Bob gets nod; Pronger struggling
Remember how the Flyers would almost always use Antero Niittymaki as the goalie against Atlanta?
Bob gets nod; Pronger struggling
Sam Carchidi, Inquirer Staff Writer
Remember how the Flyers would almost always use Antero Niittymaki as the goalie against Atlanta?
Nitty was a Thrashers-killer. Just like Sergei Bobrovsky is an Islanders-killer.
Which is why the man they call “Bob” will be in the nets on Thursday night against the visiting New York Islanders.
In his young career, Bob is 7-0 with a 1.86 goals-against average and .944 save percentage against the Isles.
Last Thursday, Bobrovsky set the tone of the Flyers’ 3-2 win over the host Islanders by stopping Michael Grabner on a penalty shot just 2:49 into the game.
Overall, Bobrovsky is 10-3-1 with a 2.42 GAA and .921 save percentage this season.
* * *
Provided the Isles' Steve Staios plays on Thursday, don't be surprised if there’s some retribution.
Staios hit Max Talbot in the head late in last week’s game, but he did not get a penalty and was not disciplined by the NHL.
After the game, Talbot was critical of the hit.
“That’s what we’re trying to stop in the NHL _ shots like that head shot,” he said.
* * *
The Flyers have won 23 of their last 24 against the Isles. Like Minnesota on Tuesday, the Islanders are on a father-son bonding trip.
* * *
Chris Pronger's wife, Lauren, told CSN her husband has "good days, bad days. It's been a lot of trauma going on, and we're just praying right now....He's battling. He wants to be out there more than anybody. It's tough for all of us to watch him go through this."
Pronger, the Flyers' captain, is expected to miss the rest of the season with a concussion. He was not able to attend Wednesday's Flyers fashion show because it was a "bad day" for him, said his wife, who hosted the event.
"It breaks his heart, breaks my heart," Lauren Pronger said.
* * *
The Flyers remain four points behind the first-place New York Rangers in the Atlantic Division; the Rangers face the visiting Pittsburgh Penguins on Thursday.
* * *
Follow Sam Carchidi on Twitter @BroadStBull.
Comments (26)
Mediatedviscera is right on the money. If they make a trade for a defenseman I hope they include that turd on the Blueline, Carle. If they were to trade him for lugnuts to the Zamboni it would be an upgrade on defense. He offers no resistance in the defensive zone, has too many turnovers/bad outlet passes, and kills possesion in the offensive zone with his continued failures to keep the puck in at the point. watch the game closely and notice how many times they are passing the puck around quickly, getting the defense scrambling, until it hits Carle's stick, he hesitates to make a play and the defense catches up and makes a play. He is the proverbial "wet blanket" to the offense (his supposed strong suit). The sooner they trade him, the better. With Pronger's cap hit on LTIR and losing Carle's 3.6 hit they could afford a good defenseman. It's just a matter of what to give up to pry one loose, but including Carle in the package is a no-brainer (if you can sucker some other GM into taking him).— Matt Mac Isaac- it doesn't matter...the goalie contro in philly is a joke, if you look at the defensive numbers...turnovers, takeaways, lost faceoffs, and giveaways that lead directly to goals it's crazy. the last time we had a healthy and good defense was the cup run of 2010. A healthy Pronger not only made Matt Carle look like an all star but took this team to the Cup Finals with two lame goalies. The Flyers are one defenseman away from another serious run with two (more than) competent goalies. pull the trigger on one of these kids and get a Weber or Sutter. Hell, Ian's career ended playing team defense, but it got us past the first round. this team has had no problem scoring for the past 5 years, unless it runs into a "hot goalie" or by definition a team committed to defense. Lunquvist hasn't been able to get out of the first round and thomas was always on the bubble until the entire team played defense around him. this year they will be the two top in the east. this flyers team might win a series but being amazed by Giroux and Jagar doesn't mean anything unless the defense can punch the other team in the mouth and make them think about how they will cross the blue line. look at Boston's stats, you cant score if the puck isnt getting to the net. JVR, Scheen, Read, Coutier, etc. will all have wasted careers unless their bodies are out there blocking the puck while a Shea Weber clears the crease. it's that simple.— mediatedviscera
- The NHL has itself to blame for not making more protective headgear mandatory.
- Joe and snipes, two of the most amazing "scribes", what with all the hockey acumen you demonstrate. I'm just sorry Flyersfan4life isn't here to respond snipes, so I guess it is up to me, "Bob" defender, against the "Leaky Leighton" lover. Oh, don't go changing your story on how you feel about Leighton, as I amassed quite a few quotes you rattled off earlier this season. While you continue to irrationaly bash Bobrovsky, is it because of his nationality, Russian ( once the Flyers under Clarke refused to even draft or play a Russian to their detriment ), making you very old school, or is it your fearsome use of skewed data from NHL.com? If you rely on that as a source, why don't you talk about the currrent power rankings, putting Bobrovsky ahead of Niemi at 13, while Bryzgalov, was 42 out of 45 qualifying goalies for ranking. Numbers lie. Wins, losses, save percentage and GAA speak more clearly. snipesmorris, armchair warrior. I had more fun running the 5 ID Penqueen fan off the boards. You're not as amusing, just a broken record.— PhillyboyinNYC
- Message Board Superhero! You here at the game? No? That's what I thought. Listen man, find a single post since last April where I have said Leighton should play. Go ahead, one. I appreciate what the guy did for us, but after he sucked it in the plagues last year, I wrote him off. Love him? I've got about 2000 or so pieces of flyers "stuff," and not one bears the name Leighton. I know that disappoints you, but it is the truth.
As for Bob, I have consistently been saying for a couple weeks now that they should be playing him against good teams instead of bottom feeders. The kid has been playing well, but you and I both know that the playoffs is a whole world different than the Hurricanes and Islanders.
Gotta get back to the game. Enjoy the commercials and keep fightin' those trolls and keepin' us safe, Phoenix! - Retire and go out on top— fman727
Comment removed.- Dipietro....islanders-Killer. That's hilarious!
Trace it back even further. Garth Snow signed him to that huge contract. Snow replaced Mike Milbury who drafted him and traded away 12 all-stars during his career. Milbury was hired by Charles Wang who ran the franchise into the ground. What a disaster.
New York Islanders. The black hole of the NHL.— slappywagflyers16 - YEs BOB plays well against the Islanders, and has played well over all. I would love to see him against better teams to see how he does say like Boston, Rangers and other playoff type teams.
As for our Captain Pronger I feel for his family right now as it must very, very hards to have him home and not being able to do the things he likes to do with his family let alone play hockey. I pray every niogbht that hedoes get betterand can continue his career even if it is just for a while as you can tell he doesn't want to go out like this. Get Healthy PRONGS We all wqnt to see you back next season.— srcdaddy1216 - Joe, not sure I agree with the idea that Bobrovsky collapsed last year. I tend to look at the big picture that a 22 yr old rookie, who never played more than about 30 games in a season, who never had to handle the puck in the european game, spoke little to no English, and was used to the european style of play which is VASTLY different than North American hockey (traffic, screens, number of shots, deflections, etc.) was asked to play in 54 games against the most talented players on the planet under a set of rules and style which were in many ways foreign to him, with little ability to communicate with his defenseman. Overall, I gave him fine reviews for his rookie season, and although I like Laviolette's style; his handling of the goalies in the playoffs would have ruined any crop of goalies. You can't have 3 different goalies thinking, I'm getting yanked at the first sign of trouble; and before they were even 3 games into the postseason that's what they had, a whole group of goalies who were so on edge and nervous about losing their spot for a mistake that they couldn't settle down and just play the game.— northphil
- Northphil: you list a lot of good excuses for his collapse, but that does not change the fact of the collapse itself. Just look over his game logs (you can do this on NHL.com) and you will notice the decline over the season that culminated in the playoff disaster. As I noted above, he even got pulled in the final regular season game, which was against the mighty Islanders!
@Nichlos1088...What game were you watching??? Looks like a high hit to me. See:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9l_joPixAA— dogman5- First thing that moves when the hit occurs is Talbot's head, and it's not b/c his "skate got caught on the ice" as genius up there suggests. — MaC130
- Bob is a Islanders killer just as much as Doc is a Nats killer.— FABER
- Snipe, I think your point is best stated for the part of how good is Bob right now? I don't buy they want to show him off for trade suitors because I don't think you can in any way entertain a thought of trading him right now given Bryz's up and down play. You don't have a statistical difference of .890 (Bryz) to .921 (Bob) based solely on opponents. If Bryz got the lesser seeded teams more often it wouldn't be enough to overly inflate his numbers. And I doubt Bob facing a few more contenders would completely shatter his fine numbers this season either. But I agree it'd be good to see Bob get a few games in a row against the upper eschelon. Although, we have seen Bob in net against the Rangers, Penguins, etc a few times this year; I think more the point would be to see how he responded to seeing himself in a 2 or 3 in a row during a tough stretch. That would be the sign of whether he was ready to completely take the job back and prove that he should have been the goalie of the future (and present) from Day 1. Of course, that is unlikely as they don't want to send any mixed messages to their $51M philosopher that they are looking to the kid to carry the team and not him.— northphil
- snipesmorris: exactly. the flyers never lose to the islanders.— Ryan
- The Flyers need to comb the junior leagues, get a goalie and stick it out all year. Bryz was never good to begin with and Bob's confidence has to be shot. The Flyers are the Redskins of the NHL.— Sports4Life
- Well said snipes...I've been amazed at the "goalie controversy" talk going around. Yes Bob has played well, but up till recently he hadn't played more than once in a six day stretch and he's definitely only faced sub-par teams. He may very well be our goalie of the future but lets not forget his collapse last season.— Joe
- Bob is an "Islanders-killer"? My question is, who isn't? It is not as if the team has played poorly without Bob in the nets against the tied-for-last-place team in the conference with the 28th ranked offense in the NHL. The article points out that the Flyers have won 23 of their last 24 against the Isles, and only 7 of those wins were with Bob. That means that without Bob the Flyers are 16-1 against the Isles, so let's not act like Bob is some sort of a secret weapon we have to face the mighty Islanders.
The bigger story here is, once again, that we get to see Bob against a bad team, while Bryz faces teams that would qualify for the playoffs. How are we supposed to know how good Bob really is if we keep playing him against the bottom feeders of the league? Are the Flyers just trying to bolster his numbers for a trade?
It should work out now that Bryz plays the Devils (against whom he has a shutout this season) and Bob then hopefully plays the Bruins, as Bryz is not so hot in back-to-backs.— snipesmorris - Somehow lost in this article was Bob's final regular season game last year, which was against the Islanders. The Flyers got the win, but no thanks to our "Islander-killer," who gave up 3 goals on 10 shots and was pulled after 12 minutes.
- *IF* (and I realize it's a big "if") they're trying to get Bryz's confidence up, why not play him against the Isles? Yes, I realize all about Bob's numbers etc, but we've seen a bunch of articles about how Bryz is the #1 on this site lately, so why not help the guy out and give him a game against a lesser team? — MaC130
- As bad a deal as it was, they didn't buy Bryzgalov counting on Bob to play the top teams. To parody Yogi Berra, Bob is the backup until he isn't. And that means he gets the softer teams on the schedule regardless.
— icarus - He got the soft teams last year as the starter. Just look at the breakdown as to who he played and who Boosh played-- Boosh had the tougher schedule by far.
- Which had to have a negative impact on Boucher's play down the line. "Hey Boosh, save our butts against the hard teams, then ride the pine for Kid Bob as a reward." Another of Laviolette's goalie-mismanagement coaching moves. — icarus
- This Steve Staios stuff is nonesense. It wasn't that bad a hit. If you watch the replay the toe of Talbot's skate got caught on the ice and his knee twisted which is the only reason why he fell. There may have been a little elbow contact to the head but that is because of the size difference not malice. I think the league made the right call on this one, and the refs too. But hey, it will make this probable snoozer a lot more interesting so by all means, get some payback!— Nichols1088
- Tough news for Prongs hopefully he recovers so he can live a quality life.— shanehockey28
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Broad Street Bull is the Inquirer's blog covering the Philadelphia Flyers and the National Hockey League.
Reach Sam at scarchidi@phillynews.com.
Sam Carchidi
Inquirer Staff Writer
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