Flyers acquire Ville Leino from Detroit, in exchange for Ole-Kristian Tollefsen

Ole-Kristian Tollefsen’s short, injury-plagued stint with the Philadelphia Flyers has come to an end. The Flyers traded the 25 year old defenseman and a fifth round draft pick in the 2011 Entry Draft this morning to the Detroit Red Wings in exchange of forward Ville Leino.

Ville Leino was orginally signed by the Red Wings in 2008 from Jokerit of the Finnish League. Ville Leino has played in 55 NHL games over two seasons, and has scored 9 goals and tallied 7 assists. Last summer, the Wings re-upped his contract, signing him to a two-year deal.

The kid’s apparently got skill. From the little I know about him, a few Red Wing fans have filled me in and say he’s a pleasure to watch, and has tremendous potential.

Here’s a clip of Leino’s first NHL goal:

The Flyers lose defenseman Ole-Kristian Tollefsen, who has been troubled by injury for the majority of the season – a big worry at the time of OKT’s signing was his ability to play without getting injured. Tollefsen became expendable last week when the Flyers signed Lukas Krajicek.

WE BELIEVE IN ORANGE 2010 trade deadline coverage

I said new features would keep coming, didn’t I?

This isn’t much of a feature, but in the coming days I’ll be making the site accessible to all of your 2010 NHL trade deadline coverage. We’ll be covering a lot of the rumors, trades, and failed trades up until the March 3rd deadline.

If you’re tired of reading Eklund’s jargon, you’re always welcome here.

Our first and last article on the Kovalchuk Sweepstakes

There’s a guy who plays for the Atlanta Thrashers and you may’ve heard of him lately. His name is Ilya Kovalchuk and Atlanta GM Don Waddell is looking for a trading partner to dish the highly skilled superstar. The problem here is, if you remember the whole Jay Bouwmeester situation of yesteryear, Waddell is asking for entirely too much in return.

Eklund has been going rumor crazy as of late saying that there are several big name hockey markets in on the Kovalchuk deal, and a select few “mystery teams”. That’s probably just Eklund being a downright retard, as usual, but we can confirm that the Flyers are one of the big market teams in the deal. The Chicago Blackhawks, Boston Bruins, Philadelphia Flyers, Calgary Flames, New Jersey Devils, Los Angeles Kings and New York Rangers are teams suspected to be involved in the trade talks for the Russian sniper.

If the Flyers were to be involved in a deal for Kovalchuk, they’d have to trade a lot of talent and salary; about $6.5 million worth. Names that are being thrown around the hockey world are Danny Briere, Simon Gagne, Claude Giroux, James Van Riemsdyk, Jeff Carter (even though Homer’s already said he wouldn’t be moved), Scott Hartnell, Braydon Coburn, and Matt Carle on top of some other prospects and players from the Phantoms. Briere, Gagne, and Hartnell all have no movement clauses, so they would have to waive those clauses in order for any of this to come to fruition, and there haven’t even been rumors of Paul Holmgren asking any of them to do so.

I, personally, wouldn’t want to see Simon Gagne waive his no trade clause and be sent away to a terrible hockey market such as Atlanta. It’d be terrible to see a guy who’s been a Flyer his whole career just shoved away like that. Gagne’s always been my favorite hockey player, but if I had to send him away along with one of Carle/Coburn, I’d do it in a second. Gagne wouldn’t do that, though. His family is growing and developing here in Philadelphia, and he’s on record a number of times saying he doesn’t want to leave.

Kovalchuk would likely be acquired as a rental player since it’s rumored that he’s going to be asking for anywhere between $9-9.5 million next season, but that could just be Waddell trying to up his value. NHL.com broke a story today that states Kovalchuk turned down, what would have been, the biggest contract given to any impending NHL free agent player ever.

Waddell said the club offered Kovalchuk a 12-year, $101 million deal, but it was rejected. Waddell said it would have been the highest contract ever signed by an impending free agent in NHL history.

In a nutshell: While it’d be great to have a guy of Kovy’s offensive capabilities on your team, he is too much of a defensive liability on the ice. And for as much money as he wants, it just wouldn’t be worth giving away your future stars for someone who may not even get you to a Cup final. Hockey is a team game made not of one player.

At this moment, it’s hard to say what’s going to happen. Yesterday, Kovalchuk was told that he would indeed be moved within the coming hours or days, but nothing has developed since then. Is Don Waddell asking too much for Kovalchuk? Is Kovalchuk being a greedy NHL player, or do you think he’ll take a paycut just to play in a big hockey market? What do you think the Flyers should/will do? Leave us your opinions in a comment down below. It’ll be good to get some discussion going on here!

Introducing the We Believe In Orange Podcast!

We’ve waited long enough to do this, and it’s finally here. Well, not really. It’s almost here.

As the foundation of a bunch of new and exciting features coming to WeBelieveInOrange in the next month or two, we’re proud to announce the WBIO Podcast.

The podcast will be recorded weekly, and while a set schedule has yet to be determined, the first episode will be live and available for you to download next Tuesday evening.

We’ll be doing a “Listener Mailbag” segment, so if you have anything you’d like us to discuss, or something you think needs mentioning, please leave us a comment on here, our Facebook page, or our Twitter account (@WBinOrange), and we’ll be happy to throw it into the show.

We’re really excited for what this is going to bring to our site, and we hope you’re just as excited to listen to it. More details on how to download, subscribe, and listen will be posted along with the inaugural episode. We’ll see you Tuesday!

Old, but left unreported: FCC to do away with terrestrial loopholes?

Back on January 20th of last week, the FCC held a meeting with a vote that would eliminate the “terrestrial loophole” in television broadcasting. That vote ended in a 4-1 landslide against the law created back in 1992.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-to-1 on Wednesday to eliminate the so-called “terrestrial loophole” in a 1992 federal cable law, which requires cable operators to give competitors access to cable-owned programming that is transmitted using satellite connections. Until now, the provision didn’t apply when the cable operators send those programs over land-based networks instead.

Back in 1997 when Comcast SportsNet Philadelphia replaced PRISM, Comcast decided to keep the sports channel off of satellite television so they’d have a bigger draw for customers who wanted to see Philadelphia sports. A smart business plan, but those who wanted to save money on their television service stayed with their satellite providers. This left tons of people without their fix of Philadelphia sports, because CSN Philadelphia wasn’t an offered channel on their service.

While it’s not widely available in the North East, Verizon’s FIOS service has been offering CSNPhilly – as well as the other CSN regional channels – since the service launched.  There are a large number of residents living in areas without any type of cable provider, so satellite TV is their only reasonable option for television, so this will come as excellent news to them.

The change hasn’t been made official and there is plenty of work to be done in the court room, so I can’t even predict when this will happen. The good news is, Comcast’s days of strangling their customers appear to be over, and that’s the good news here.

Ryan Parent will have surgery Monday

According to Flyers GM Paul Holmgren, Flyers defenseman Ryan Parent will undergo back surgery on Monday to remove a disc fragment from his lumbar spine. At first glance, Parent is expected to miss six weeks of action.

In two years in the NHL, Parent has suffered two major injuries. Last year, he tore his labrum in his right shoulder and missed 36 games. Parent has missed 16 consecutive games this season.

FSN Pittsburgh suspends employee

We ran a post earlier this week about the whole FSN Pittsburgh withholding video evidence of Gagne’s goal last Thursday ordeal.

A decision has come down from FSN Pittsburgh to suspend the employee responsible for transferring the videos from the station to the NHL War Room in Toronto. FSN has decided to suspend the employee who just so happens to be the son of former Penguin, Lowell MacDonald.

The replay that gave conclusive evidence of Gagne’s goal was not shown on the television broadcast until minutes after the goal had already been waived off. This has caused quite the stir among fans and the media over the last few days.

From Philly.com:

The Post-Gazette reported that in a statement, FSN Pittsburgh said, “There is nothing more important than the integrity of the game. During last Thursday’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers, a definitive replay of a Flyers goal was not aired prior to the conclusion of the official review and, as a result, a Flyers goal was not awarded. Fortunately, this did not change the outcome of the game. Nonetheless, FSN Pittsburgh’s failure to provide video to the league officials in a timely fashion was wholly unacceptable. FSN Pittsburgh has addressed this matter and has taken steps to ensure that such a failure does not occur again.”

The Penguins also issued a statement: ”We fully support FSN Pittsburgh in its reaction to this issue. The integrity of the game is paramount.”

No word from any sources that I’ve seen on how long the suspension will last, but it probably won’t be long enough. Send your hate mail, everyone.

FSN Pittsburgh to be investigated by the NHL

If you hadn’t seen it already, the NHL blatantly robbed Simon Gagne of a goal last Thursday night during the Flyers vs Penguins game. It was so blatant, that the NHL is now going to investigate Fox Sportsnet Pittsburgh for not sending all of the available video footage to the war room in Toronto for review.

It remains unknown whether or not FSN purposely excluded the video angle from the package they sent to Toronto. During FSN’s broadcast, after the goal had already been disallowed, the FSN announcers can be heard saying, “We saved this one” when playing the footage that clearly shows Pittsburgh goaltender Brent Johnson kicking the puck back out of the net.

The NHL has given no indication of penalties or the length of the investigation, all we know is that it is happening.

Pittsburgh, your days of cheating may be coming to a grinding hault.

[Philly.com]

According to Paul Holmgren, Jeff Carter isn’t going anywhere

Get off of HockeyBuzz, because Eklund is wrong again.

According to ESPN.com’s Pierre LeBrun, Paul Holmgren has put all of the Jeff Carter rumor buzz to rest.

“We’re not trading Jeff Carter,” Philadelphia Flyers GM Paul Holmgren told ESPN.com on Saturday.

The 25-year-old forward is earning $5 million this season and $5.5 million in 2010-11, the last year of his deal. He’s basically been a point-a-game player for two years now, and that’s good production for his salary.

But when the Flyers struggled in the opening three months of the season, no player had his name dragged through the trade rumor mill more than Carter.

“I don’t know where all these rumors are coming from,” said Holmgren. “We are not trading him, I can tell you that.”

Jeff Carter’s production this year, compared to last, is painful to look at. It’s clear that he is not the same confident player he was last year, and since opposing teams have figured out his style of play, they have been shutting him down easily.

It’s been rumored that Carter’s name was the lead name in a trade proposed to Philadelphia by Montreal which would send the Flyers goaltender Jaroslav Halak. However, with the strong play of Michael Leighton and Ray Emery’s progressing health, as well as veteran back-up Brian Boucher, all of those rumors just seem ridiculous at best. Jeff Carter’s name has also been included in Ilya Kovalchuk talks, but those have since simmered down.

Anyway, Jeff Carter isn’t going anywhere, so don’t believe anything you read.

Emery to the Injured Reserve, will miss six weeks.

The Flyers have officially announced that Ray Emery will undergo surgery tomorrow, Wednesday, December 9th, to repair a torn muscle in his lower abdominal wall. According to the Flyers general manager, Paul Holmgren, Emery will miss approximately five to six weeks.

This injury could answer some of the questions surrounding Emery’s less than solid play as of late, so it will be interesting to see if anything further comes from this.

Emery has an 11-8-1 record with a 2.83 GAA.

The Flyers have called up Johan Backlund from the Phantoms to replace Emery as well as David Laliberte, who will play tonight against the Islanders.

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