At least 5 Flyers need surgery; Holmgren defends Richards
The Philadelphia Inquirer Blog - Flyers Report: Broad Street Bull
At least 5 Flyers need surgery; Holmgren defends Richards
Sam Carchidi, Inquirer Staff Writer
Five Flyers will have off-season surgery, general manager Paul Holmgren announced Tuesday _ and that doesn’t include defenseman Chris Pronger, whose back condition is still being evaluated by doctors and isn’t expected to be known until later in the day.
The five: Mike Richards (wrist), Andrej Meszaros (wrist), Kris Versteeg (sports hernia); Michael Leighton (hip) and Blair Betts (finger).
Scott Hartnell and Jeff Carter are also being evaluated for possible hip surgery, Holmgren said, adding he hopes to know their medical status on Friday.
It will probably be known later Tuesday if Pronger will need surgery, Holmgren said.
The GM said Richards dealt with an injured wrist since training camp and that it “inhibited his play in certain aspects - it affected his performance in the faceoff circle and I think it affected his shot.”
Richards, who had one goal in the post-season, has a torn ligament in a wrist. Holmgren did not know which wrist was injured.
Richards sometime seemed emotionally detached this season. He did not make himself available to the media on Monday or Tuesday. He said he will talk on Wednesday.
Holmgren said Richards was a good captain.
“He’s a quiet kid, a reserved kid,” Holmgren said. “He’s a hard gut to talk to sometimes - for anyone, probably even his closest friends. He’s just a quiet guy, but there are no issues with Mike and Peter (Laviolette), or Mike and his teammates.”
A video of Holmgren addressing the Richards situation is embedded below.
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meaningless - Holmgren defended the goalies too. He was the only one that thought the three blind mice did well
To all you yahoos yapping about what a lousy captain Richards is, what are you looking for? What's wrong with a guy who leads by example rather than chirping to the media or talking a good game? And stop citing how Richards acts in the "locker room". None of you have been in the "locker room", so your comments are meaningless. And placing the 'C' on Briere or Giroux? Based on what? Because they had good post seasons? Well nobody had a better post season than Richards during the Cup run, so stop being so damn myopic. You can't just play musical chairs with the 'C' based upon who had a good post season and who didn't.— stinky_pete- Richards is used almost 100% defensively in the playoffs. He is assigned to defend the other team's top line (forwards) and to kill penalty's. Anyone, that has ever played ANY sport, knows that defending the whole game against the other team's best players is very taxing. It reduces his 5 on5 time as well. Richard's will never be able to put up big offensive numbers in this roll. Yet every season, come playoff time, the Flyer's insist on taking one of the team's top weapons (Richard's) and put him at center on the 4th line to defend.
Flyers need to be more concerned about getting Richards on the Scoresheet in the Playoffs, we have plenty of capable defenders and don't need 100% devoted to this style.
As far as the Captain issue.. Any other locke room in the league... Pronger is Captain. He should be here too.. Its not Richards fault he is, front office rightly made Richards the captain when he came up with a big wave of Phantom's after the calder Cup run. It made sense, he was the captain there, makes sense when those players started coming up here he would still be their leader. Problem is...when Flyer's started adding key veteran pieces like Pronger and Timmonen, it became almost unreasonable that Richards should be the captain of league veterans lof their sature. It's just a seniority issue more then anything, but its still visibly broken on this team. Best move in my opinion is to have Richard's give the "C" over to Pronger. .Take the 15 mins of embarrassment, but in the process take the weight off richards shoulders long ter (or at least for the near term.)— drmonday - This team has sooo many stars up front an overpaid average defense and 3 AHL goalies. It would be nice to see the Flyers sign a bona fide starter for the 1st time in like 20 years, I don tcare if they have to shed Carter for picks to make cap space. Get r done.— statethe obvious
- As has been noted by many here; the Captain of the team is not always the most "vocal" guy in the room. When Gretsky was captain in Edmonton it was Messier who was vocal, not Wayne. The same situation as here.— Ernie D
