JC Laberge has made up in a hurry for his poor performance in the game against New Jersey scoring the hat trick to lead Red to a 4-1 win over Blue in this game. Playing on a line with Wallace and Moilanen he was clearly the star performer of the game. Going to have to see him in another exhibition game for sure. Basically this game was won by Laberge and lost for team blue by young 23 year old Goalie Darren Flick. Flick is only 5’9 and is really on his last legs in the Flyer organization. He will stick around through camp, just so we can keep our goalies all healthy and rotated in and out fairly but this is likely the last action he will see in a Flyer jersey.
Septmber 18 vs Islanders

Not an exciting game by any means. We were unable to keep the puck out of our net, and lost 4-2. Top performers were: 27 year old Anttu Lehtu, who scored one of our two goals, and Darren Helm with a shorthanded marker. Struggling today in this game as the NHLers start to show up on other rosters were youngsters Paul O’Donnell who was -1 with three holding minors, and Tom Kapanen who lost all six of his faceoffs and was -1 as well. These two players have both been sent to the Phantoms as a result of this poor performance. Jack Peterson, a first year pro out of Clarkson has also been sent down.
Reassigned and released from their tryouts with the team were Sebastien Brodeur, Cory McAvoy, Tim Menard and Jaako Moilanen. Three of those four players if they have good seasons will likely be rewarded with their first NHL deals at the end of this season. Also released from their tryouts were Fistric, Riddell and Gretzky.
Vasily Nikitin, Nichlas Ogren and Bryant White need to pick up their play, or they could soon be the next casualties.


SEPTEMBER 19

NHL PREVIEW DAY.

Rankings of teams and expectations are out.

1. Vancouver Canucks
2. Calgary Flames
3. Edmonton Oilers
4. Montreal Canadians
5. Columbus Blue Jackets
6. PHILADELPHIA FLYERS
7. Ottawa Senators
8. Los Angeles Kings
9. Toronto Maple Leafs
10. Dallas Stars
30. Pittsburgh Penguins

WHAT THE? THIS MEDIA IS A MESS.

Flyers are 6th and the Pens with Crosby and 2 other stars who are young are 30th. OKAY NHL MEDIA GUYS SURE> YEAH SURE.

That will really help expectations for me in my position. Next thing you know Clarke will want a bloody cup.

In other news of the day…the intrasquad game was a 1-1 tie. The stars were David Clarkson, Zdenko Pucher and Jeff Carter. So not really any news there.

SEPTEMBER 20 vs NY RANGERS

Ok so…it is going to be tough to beat the Rangers. We out shot this team 59-19 in this game. And we go to the shootout with them. TWO-TWO. WHY?

This guy:




Hate is a strong word, but I think it applies to the new Ranger goalie. The Philly fans are not going to like him much. Garrett Curry and Drew Doughty were outstanding for the boys tonight, and no one really had a bad game, although Sam Reinhart was not at his best tonight. At least we won the shootout.
Anyway after this game, the Flyers are down to 4 goalies (one more camp scrimmage), 12 defense (Sent down Oulett, Kuchin and Cohen), and 21 forwards. Have returned Wallace, Reed and Leach to their junior teams (no tryout players left in camp now), and reassigned Jakub Galvas to the Phantoms.

September 21st

Team Blue wins the last scrimmage of camp 2-1. Clarkson Larsson and Carter were the three stars. Time for some decisions, as need to get the roster down a bit.

Off to the Philadelphia Phantoms:

G-Jens Rouihainen
D-NIchlas Ogren and Alexander Wrobel.
LW-JY Hamel
C-JC Laberge, Zbynek Suchanek, Rasmus Vuohaniemi
RW-Logan Woolf

So the Flyer roster is now at

3 goalies-Elliott, Eriksson and Boutilier
10 dmen-Zadorov, Doughty,Byfuglien, Grossman, Larsson, Andersson, Curry, Oleksiak, Prochazka and Nikitin
16 forwards-Tedenby, Pucher, Mitchell, Radunske, Carter, Grigorenko, Reinhart, Hodgson, Helm, Girgensons, White, Lehtu, Giroux, Clarkson, Naumov and Perkovitch.

All players under the age of 21 have been let go, they are not ready for the NHL yet.The youngest players left (all 22 born in 1997) are Prochazka, White and Nikitin. The only 1996 born player left is Rasmussen.
The oldest player still with the team 1983 born Brock Radunske.

September 22

Another game that goes to a shootout. The dang leafs hold us to 2-2, and then beat us in the shoot out 3-2. Elliott makes his debut. Flyer best players on the night were Tedenby, Carter and Larsson. Struggling tonight and needing to make something happen to stick with the team was 32 year old Darren Helm. Radunske, Lehto and Clarkson also did not put in their best performances.

September 24.

Good hard practice yesterday and everyone seems up beat and about to get into things. Still not playing my top guys the top minutes yet. This is the last game for a few guys to show what they have. We will be dropping down to 14 forwards after tonight’s game.

Eriksson gets the start in net.

Defense
Larsson-Nikitin
Curry-Andersson
Zadorov-Buffy
Grossman-Doughty

Mitchell-Reinhart-Grigs
Radunske-Lehto-Perkovich
Pucher-White-Naumov
Tedenby-Carter-Giroux
Girgensons, Helm, Hodgson and Clarkson get the night off up front, and on the blue line the breaks go to Oleksiak and Prochazka.

Right now…odds on favorites to be re assigned after tonight’s game are Helm, White and Radunske. At least one of those three is being sent down. The blue line will not see any cuts until after our last game with Pittsburgh. And in goal, we just have three here, but only for practice purposes. Boutillier will not see any more pre season game action.

Argh. This team just cannot finish the job. We lose 4-2 to the Sabres. The lowly weenie Sabers. We outshoot them 40-22 and lose. I hate that.

Anyway, Radunske scored and that saves him for now. Sent to the Phantoms is this guy:




September 23.

Silly season begins. The Vancouver Canucks, with no takers for Nick Bjugtstad and his Conn Smythe Trophy, all star awards (2 times 2nd all star) and his 4.05 million dollars, have placed him on waivers. Also on waivers today for the Canucks is veteran free agent signing Patrick O’Sullivan. At 34, not sure why the Nuckleheads signed him, he is useless.
The only other players on waivers (there are 8 of them) today are all guys who go on waivers every single season. There are some players being made available now as well, but not one of them fills my LW or D needs. (Stevens changing mind again—says need LW and D not C…not sure he knows what he is doing)

Right now our exhibition record is 1-2-2. Our win in came in a shootout and our two losses both 4-2. This is not good. We are scoring 2 goals every game. Time to get it together boys.

September 24 vs MONTREAL

Start goes to Elliott. Helm starting on 1st line, Radunske on 2nd, Perkovich on third. One of these guys may very well be playing their last game as a Flyer.

However before this game can be played, the LA Kings have put two players on waivers that are very very interesting.

Player 1 can help me out with my Left Wing depth need. Right now Radunske, Helm and Perkovich are battling for the 3rd line LW position. None of them deserve it. John Mitchell is okay and serviceable as a 4th liner, but not at 3 line. This guy may help fill that void. PLUS HE IS A PROTOTYPICAL FLYER…BIG AND BLOODY STRONG.





Player 2 can help me out with my defense need. Right now one of Curry, Oleksiak, Nikitin, and Prochazka are going to make the team. My gut feeling is that Curry and Prochazka need one more year in the minors, and Oleksiak and Nikitin suck. I would love to waive both and lose both, but nooone will take either.



Called all the scouts and the coaching staff together. We need to figure out which one of these guys we want. I know which one I want, but what do the guys think.

The Flyers have completed their exhibition season, finishing with a 3-1 win over the Pittsburgh Penguins. The Flyers finished the ex season with a 2-5-2 record. One of those two wins came in a shootout the other was over Pittsburgh in the final game. Not an auspicious start. We do still need a LW that could provide some depth on this roster, but right now I am not happy with how the team is playing.

Time to make the final decisions on the roster.

Flyers have to send a couple of forwards, and two defensemen down to the minors. However, there appears to be a challenge for the team in order to get under the salary cap. Currently the team sits at $45.8 million, and must somehow relieve itself of 1.8 million in order to get to the cap.

There are no options. With the claim of Kristoffer Granqvist from LA we have 10 dmen currently on the roster, and Dustin Byfuglien is currently injured. Flyers looking at having to waive someone they are going to lose, or have to make a deal in order to get under the salary cap.

No one is interested in Helm, Radunske, John Mitchell or Zemgus Girgensons from our up front roster. Anttu Lehtu has been the surprise of camp, and there is no way the 27 year old is not playing on the team this season. In his six games he has managed 2-2-4 from the third and fourth lines for the most part. He is an exciting surprise.

So a shakeup of some proportion is in order. Move out a dman? Well…Doughty makes a ton, Buffy makes big bucks and is hurt. Zadorov makes good money and is a stud, Rasmus Anderson makes a few bucks (just over 1 million) and is not really getting much done. Scouts have him as a 5-6 guy and he is making a lot for that. So….we need to see what we can get for him, as moving him out will alleviate the cap issues for the most part.

Calgary and 7 other teams have provided offers for Anderson, however the Flames are the only ones to include a LW in the package for Anderson. They have offered a 2nd round pick and a young LW with Flyer like numbers,for Rasmussen and our 7th round pick, so the deal is struck



Young Landry will be a good up and comer for us, and cannot wait to see what he can do with the Phantoms. (btw this deal was done with one negotiation, I changed my 6th round pick to a 7th and that is my October trade..Input will be asked for the next one, if I choose to make one at the deadline)

So, after this deal and the waiving of GIrgensons, Radunske and Helm the team is BARELY (100K) under the salary cap. This is going to be a big issue as we only have 12 forwards, 6 healthy dmen (plus Buffy) and the 2 goalies on the roster. An injury away from disaster. But we have what we have…and off we go to start the year.

Our first game is vs LA KINGS. Here is our lineup:



LETS GO FLYERS!

October 4, the eve of the 2019-20 season

All 4 guys –Randunske, Girgensons, Helm and Oleksiak clear waivers and are now with the Phantoms. The Phantoms have a ton of veteran classed guys…Helm, Nikitin, Ogren, Radunske, Oleksiak, Girgensons, Cohen, Wrobel, plus 5 signings of their own. Oh well…none of the guys down there are ever going to get much ice time as a Flyer. That is why they are down there. Most will not be resigned next time a deal is needed for them.

So the NHL opens up tonight with games in Atlanta, Ottawa and Minnesota. No team has really made any kind of exciting or overly interesting move as camps wind down and the season begins. The closest thing to insane was the Cancuks sending Bjugstad to Manitoba. The $ value on the contract scared everyone in the league off, so Nick will spend this year in the minors in spite of being a complete and total proven winner.

Guys who are still on the market looking for jobs are plentiful.



Most notably: Backstrom, Seguin, Huberdeau and Lehner have all had trouble finding work. These guys just keep pricing themselves right out of the market. Every team would love to have them, but the contracts they are demanding are insane. I mean Lehner who to me would be a solid backup to Elliott wants 4.5 million per. WHAT is that based on in reality? This guy finally had his first winning season with Columbus last year, his first winning season and he has been in the league for 7 years. 4.5 mill? Go rot in Sweden.


Game 1 Vs LA…FLYERS EXPLODE FOR 6 goals, 3 on the Power play.



Flyers put 34 shots on LA Goalie Cam Ward and light the Kings up. A great performance by the team as a whole. The three stars tonight were:

3. Mattias Tedenby 1-1-2 5 shots on net.
2. Jeff Carter 1-1-2 4 shots on net
1. Zdenko Pucher 1-2-3 2 shots

Cody Hodgson led the team in shot attempts with 10, and hit the net 6 times.
Adam Larsson and Andrei Naumov each had 4 hits.
In the faceoff circle, the Flyers did not fair too well. Only Jeff Carter was at 50%
David Clarskon as he is known took 12 Penalty Minutes as he got a misconduct for yapping after a penalty was given to him.
Anyway, great start for the boys. Up next: PHOENIX COYOTES.

Game 2…3-1 win over Phoenix

Totally rammed with shots. Phoenix had 46. But Elliott was awesome, and my PK was amazing. Phoenix had 9 power plays to my 3. I went 1-3 Phoenix 0-9.

3 stars
Elliott
Carter
Giroux

Bad days for Clarkson and Tedenby. David with 1 shot, -1 and 2 PIM. Mattias with 2 shots, Even and 6 PIM. Neither were spoken to about their performances, as it is early days yet. They will get the hang of what John and I want them doing.

Still no fights for this team, even though have 10 guys aggressive and allowed, and one berserk and allowed. May have to up the mantra here. Lots of hits though…leading the league right now.

Game 3…Loss 3-0.

Here we go. Ericsson was just okay in this one, but the team could get nothing done. Frustrating night as we only took 14 shots the whole game. MA Fleury in net for the Stars and he handled us easily. San Jose tomorrow night. We need Carter to be on his game, and tonight for whatever reason he struggled mightily. Gave up our first PP goal against this year. darn

But that being said if anyone told me that after games in LA, Phoenix and Dallas in 6 nights we would be 2-1 I would have laughed. Off to San Jose.

Game 4…wow. I think Mr Stevens has some work to do with his shootout choices.

He and I will be having a conversation tonight about this. Because this….is just not good. Also, what in the name of all things holy is he doing playing Eriksson on back to back nights? At least Joacim played well.



Finally being outshot again 38-30..we are not off to a good start here. Faceoffs, and discipline seem to be an issue with this team. We gave up 6 power plays again tonight. In fact in the 4 games so far we have been very lucky that our PK has been solid so far. We have been shorthanded 19 times in the four games, tied for first in the league in lack of discipline with LA. Thankfully we have only given up two goals. Our power play in the meantime is 4-18. A decent enough go on the PP although we did score 3 in the first game, and have only 1 since.

Also concerned that no one seems to be stepping up and taking this team to another level. Giroux and Carter only average at best tonight, Doughty was okay, and it was Perkovitch’s turn to play freaking horrible. Need someone to grab this team by the bootstraps and give them a shake. Nobody came close to being a star for us tonight, and it was a shoot out game.
Chatted with my friend John, and we have had a shake up in the shoot out order. No longer will it be Doughty, Tedenby, Zadorov. We are now looking at Carter, Giroux, Pucher as our first three shooters.

Taking a look at the Phantoms, we have too many vets down there. So I have offered a few guys out on loan so they will get some playing time. Cohen and Helm have been offered to Albany, Wrobel and Radunske to Binghampton, and Boutillier has been offered to Chicago. All of these teams have room for these guys to play more regularly, and I am hoping that they get the shot there, that they will not be getting with us.

Next up the Flyers are coming home. Our home opener with Toronto. Should be a barn burner. I expect this game to get a little heated.

Radunske, Cohen and Boutillier have all refused loans. Fined Brock and Colby, but will just try and have Jens the Finn sent out to Albany. Cohen and Radunske are both unhappy, but whatever. They suck anyway.

October 14—FLYERS GET GRIGGY WITH IT. CLARKSON DESTRUCTION AND RUSSIAN DOMINANCE

The game vs the Leafs came as advertised. Right off the hop, just over a minute into the game David Clarkson decided to show the Flyer faithful who was boss, and delivered a massive beat down of Leaf enforcer Jamie McGinn. Immediately following killing that penalty, Mikail scored 2 goals, and then Naumov got in on the act beating the living daylights out of long time Leaf instigator and Adam Oates disturber Nikolai Kulemin. Kulemin had attempted to spray Elliott as he came through the crease. Following that, Grigorenko popped the hat trick goal, and the Flyers go on to defeat the Leafs 4-1. Of note in this game as well…this is the first game all year where we out shot the opposition and the first time since the game vs LA that we had all three stars. (Pucher, Perkovich with a great bounce back game, and Griggy.) A dominant performance outshooting the leafs 33-18 , winning both fights and out hitting them 27-17. Great old fashioned Flyer hockey. Hopefully this team keeps this up. If they do we will win more than we lose.

October 16-NAUMOV eats the Predators for dinner. Griggy gets groggy.

Andrei Naumov and Mattias Tedenby lead the Flyers to a 3-1 win over Nashville on home ice. The Flyers are unbeaten at home to start the year (2-0) which is a far cry from the last few years when they started 0-3 on home ice each season. Unfortunately the Flyer depth and salary cap issues are now in challenge mode, as Mikhail Grigorenko has gone down for a few days with a mild concussion. The flyers have no way to put him on IR and will not save any money doing so, so they are going to have to dress everyone they have and one of the D…guess which one?...will have to play some time at forward. “We are lucky, as we have Buffy to fill in up front when we lose a forward” head coach John Stevens said…injuries are just a part of the game, and with our cap issues we have to look to Buffy to do the job up front.

When questioned about the cap problem, Stevens said to go speak to his boss about it. Unfortunately, neither Clarke nor Philamal were available for comment. Although we all know Philamal will just blame Clarke. No scraps tonight either, kind of a bad day even though the team won…it is going to hurt to be without the leading scorer for a couple of games.

NEWS AND NOTES FROM THE FARM: Radunske and Cohen both clear waivers, neither will go out on loan, but Jens Rouliannienennieinen has agreed to go to Albany. So the Phantom roster is set for the year. Cohen and Radunske will play out the year there. Hopefully, neither gets much ice time as they are both quite the cranky little crackpots. The Phantoms after three games are sporting a 2-1 record.


NHL NEWS:

Nothing too outlandish yet is going on in the show. Boston has started the year 5-1, we are second at 4-1-1. Vancouver leads the West with an identical record to ours.

Leading scorers in the show:

GOALS: Leon Draistl in Edmonton with 7 (5 games),3 guys tied with 6 (none named Kovie or Ovenchicken)
Asissts: Mark Scheifle in Carolina has a whopping 11 (6 games) and Sebastien Collberg in Toronto is next with 8
Points: Draistl 12, and a bunch of guys with 11
Plus Minus: BEST: Kopitar(Chi), M Reilly(Cal), and Jake VIrtanen(Chi) at +10 WORST: Marc-Oliver Labreque in Florida at -9

GOALIES:

WINS: Tons including our own Brian Elliott with 4.
SAVE %: Anyone with 2 games or more Brian Elliott leads the way at an amazing .956
AVG: Again Elliott leads the way at 1.26
SO: 5 different guys have 1.

October 17

Notes from the farm: Darren Helm at 32 is understandably unhappy playing in Albany with the River Rats and has asked for a trade. I have said, okay I will put your name out there and see if anyone is interested in you. No one is. Since he is away from my prospects and playing in Albany I have no issue with him staying there and sitting on the 4th line all year, or as a scratch. No one wants him, including me.

Around the league: The Kings and Capitals have made the first trade of the season. It is totally insignificant as the Kings shuffle a 25 year old 4th line Centre to Washington for a 25 year old 4th line centre. Neither player is any darn good. This trade will just leave both teams in the same spots they were before the deal….last in their conferences.
Joe Colborne signs a deal in Columbus. Again…who cares.

With us, the time has come to take a look at Sam Reinhart. Sam has really struggled so far this year to fit in with the team. He is 24 now, and has not really got much better. Basically, he is not capable right now of playing anything more than 4th line minutes, and that is not good for him. We are going to have to see how things go in the next little while, but Sam may be someone who comes available. At 875K per year and a qualifying offer due to him by this June…Sam is someone who likely could be had for the right offer. Love the kid, he works, he leads but…he is just not a Flyer. Stevens is not happy with him at all, and figures we should look at moving him. Going to have to ask the guys if Samson should go on the block.

OCTOBER 19th vs ISLANDERS…who cares. We got killed. Clarkson and Lehtu got their butts kicked by a couple of pansies on the Isles and the destroyed us 6-2. Three guys are getting a talking to tonight. Horrible to not back up the boys and play like a bunch of smurfs cowering in the corners. Oh yeah, and the league’s top goalie played like he was the worst in the league. Oh wait….that other guy on the other team (Schneider) is pretty darn good. But we only got 15 shots all freaking night. This team has to learn to play Flyer hockey. Better hurry up. Clarkey is UNHAPPY with the loss. Well Bobby…maybe if you had not hired all these loser coaches and managers until I took over you would be in better shape. Now…get me some $ so I can get some players. Come on 4-2-1 is not that bad.

HOT STREAKS: Kopitar was scoring, he has been stopped. Pontus Aberg a 26 year old Swedish RW has just scored again. He has a 5 game goal streak and has 8 goals in that 5 games.

Now for the exciting news, the unsigned prospect update:

Cory McAvoy our first round pick is having a whale of a start in Kitchener this season. He has just scored only his 2nd goal of the season, but he has 13 assists in his 10 games, so 15 points, and has points in each and every game the Rangers have played so far this season. Loving this pick right now. Great job Cory.
His linemate David Wallace, also one of our picks this past summer has 5 goals in that time frame. Both young men are doing us proud.

Kurtis Reed in Swift Current, is also off to a good start having scored 2-6-8 in his first 11 games of the year.

Carey Leach is having a hard time getting into Owen Sound’s lineup so far this year and has only played 3 games. Leach was our 2018 1st round pick (9th overall) and this is not good enough. No one seems to be interested in making a deal for the young man, so we have decided to offer him his entry level deal. Carey will be eligible to play in the AHL this season, and I think that is going to be a good fit for him.

The rest of the gang is just off to average starts, but it is early days yet.

OCTOBER 21, FLYERS THRASH THRASHERS.

Jeff Carter scores 2, Cody Hodgson sets up 2. Drew Doughty is injured. Team kicks arse and scores 3 PP goals, gets 45 shots and beats the Thrashers 4-2. Good to be back on the right side of things. We had 39 hits in this game, with our great FA signing Nick Grossman leading the way with 5. The boys are learning about being disciplined. Not one penalty in this game for us. Keeping the other team off the PP and scoring 3 of our own. GREAT JOB BOYS. And soon..>Griggy will be back in the lineup. Doughty will get checked out overnight it seems he may have something wrong with his left hand. He had to leave the game early in the 2nd period as he could not hold his stick. Grossman stepped up and played 23 minutes in Drew’s absence, a season high for him. Great stuff. Carter, Hodgson and Naumov were the three stars, but I think Grossman deserved one tonight. Loved what I saw from him. Did a little of everything.

October 22.

Doughty is okay, just a minor hand cut. Thankfully. Griggy has started practicing again.
And now…Ovenchicken is on a role, buried his first hatty of the season last night, and has scored in 5 straight, now with a total of 8 to tie for the league lead. Oh and Vancouver Canuck, and former Capital Georgi Gutsevich is on a role as well. He has scored his first 5 goals, 1 each in his last 5 games.

October 26 BULLIES BEAT UP BABY BEARS.

The Flyers went fight less again tonight. However…we beat the Big Bad Bruins 5-3. We scored 4 goals in an 8 minute span of the third period after we had continually beat up the B’s in the corners, in front of the net and along the walls. TWENTY FIVE more hits. This team is the bash brothers for sure.Perky got hurt tonight, no idea what, but will not matter much anyway. He is a very average scrub. If he is hurt long term will send down to Phantoms and call someone else up. Ted had a goal and two assists and Griggy came back strong with 1-1. Griggy’s goal was his 100th in the show. Well done bud.

Around the league: Lubos Drabek, Vancouver’s 1st round pick in 2016, 30th overall is the early candidate for rookie of the year. He has a point in all 10 Canuck games and currently leads the team in scoring ahead of superstar Gote Stenstrom. Drabek is 7-9-15.
Matt Duchene is also firing on all cylanders. Duchene has been in Carolina since they drafted him 9th overall in 2009. He is now 28 and has five 20 goal seasons behind him. With a point in all 10 of Carolina’s games he is running hot at 7-8-15.



Lots of point streaks. Joel Armia in Disneyland has points in 10 straight.

Cody McAvoy in Kitchener has his streak end at 11 games, 2-14-16.

October 28 Carolina up tonight.

These guys have 61 goals in 12 games. The Flyers? 27 in 9. Uh oh. And it is the back up goalie in net for me tonight. Gulp. Perky is back to being healthy and Samson needs a break tonight to get off this bad run he has had. Dressing Buffy as a forward and going with the other 6 as the D to give Sam A break.

And yeah…Carolina can score a bit, but what a comeback from my boys. Naumov had another fight in this one, and he won it which allowed the team to get their act together, after falling down 2-0 early. Then the Canes power play went to work going 4-6. OUCH! But to get a point out of this one when I was down 6-3 with nine minutes left is great stuff. Umm…someone did not do so well in net for me. Eriksson though was the only poor performance of the night from my guys. Gutsy effort. Save for Duchene and his 4 assists and little teeny Patty Kake making a mess of us…well done boys.



AROUND THE LEAGUE: Jamie Benn and Filip Forsberg keep on putting the points up. Lots of streaks, not much defense so far this season.

October 31. BOOOOOOO

It is Halloween and we are finishing up a 7 game home stand tonight vs Chicago. Jeff Carter and his first hat trick of the year (Griggy also has 1) lead the Flyers to a 5-3 win over the Hawks.

End of October and here is how things are shaping up in the show:





As you can see Sam is still struggling. He did get his first point in the game vs Chicago, so am still going to be patient with him. But there comes a time. Also struggling appear to be Zadorov and to some extent Granqvist. Thanks to my scouts for telling me to go out and pick him up off waivers. Some help. The other guy—Tremblay is tearing it up for Manchester in the AHL with 7 goals and 2 assists in 7 games. Sometimes these scouts have their heads up their butts. Especially the guys who live in Quebec. Always want the darn small guys.

November 10

Weekly update on the Flyers:

We lost 2-1 to the Rangers, we then went on to defeat Washington 2-1 in the shootout, and Florida 5-3. Adam Larsson has stepped up his game the last week with 1 goal and 5 assists in the last 3 games *split between two weeks, so no award*. The rest of the boys are fairing well and doing their jobs. Clarkson had a big fight and destroyed Scott Hartnell in Florida and paced the team with his 2 goals in the win. Each of the last three games the boys have had over 25 hits and have had at least one scrap per game. They are battling as a team big time. Played the Devils yesterday, and the boys took the night off against the league’s worst team. With Eriksson in net, we did not support him at all. Outshot 33-15, first time under 25 hits in a long period of time, and no fights. Lost 3-0. The boys are getting a yelling at from Stevens yesterday and again today at practice. We were going to have a day off, but that was insane. We have 5 days before our next game and the team better get it together, or the changes could be a happening. This good game, bad game, good game stuff has to stop. That being said…we are well ahead of where we expected to be at this point.

HOT/NOT Reinhart is not responding to training, and is not getting any better. In fact, he appears to be back sliding, and is not interested in hard work. Hodgson has had two weak games and is in danger of getting benched. Got a warning for his performance in the game vs Washington, and did not step up vs Florida. Griggy is outstanding. Cartsy leads the team in every offensive category, and Claude is coming on. BUT…the dman we got from Dallas…stinks. Barely eking by every game with average perforances. He is now down to 10 minutes per game. Hate this guy, so soft.

Around the league: Leon Draistl, his over a point per game pace and his 5.3 million have been put on the block. I chatted with Edmonton GM Kevin Lowe about what he wanted. Unfortunately we need it to be a dollar for dollar deal and Edmonton wants to shake the salary. So it will not happen. Plus the bugger wants Larsson. Yeah no thanks.
Dallas leads the league with 24 points but Vancouver and Tampa both have at least 2 games in hand and are one point back of the Stars. The Canucks are icing a really young second line with the average age being 20.5 years old. But it is scoring at will. We currently sit 5th overall, and 3rd in our conference behind Ottawa and Tampa.
At the bottom…New Jersey with 9 points and in Minnesota they only have 7. Some small changes (up and down from minors) are already being made in both cities.
No big deals at this point to talk about. A couple of teams are just shuffling 4th liners and minor leaguers around.

Today we reached agreement on new deals with

1. Claude Giroux age 31- 2 years 5 million per, no trade contract. Same salary he has this year.

2. Griggy—age 25-2 years 4.3 million a good raise from his current 2.9 cap hit. But he has been awesome and is looking to break out.

These deals mean that there will have to be a guy or two not back next season. So I am not offering at this point deals to a few core players; Dustin Byfuglien, Nikita Zadorov, Cody Hodgson, and Mattias Tedenby are yet to be given new deal offers. Someone will not be back in order to afford a few raises that are due to Pucher, Naumov and of course Griggy. I am also not bothering to re up with quite a few guys….and there are 22 players on this roster or Philadelphia or somewhere in the AHL without deals on the table for next season. EARN IT BOYS.

Off to the bar. This team is making me insane.

November 1 2019


So the last 20 days have not been the best for the Flyers.

Claude Giroux has decided he is not a good hockey player. I In the last 6 games prior to the Nov 30 game vs the Devils he had not ONE single point. He hasd gone -6 has taken 3 hooking penalties (2 in the offensive zone) and had exactly ZERO hits. He is not playing Flyer hockey and needs to pick up his pace. He has been dropped from the top line and the top power play unit. He had a massive argument with teammate Drew Doughty during practice, and the team has decided to strip Mr. Giroux of his Captaincy. On November 25 John Stevens named Jeff Carter as the new captain, and added David Clarkson as an alternate. Things started to look a little better early in the game vs the Devils as Giroux got onto the 2nd Power play unit and managed to set up Cody Hodgson for our 2nd of the game giving us the lead. However….he then proceeded to go right back to the way he has been, turning the puck over for a goal, and hitting no one and then disappearing taking only one shot and missing the net…all night. Hopefully he can take the positive out of the game.

This was RIGHT at the end of a Flyer tailspin which saw us lose 5 consecutive games. It was ridiculous how bad we were being outshot by an average of 35-19 per game. We scored EXACTLY one power play goal in 19 chances in the 5 games, and were outscored 24-12. The fifth loss was a 5-1 loss to the New York Islanders. Finally with the new lines and new captain the team responded and we defeated the Lightning 6-3 on the 26th.

This was a horrible stretch in which Jon and I were speaking and yelling at each other on several occasions. Things just did not make sense. We were not hitting, averaging only 15 per game, we were not shooting, we were turning the puck over, and our systems play just seemed to fall apart.
There was only one semi bright spot during this time and that was David Clarkson. He has gone ape doodles in November. In 10 games in November (before New Jersey) Clarkson has 5 goals, 4 assists, 9 points, is plus 6 has led the team in shots with 28 and has engaged in 4 tilts, winning 3 of them. Clarkson in other words has been a Flyer beast, among a whole bunch of guys who are looking like ghosts out there (or should I say phantoms) –completely invisible. Clarkson slowed down a bit against the Devils, but still managed 2 hits and took 7 shots 4 of which were on target.

Anyway we have won our last three games with the new leadership team, and things seem to be on the uptake as we head into December. Hopefully, Giroux can find his testicles as he has even been fined (and is unhappy about it) for a particular horrible performance 2 days before we took away his C. The main difference in our last 3 games you ask? We went back to Flyer hockey—69 hits in the last 3, in the 3 before that we had 42.

Around the league: Not much has happened, other than the Oilers waiving their $5 million man in Draistl. No one touched him as he is just too much. We had a long conversation in our room about just picking him up and waiving Giroux, but we should give Claude a little more time to get his game back before doing so.
Sens lead the east with 37 points, with the Lightning having fallen a bit off the pace at 32. And this slump has killed us….



The month of October has taken us from leading our division, to battling for the final playoff spot. Ottawa is already starting to pull away, with a 10 point lead over us for the Conference title. The good news is our division is very mediocre and the Isles are only one point ahead of us, but they have played the fewest games.

MONTHLY AWARDS

Ontario Hockey League player of the month was Carey Leach our 1st round pick in 2018. (Hmm…maybe Clarkey did something right). Leach played 10 games scoring 14 points during the time.

NHL players of the month. Offensively Ovenchicken led the way, with 15 goals and 10 assists in 14 games. Nice pace.

Defensively it was Nasvhille 27 year old goalie Petr Mrazek who won all 8 games he started.

Rookie of the month for the 2nd straight month, was Vancouver Canuck, 21 year old former 30th overall pick, Lubos Drabek. Drabek went 4-6-10 in 13 games playing 2nd line Left Wing for the perennial power house Canucks

Another interesting hockey note, as Ray Ferraro has stepped out from behind the microphone and moved to Mannheim Germany where he has become the new General Manager of the club. His first item of business there will be to hire a head coach. Any bets on Don Granato? Or Tony?

December 2019

PROSPECT UPDATE:

Tim Menard is getting himself in some interesting situations in Windsor with the Spitfires. Stories coming out of Windsor saying he is being lazy and he is blaming and getting into arguments with head coach and GM Matt Gibson. Gibson is an up and coming 44 year old who is really good with the kids, and especially defensemen. After speaking with Tim who claims nothing is really the matter, and that he is giving it his all, I have dispatched Ontario based scout Mike Kelly to have a look see at what is going on. Menard was looking extremely good last season, and we were hopeful he would turn into a top level guy. But now…attitude questions are making me wonder.

I spoke with Gibson and he basically said straight up, I am sitting him. Menard is just not focused on the tasks he is given, and he is not even trying right now. Just watching guys skate by him. Not a physical bone in his body, and he is chirping his teammates, and yelled at me in practice yesterday. Big issues here for us. Need to get them resolved.

Dec 7 2019.

Wow Giroux scored. His first goal in 11 games. Then well…he set up another goal. The we won in the shoot out, although Giroux hit the post. 5-4 shootout win over the Sabres. Nice to see. 41 hits in this game. Clarkson pummels Keith Ballard, and gets an assist to break his 3 game slump. In December so far the team is 2-2-0 with a 2-0 shut out win for Elliott, then a 2-1 loss to the Penguins, followed by a horrible 5-1 loss in Montreal and the win over the SAbres.
Hopefully things will get better from here.

Time to make a move from the farm team. Kristoffer Granqvist goes down for 3 months with ACL injury. Do not have a lot of $ left to spend, but at least can make a call up. There is going to be a rotation going on here, as I now have only 6 defensemen on the roster including Buffy. For now though calling up Lionel Landry, the 23 year old LW acquired from Calgary for Rasmus Andersson in October. Landry has done well with the Phantoms scoring 12 goals, 9 assists and 21 points in his 23 games. Should I need a dman from the farm this is who it will be:



So you know I am hoping no one else gets hurt.


Dec 8
Mike Kelly called me. He got a good look at Menard last night. Told me he did not have his best game, and was looking like he may be playing with a minor injury to his groin. Limped off the ice a couple of times, and took a bad penalty because he could not get the pivot going in time. Seemed to be really sore. But that he had full confidence that Tim is going to end up being a core player for us in the future, and will bring us a game very similar to that of Brent Seabrook. Said when he got there he was crazy physical.

Dec 16

We,we have only played 2 games in the last week, win one lose one. Defeated 3-1 by the Islanders, and then come back the next night and beat the Caps by the same score. The two games were quite interesting. Landry buried his first goal in his first game on his first shift, and in his second game won his first NHL fight, destroying Shane O’Brien. Great career start for Landry

Unfortunately in the game vs the Caps, Claude Giroux has gone down for 10 days. Giroux was starting to heat up a bit with points in his last 3 games, including setting up 2 of the 3 vs Washington. Also discovered by the doctors after the game was that Claude’s groin injury from 2016 has not healed properly, and they are betting it will return to bother him some day. ON TOP OF THAT Granqvist apparently has some cartilage damage in his knee that they are never going to be able to fix. So both of these players could have severe problems staying healthy in the future. Ugh darn injuries.

Right now we are so up against the cap, we cannot call up anyone to replace Giroux. We are stuck with just the requirements to play a game. The good news is we only have 2 games over the next 7 days, 3 in the next 9.

Around the league: The Anaheim Mighty Ducks are in a bit of a slump. They are not so darn mighty right now. They have only won 2 of their last 11 and GM Jan-Erik Laukkanen has been given an ultimatum to get that act together.The Ducks had started the season 5-1 and are now really in the midst of a bad slump. And there are no injuries to blame for them. They are just playing bad hockey.


December 24

MERRY CHRISTMAS to two people around the NHL.

1. Jan-Erik Laukkanen. Fired by the Anaheim Ducks.
2. Patrick Kane—Placed on waivers by the Carolina Hurricanes. Kane makes $6.3 MILLION per year, and is in his 13th season in the NHL…all with the Canes, or should I say KANES. He has averaged 30 goals and 30 assists over his career. Unbelievably dumb move by the Canes. He is on pace for a career high 45 goals and last year was his best season 41-45-86. If we only had some money.

December 26

And the hits continue. Merry Xmas and Happy New year to the now unemployed former coach of the Colorado Avalanche, Al Murray.


December 30

Claude Giroux returns to the lineup and buries 2 goals in a 6-3 win over the Rangers. We got lucky as that evil jerk goalie Hynek broke his finger and could not play. Drouin-Desluariers got the start.

As a note: While Claude was out of the lineup the team went 3-2-1.

And we are now at the end of our 2019 calendar year. In December we went 6-5-2 and are 2 points out of a playoff spot. We have 43 points, tied for 9th with Toronto and CArolina is with 45 in 8th. We have 4 games in hand on the Canes, but the Leafs have a game in hand on us. Interestingly, we are only 1 point out of 3rd in the conference as division leader NY Islanders sit there with 44 points. So the playoff battle is already heating up.

Also as it always is at this time of year for NHL GM's it is going to be decision making time on some players for new contracts. There will be quite a few guys not being offered qualifying offers and a big contract player or two will not be re-signed. This is my first go around at this, and it should prove quite interesting.

My wide network of scouts has a decision to make for me.

There are three players here, their current contracts, their status (UFA/RFA) and the $ they are asking for in a new deal. YOU CHOOSE WHO I RE-SIGN. TWO of these three will return to the team, and one is to be let go to free agency. The RFA will have his rights released and will not be traded.


Dustin Byfuglien 34 years old RD/RW 3.39 UFA….3.84 per year for 2 years.

Nikita Zadorov 24 years old LD 2.35 RFA…5.10 mill per yer for two years.

Cody Hodgson 29 years old C 1.12 UFA DOES NOT WANT TO NEGOTIATE.



Whaddya think scouts? You have 36 hours to tell me from the time of this post. Who do I re-sign?