Seriously, how can you not love this

The best decision this season wasn’t trading for Pronger. It wasn’t losing Jones (BECAUSE NOW MY TWO JONESEY JERSEYS ARE WORTHLESS THX DEAN LOMBARDI). It wasn’t creating this blog. It was clearly dumping the black as a home jersey and installing this beauty full-time. For a team that was the “Orange and the Black”, they seemingly went Eric Lindros crazy in the early part of this decade and make the black sweater the full time home jersey. Introducing an orange alternate was nice, since that jersey was beautiful, but you look at the glory days of this team, and they’re predominately orange. Back in 2001-02 when the black took over as the home, 8 other teams also sported black home jerseys, making us look so original.

I was hoping for a return to orange when the Rbk Edge re-design hit, but all we got was another crappy black jersey. Finally having some sense, the organization brought back the classic 70’s jersey as an alternate. The white nameplate was a homage to the early part of the decade, where the team wore them during game that were on national television so fans could identify the players. It might have looked strange at first, but it’s a great little nod to the glory days of this team. The Islanders do the same thing with their shoulder patch, giving a shout out to their 4 cup wins in the 80s. Little stuff like this is awesome to me. I hope this jersey doesn’t ever change. It’s perfect for the Rbk Edge template, and seems to sell well. It’s so nice to be able to wear and buy orange Flyers stuff now.

Screw Ryan Potulny

I’ll be honest, the black nameplate was a giant “WTF” at first glance. Then Danny Syvret scored and it was all okay. Seriously, I don’t really mind it, after buying one. If it becomes the road sweater next season, I wouldn’t care if the nameplate stayed. I really like this one for some reason, it’s grown on me immensely. Probably because I’m so sick of our old jerseys. Obviously the giant “Winter Classic 2010″ patch will be gone, which may take away Danny Carcillo’s trick sauce magic while wearing said sweater. It’ll also be nice to not be pulling the “Minnesota Wild” and having completely different home and road sweaters. Something about that orange stripe on the shoulders is awesome to me. I can’t pinpoint it. I received a Chris Pronger WC jersey for Christmas and haven’t stopped wearing it since then.

So, that leaves the black third in limbo. Who knows what’ll happen to it? I won’t shed tears if it’s scrapped. However, I’d like to see a third jersey in service next year. I’ll look over some ideas for a new black or orange third jersey.

I own both of these jerseys. Clearly someone upstairs hates me.

Sans the crazy socks and the wordmark logo, these jerseys look somewhat similar to me.  I really liked this jersey, and the inclusion of grey as an accent color. That 3d-ish logo wasn’t too shabby either. I suck at photoshop, so I’m not going to whip up some concept masterpiece, but switch the maroon for orange, and the navy for black, and that’s a slick looking jersey to me. It could use some black piping around the white shoulder stripes, and if the socks were a traditional pattern, I think it could look good. If any of our readers are photoshop-saavy, and want to explore this idea, go right ahead, but just send us the results!

High-five for crap photoshop skills

Look, I made it orange. I hope the “SENS” scrap this jersey. I love it, but it would be weird to just blatantly rip their design from them. I’d like to see something similar to this, maybe with some more conservative piping, because I think it could work. I love the tie-up collars that seemingly have faded away, yet are slowly coming back. Just a thought. I’d like this over something like that black smock Heatley currently wears with San Jose. At least show some orange flare. Again, if you have better-than-crap photoshop skills, see if this one is any good.

Rawr.

Surprise, it’s a Medicine Hat Tigers jersey. Now that the CHL has switched over the the Edge system, we get to see this masterpiece. I really like this one, and if you slapped a Flyers logo on the chest, I’d buy it. The two color stripe on the socks is an eye catcher, and its a black jersey that I actually really like. Something about jerseys with white sleeves catches me eye as well. I’m not sold on the back numbers being white (with orange being a possibility), but I think this would be a great template for a third. Considering that the black third was a recoloration of the orange sweater, could we see something like this?

Thanks for reading this little look into one of my favorite topics in the hockey world. If you’ve got any ideas, concepts, or just comments, be sure to leave them behind. I’d really like to know what the fanbase thinks about what they could potentially be purchasing at fan gear in the years to come. Oh, and help me decide on a player for my orange jersey. The damn thing has blank far too long, yet my indecisiveness to spend the money and over which player to get is not helping.

The fan favorite, and I use the term lightly, in Montreal, Danny Briere, scored his fourth career hat trick to help lead the Flyers in a 6-2 rout over the Habs. Briere hasn’t had a hatty in two years, but he said it felt nice to do it in front of family members, friends, and of course, the lovely Montreal fans casting boos down onto him. Danny scored his hat trick on a beautiful penalty shot move after being tripped up by Ryan O’Byrne late in the third period.

Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, and Blair Betts also added tallies for the Flyers.

The Flyers put in one of their best games I’ve seen in awhile, and because of it, their special teams finally clicked. They were two-for-four of the power play, and even managed a shorthanded goal as well.

Michael Leighton again put in a stellar effort, again reminding me why I think he should be this team’s true number one goalie. He just seems to be extremely confident. We’ll see if Laviolette decides to ride him after the break. I wish he would. Emery just hasn’t been the same since his injury.

The Flyers are 6-2 in their last eight games. Definitely something to be excited about for after the Olympic break. Hopefully the two weeks off doesn’t ruin any chemistry this team had going for them. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Just because the NHL is on Olympic break doesn’t mean we are. We’ll be reporting on the Olympics, and more specifically, the Flyers in the Olympics, as the games begin on Tuesday afternoon. Stay tuned!

All around a pretty good effort tonight, save for that spurt early in the 3rd period.  The Power Play continued to struggle, failing to convert on numerous chances in the 3rd period.  Leighton looked sharp in goal once again.  Jeff Carter continued his fine play, adding two more goals.  The Flyers are right back at it again tomorrow night in Montreal, for the final game before the Olympic Break.

The first was between the Minnesota Wild and the Chicago Blackhawks.  Chicago sent D Cam Barker to Minnesota for (former Flyer) D Kim Johnsson, and D Nick Leddy, a 1st round pick in 2009.  This sure looks like a salary cap move for the Blackhawks.

The second deal involved Ottawa and Carolina.  Carolina sent veteran winger Ray Whitney to the Senators for (former Flyer) D Alexandre Picard and a 2nd round pick.  It’s not much of a surprise that Whitney was moved, as the rumor mill was churning for quite some time.  Whitney was a guy I thought we could use here in Philly for some extra scoring depth.  Following this, the Senators also place Johnathon Cheechoo on waivers.

The Flyers managed to win a game down 2 goals against the Devils for the second straight game in a row, while only mustering a total of 15 shots on goal. The first period started off with those two fluky goals, but the Flyers got a huge response from former Devil Arron Asham to make it a close game. The Devils certainly squandered their fair share of scoring chances, with prized acquisition Ilya Kovalchuk “Jeff Cartering” a few shots off of the glass/wide, and Travis Zajac missing an empty net as well. The hot topic of debate was Scott Hartnell’s no-goal that would have tied the game at 2 at the end of the first. While physics may have told you that the puck was in, the NHL’s war room saw things differently. Cue the “MSG+ didn’t send the correct camera angle” theories.

Jeff Carter buried a wrister off the iron in the second to tie the game, so the no-goal didn’t exactly hinder the offense. Earlier in the day, Carter received the news that he would be a part of Team Canada, as Ryan Getzlaf suffered an ankle injury earlier this week which will put his Olympic status in doubt. The Flyers had a couple of breaks in this game, with Zach Parise missing the game completely due to an upper body injury (which isn’t good for Team USA :/). The Devils also lost Bryce Salvador early on, as he took a high stick in the defensive zone, leaving with vision problems. The Flyers played relatively disciplined, but special teams weren’t the key point of this game. Leighton coming up with the big stops certainly was the highlight of the game, with Gagne’s goal being the icing on the cake.

Upcoming notes: The Flyers play another home-and-home set against Montreal this weekend, before the Olympic break takes over. The Opening Ceremonies for the Games is tomorrow for our Olympic followers. Ray Emery will get 3 weeks, including the Olympic Break, to rest his ailing hip.

Marty Turco is 34 years of age and is clearly on the downswing of his career. It’s clear that Turco still has the ability to be an effective goalie in the NHL, but he has Marty Biron syndrome. Turco lets in some terribly soft goals and doesn’t have the best positioning I’ve ever seen. He’s become disliked in Dallas and fans are ready to move on from the Turco era.

Nick Kypreos of Rogers’ SportsNet first broke the news of Philadelphia being interested in Turco’s services on Twitter:

Dallas/Atlanta still waiting for trade call to complete Kari Lehtonen deal. Dallas/ Philly talks ongoing for Marty Turco.

On the other hand, you have TSN’s Bob McKenzie who is reporting that the Flyers aren’t as interested in Turco as the Chicago Blackhawks are.

Whichever way you look at it, this is a terrible idea. Why?

Marty Turco comes with a $5.7 million cap hit which is absolutely insane for a goalie of his skill level. He doesn’t deserve that kind of money and he flat out will not be able to fit here unless the Flyers move a big money maker. Namely, Danny Briere and Scott Hartnell, Simon Gagne, or Jeff Carter. Briere and Gagne have NTC’s, and Jeff Carter has already been deemed untouchable by Paul Holmgren.

In order for this to work, the Flyers would have to do several things that they’d end up regretting, one of which includes trading for a 34 year old goalie who can barely play anymore. That, and the Flyers don’t need a goalie.

This trade adds Lehtonen to an abundance of goaltenders in the Dallas Stars system, however, with all four of them set to become unrestricted free agents this summer, this move makes a lot of sense.

Lehtonen has had his share of issues this season, but has been reliable for the Thrashers.

With the rumors surrounding Marty Turco’s immediate future with the Stars, it’s been assumed that they were looking for some youth in-between the pipes.

The Stars give up a young, defensive prospect who is small, quick, and mobile who has tremendous offensive talents. Picture a young Sergei Zubov. Vishnevskiy was a fan favorite, and rightfully so. However, his play was nothing but potential.

The Flyers did a good job Monday night of keeping the threat of  Ilya Kovalchuk to a minimum. He’s been fairly average against the Flyers throughout his career. He didn’t show many signs of life until the later parts of the third period on the power play. Even then, he was rocketing shots high and wide constantly. He was, for the most part, a non-factor. I don’t expect that to be the case tonight. Kovalchuk got his first practice with the Devils yesterday since being traded to the club. He’s now had time to start understanding his line mates and Lemaire’s system.

The lines will remain the same as they were on Monday night. Michael Leighton will remain the starter while Emery sits out with his hip injury. Newcomer Ville Leino is still not being added into the line-up, and it appears that Peter Laviolette wants to tell the media that he has no use for him in the system, but he doesn’t know how.

On a site related note, content’s been low this week. I’ve been smashed with school work. Our podcast wasn’t recorded because my headset decided to break at the last minute, so recording it would have been impossible. Stay tuned for updates, though.

Shortly after that, Jeff Carter delivered a debatable hit to Anssi Salmela (I’ll have more on the hit later in the post), just a split second after he put the Devils 2nd goal behind Michael Leighton.  The hit seemed to be the energy boost that the Flyers needed, as terrible as it sounds to say that. From that point on, it was all Flyers. James van Riemsdyk got the Flyers on the board early after a crafty move and shot beat the NJ defender and flew by Martin Brodeur. Seconds later, Jeff Carter finally hit an open net on a 2-on-1 pass from Scott Hartnell.

When the third period started, the Flyers came out and showed that they were the better team and wanted to win this game. Mike Richards broke the tie on the power play on a pretty pass from Kimmo Timonen was dished out from behind the goal line. That was all the Flyers needed to beat the Devils tonight.

Once the Flyers woke up tonight, they showed us a great defensive effort and they generated a ton of offensive opportunities. When you’re playing a goalie like Martin Brodeur, you’re going to need all the opportunities you can get. Michael Leighton was awesome in goal tonight, too.

Part two of this home and home series is Wednesday night in New Jersey.

As for the hit, here’s a video of it first.

This hit looked so much worse in the arena and until I got a few more looks at it, I was convinced that it was a dirty hit on Carter’s behalf. Once we slow down the replay, though, it’s not as bad as people are going to make it out to be. Is it a suspendable hit? Probably, but not deserving. Anssi Salmela was skating through the slot with his head down. As hockey players in peewee, we’re taught not to do that. Always be aware of your surroundings, and have your head on a swivel at all times. Salmela did none of those.

The argument that everyone will bring up here is that it was a late hit, but was it? Had Leighton made the save, the rebound would have been right on Salmela’s stick for an easy tap in had Carter not pushed him off the puck.

It’s a tough call to make, but we’d like to know what you think. Drop a comment down below.

Oh, by the way, our podcast debuts tomorrow! Stay tuned for that! Goodnight everyone!

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you probably know that the Devils acquired Ilya Kovalchuk, Atlanta’s prized sniper, who is undoubtedly one of the best goal scorers in the league. With the return of Patrick Elias to the line-up, Kovalchuk is an even bigger threat. Not to mention his abilities on the power play. I have little doubt that the Flyers won’t shut down the Devils offense, because the defense has been awesome the last three games. I’m just worried about being able to come back from a 1-goal defecit. How miserable is that?

It’s unknown who is going to start in goal tonight. The Flyers didn’t have practice yesterday due to inclimate weather conditions. It’s also unknown whether or not newly acquired Ville Leino will play tonight, and if he does, where he’ll play. Bill Meltzer is reporting that there have been “indications that Leino will replace Darroll Powe on the left-wing on the Jeff Carter line,” but nobody is certain.

The Devils are too good when they’re playing with the lead, so it’s absolutely crucial for the Flyers to hop on them early and keep the goals coming. Falling behind in the first period will be unacceptable, and we’ll be talking about another loss in tonight’s recap.

Recap will be a little later than usual tonight; I’ll be at the Wachovia Center taking this one in.