From: seth@cbnewsh.cb.att.com (peter.r.clark..jr)
Subject: FLYERS notes 12/30
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 19:14:54 GMT



The FLYERS crushed the Kings last night in LA 10-2 after falling behind 2-0
only 2:43 into the game. It was the FLYERS first win on the road since the
OT thriller in Montreal on 11/14. It was the most goals ever scored by the
FLYERS on the road, and their largest margin of victory on the road. Rod
Brind'Amour collected his first NHL hat trick and totalled 6 points on the
night. It is their second consecutive road game without a loss, quite a
while since THAT happened...

Injuries:

Eric Lindros twisted his right knee in an afternoon skate when his skate got
caught in a rut in the ice. He was not a happy camper, and was filmed slamming
his stick into the glass at the gate angrily to get the attention of somebody
to let him get to the dressing room (and vent a little frustration I suppose).
He did not play, and will miss tonights game vs San Jose, but is tentatively
expected to return Saturday (this from the team's vice-president of public
relations). Yes, it's the same knee...

Lines:

Eklund-Brind'Amour-Dineen
Fedyk-Recchi-Paslawski
Boivin-Acton-Evans
Snuggerud-Lomakin-Brown - actually saw duty as a line! Two shifts in the first!
Snuggerud took some faceoffs in the third.
No defensive or goal changes. Roussel is apparently very anxious to get into
the lineup, but I think Soderstrom has won the starting job for a while and
Roussel may not dress until he's going to get a start.

Game Summary:

The FLYERS got off to a strong start, and got most of the early pressure.
But Luc Robitaille stole the puck from Gary Galley behind the FLYERS net,
moving from Soderstrom's left to right, and passed to McIntyre who top
shelved it past Soderstrom for the 1-0 lead at 2:06.

On the ensuing faceoff, Doug Evans took a penalty and the Kings went to work
on the power play. It didn't take long for them to strike. Paul Coffey passed
across to Jarri Kurri at the left point, and Kurri sent a perfect pass to
Luc Robitaille at the right side of the net, and he one-timed it past Sodertrom
for the 2-0 lead at 2:43. Based on recent play, I expected the FLYERS to start
to crumble at this point. oh, baby, was I wrong!! :-)

The FLYERS struck back quickly. Rod Brind'Amour controlled the puck along
the offensive boards about 1/2 way down the left side. He centered to Benning
who was just inside the blue line, he drifted right a little and hammered
a slap shot past Hrudey to get the FLYERS back to within 1 at 3:39.

They kept the pressure on, and quickly dampened anything that the Kings try to
get started. Dmitri Yushkevich passed through the neutral zone to Mark Recchi
to start a 2 on 1 with Fedyk. The lone King defender dove at Recchi, but
Recchi was able at lift the puck over him in the direction of Fedyk. The
slow pass gave another King defender time to catch up with the play, but
Fedyk controlled the bouncing, squibbing puck, avoided the defender and beat
Hrudey "LIKE A RENTED MULE" to tie the game at 2 at just 6:19 of the first.

The Kings got some good scoring chances finally, but Soderstrom nailed
everything they threw at him.

But the FLYERS just kept coming. Yushkevich carried through the neutral
zone off a pass from Lomakin, and crossed the Kings blue line. He likes to
take that slap shot (heck, with a 96.2 MPH slap shot, I have no problem with
that!), but this time he faked it, made a perfect drop pass to Brind'Amour
and took out the King nearest to him creating essentially a 2 on 1 with
Brind'Amour and Dineen. Brind'Amour carried right up to Hrudey and beat him
to give the FLYERS a 3-2 lead at 8:49.

The FLYERS struck again on a sloppy forward play. Carkner controlling in
the neutral zone just inside the FLYERS blue line. He gets into some trouble
and just pushes the puck forward along the FLYERS left boards. I thought
that Recchi poked at it to help it along, but he didn't get an assist so
I guess he missed. The puck by now is near the Kings blue line, and 
Brind'Amour pokes it into the zone as he's having one leg taken out. Dineen
finally gets some control of the puck, drifts to the middle of the left
circle, and fires a wrister past Hrudey who had come out to cut off the
angle, but didn't do a good job apparently. That was at 14:38. 4-2 FLYERS
after 1 period. My wife (who was also foolish enough to stay up with me to
watch the massacre) reminds me of the 4-0 lead in Cap Center a couple of
days ago...

The FLYERS opened the second period right where they left off. Stauber
replaced Hrudey, but it didn't matter. Yushkevich kept the puck in the
zone as the Kings tried to clear, and sent it down the left boards.
Brind'Amour, Recchi and a King all hack at the loose puck, and it kicks out
towards Stauber. Then it gets messy. Recchi and Stauber both swung at
the puck at the same time as Alexei Zhitnik arrives and runs into both
of them. Recchi got more of the puck than Stauber, and it shot up and into
the net as the net was being lifted off it's moorings by the three players
falling into it. I'm thinking that it's going to be the Caps game all over
again. The light came on, but no signal from referee Trottier. The replay,
however, clearly showed the puck denting the twine before the net came off
and Recchi was awarded the goal. That gave Yushkevich his first NHL 3 point
night. 5-2 FLYERS at 1:43.

Soon after the goal, Recchi and Fedyk started in on another 2 on 1, but were
cut off because of a retaliatory slash from the stick of Yushkevich. With
just 15 seconds left on that penalty, Brian Benning took one for elbowing
giving the Kings a brief 5 on 3. They killed that off thanks to a diving block
by Nattress and a great save by Soderstrom.  In the 5 on 4, the FLYERS got
more pressure on Stauber than the Kings got on Soderstrom, and 48 seconds
into the 5 on 4 Paul Coffey started shoving Ryan McGill in Soderstrom's crease.
McGill just stood his ground. Then Coffey gave McGill a right jab to the face,
but only got a roughing penalty to end the Kings power play. When the FLYERS
got their minute crack, they ended what I believe to be an oh for sixteen
on the power play. Just after the 4 on 4 expired, Carkner was retreating
into his own zone. He had to go all the way back to the goal line, where
he made a nice rebound pass to Benning off the boards directly behind the
FLYERS net. Benning saw Brind'Amour breaking and hit him at the red line.
Brind'Amour got hooked from behind by Brent Thompson as he shot the puck past
Stauber, and Trottier's arm went up. Clearly it would have been a penalty
shot had he not scored. But there's a new rule in the NHL. If you take a
penalty while killing another penalty, and the other team scores on the
delayed call, the man in the box comes out but the second penalty is still
enforced. This makes sense as you shouldn't kill two penalties with one goal.
So the FLYERS got another 2 minutes on the advantage. I didn't expect to see
two in a row, and I didn't, but that's OK. 6-2 FLYERS after 2 periods, even
though the FLYERS are only outshooting the Kings 27-26.

5:04 into the 3rd period, Hiller tried to pick a fight with Ryan McGill. In
the corner of the TV screen I could see him start shoving McGill as the camera
followed the play. McGill showed no aggressiveness whatsoever as Hiller kept
pushing and pushing with the shaft of his stick. Hiller then dropped the
gloves and punched McGill in the face, who immediately covered up. The really
bizarre part (aside from McGill not beating the crap out of this guy) was
that referee Trottier gave Hiller 5 plus the game, but no two minutes for
instigation. Emrick was beside himself, and had the game not been so one-sided
coach Dineen probably would have had a fit.

So the FLYERS have a 5 minute major to play with. They get off to a slow start,
but a little hard work pays off. Eklund and Brind'Amour doing all they can,
and Benning (I thought it was Eklund, but the UPI box score says Benning)
finally gets control behind the Kings net. He passes out to Rod who's
standing just to the left side of the net, but he's tied up and can only
send the puck weakly through the crease parallel to the goal line. The
puck slides all the way past the lower arc of the right circle where Paslawski
picks it up and sends it waist high from a near impossible angle past
Stauber. It may have gone off a King defender, but his position would have
made it an even tougher angle. 7-2 at 7:33

Benning picked up the puck after it was sent into the left offensive zone
corner by Paslawski, still on the 5 minute major, and centered it to Fedyk
who was crashing the net. The first shot hit Stauber's pads, but the second
shot off the rebound went through the 5 hole for an 8-2 lead at 8:27. (you
know, I thought that this was Eklund making the pass as well. I could easily
confuse 9 and 19, and UPI says Benning so I'll assume they're right...)

And it only took 20 seconds for the FLYERS to strike again (I was still
writing my notes from the first goal on the major). Fedyk passed to Recchi
to create another 2 on 1 with Eklund. Recchi makes the pass to Eklund who 
skates around Stauber who tried to come out to break up the play. Eklund
shot into the now empty net for a 9-2 lead at 8:47. 4 power play goals for
the FLYERS after a long, long drought.

Rod Brind'Amour closed out the scoring at 13:33. Pelle Eklund took a pass
from Ric Nattress, crossed the Kings blue line, and was surrounded by three
Kings. He just flipped the puck out into the middle of the ice, and there
was nobody within 20 feet of Brind'Amour when he picked up the loose puck
right in the center of the zone. He beat Stauber to put the FLYERS in double
digits at 13:33 and complete the hat trick, the 4th for the FLYERS this season.

So the FLYERS win 10-2 despite being outshot in the game 43-40. The Kings
have scored just two goals in their last two games despite having, according
to Mike Emrick, over 100 SOG in those two games.

The FLYERS have a great night on special teams, 4-9 on the advantage and
killed 5 of 6 Kings power plays. They have gotten off to a fantastic start
on the west coast trip beating a quality (although faltering of late) team 
in the Kings badly, and did it without Eric Lindros. Next up it's the poor
San Jose Sharks. But think about this for a moment: Last time Eric went down,
the team had a huge win over the 'Diques, who had been faltering at the time,
and then travelled to Ottawa and lost a game that they should have won. Let's
hope we don't get a repeat. And let's hope Eric can play Saturday in Calgary
and Sunday in Edmonton.

Finally, the FLYERS are now 6 games below .500, 8 points out of a playoff
spot and 7 behind the 5th place Islanders by virtue of the fact that both
they and the Devils lost last night. In fact, the FLYERS gained ground on
everybody in the Patrick except the Caps, who beat the Rangers. One other
bit of good news is that the FLYERS have 2-4 games in hand on all but the
Devils in the Patrick. But they are still a woeful 3-12-3 on the road. Tonight
is a chance for them to improve on that. IMHO the FLYERS must finish this
trip no worse than 2-2-1, although with the win over the Kings I expect them
to finish no worse than 3-1-1. After that, it's 9 of 11 at home and a return
to Thursday, Saturday, Sunday scheduling.

One last thing. Due to overwhelming demand :-) I have decided to consider
starting up a FLYERS mailing list. At present I am thinking about sending
out all of my updates to this list in addition to posting them to the net
(like what Tom Wilson does with the Lightning list), plus publicly answering
questions on the assumption that if one person asks, more people might be
interested. Plus possibly some extra stats from time to time, stuff that the
non-FLYERS fan could probably care less about. What I cannot do is have an
automated list that bounces messages I recieve out to everybody. My system
administrator would not allow that for security reasons. What I'd like to
know is 1) how many people might be interested, and 2) Any suggestions or
comments on how you'd like to see the list run, what sort of info you might
want that I haven't thought of, etc.

pete clark jr - rsh FLYERS contact