Leino benching is playoff message for Flyers

HOME GAME . . .

desperate opponent . . .

indifferent stretch somewhere in the middle . . . boo . . . tied . . . overtime . . . still tied . . . shootout . . . shootout loss . . . boo . . . rinse . . . repeat . . . boo . . .

The optimists are looking ahead 10 days to the start of the Stanley Cup playoffs for the Flyers, when the urgency of the postseason will turn them into the Flyers again. The pessimists, meanwhile, have hyperventilated at this point, their last words before sticking their heads into the paper bag being, "You can't [gasp] just turn it on and off [gasp, gasp] like a faucet . . . "

The future is unknown and unknowable. All any of us can do is interpret the public signals. There were two yesterday: the benching of Ville Leino as the Flyers' 3-2 shootout loss to the New York Rangers wore on, and the sudden cautiousness with which the Flyers are treating those fabled "lower-body injuries" to Danny Briere (who sat out the game) and Blair Betts (who left after the second period).

The Leino business was a pretty public kick from coach Peter Laviolette with only three games remaining in the regular season. The caution with injuries - and you can include last week's decision to keep defenseman Chris Pronger out of the fray for a while longer with his bum hand - is an acknowledgement (later confirmed by general manager Paul Holmgren) that health is much more important to the Flyers at this point than playoff positioning.

"Absolutely," Holmgren said. "The idea is to get in. We're in. We still want to finish as high as possible but I don't think you can be shortsighted and push when guys are banged up.

"Danny, there's nothing really serious with Danny, we just want to keep him out now. With Blair, I think we'll have a better idea [today] but this is nothing that's going to keep him out of the playoffs."

So while the vox populi is becoming increasingly voxy about the way the Flyers are working on coughing up the No. 1 seed in the NHL Eastern Conference - they're now tied again with Washington at 103 points - the attention of the team seems to be very decidedly on getting ready for the time that matters.

Take Leino. We all know what he gave the Flyers when he was finally inserted into the lineup in the middle of the playoffs last season. We also know that there was a reason why he wasn't playing in the previous games, that Laviolette wasn't sitting him for the heck of it, that the completeness of his game could be somewhat, shall we say, lacking.

Now, the coach has sent Leino the only kind of message that is guaranteed to get through as the days before the playoffs dwindle to a few. Leino played only two shifts after the second intermission against the Rangers, only 53 seconds, and not at all after the 43rd minute of a 65-minute game.

After it was over, Laviolette did not offer a word of criticism, saying, "In the third period, I just shortened the bench up, tightened it up."

Still, the player heard. There is no doubting Leino's importance to this team - it is a team, after all, whose strength is its depth at both forward and defense - and there is no doubting the message.

"That's the coach's decision," Leino said, indicating that he wasn't injured, adding, "I'm OK.

"I don't know. Obviously, I want to play and want to be a part of a tight battle like that, but that's a coach's decision . . .

"I think I played a good first period. Second, I had one or two bad shifts - or, not clearly too bad, but I wasn't on my best game. Like I said, it's a coach's decision."

Leino was doing the standup-guy thing, coming out and answering the questions. Somebody asked him if Laviolette's style after a game like that would be to pull him aside the next day and talk about the decision. Leino said he wasn't sure.

"I don't know - maybe, maybe not," he said. "We'll see tomorrow."

It is just one more bit of preparation for the days ahead.

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