Pronger questionable for Flyers’ game with Ottawa

The Flyers downplayed Chris Pronger's hand injury - the defenseman is questionable for Saturday night's game in Ottawa - and were more concerned about their uneven play in recent games.

In fact, after Friday's practice in Voorhees, general manager Paul Holmgren went so far as to say the players needed "a bit of an attitude adjustment" as the team heads toward the last six weeks of the regular season.

As for Pronger, he missed Friday's practice because his right hand was still swollen and he was having a difficult time gripping a stick. Erik Gustafsson was recalled from Adirondack and will likely take the defenseman's place for one game.

Pronger suffered the injury blocking a shot in Thursday's 4-3 overtime win over the New York Islanders. X-rays were negative, and the injury is believed minor.

The Eastern Conference-leading Flyers are 2-1-1 in their last four games, but they were fortunate to salvage a point in a 3-2 overtime loss to Phoenix, needing a late goal by Claude Giroux to force overtime.

And they blew a two-goal, third-period lead against the Islanders before Andrej Meszaros won it in the closing seconds of overtime.

In Ottawa, the Flyers will play another team on the playoff outskirts. They need to raise their level of play, need to fight off any complacency that threatens a team that sits atop the conference, said Holmgren, the players, and coach Peter Laviolette.

"I think the last few weeks, we've been - I don't want to say lucky - but we need to play with more oomph than we've played with lately," Holmgren said. "The Islanders are a good young team now, and they work and skate. I thought they won a majority of races for loose pucks. I thought they won a majority of the battles for 50/50 pucks - and that has to change if we want to get where we want to be."

Holmgren said the players "recognize it" but that "we need a little bit of an attitude adjustment right now."

"It's not always easy, but we have to find a way," said center Danny Briere, whose line, with Scott Hartnell and Ville Leino, was reunited briefly in the Islanders game. "That's what has got us in a little trouble lately. We have to find that extra jump we had earlier in the season."

Briere admitted that the players need to fight against complacency against a lowly team like the Senators, whom the Flyers have defeated, 5-1 and 6-2. The latter game resulted in 126 penalty minutes last month.

"When you play teams that are getting rid of their players, you just don't know what you're going to see some nights," he said.

The Flyers, in the midst of a stretch when they play several weak teams, have been instructed by Laviolette to keep their sights on finishing with the league's best overall record and gaining the home-ice advantage throughout the playoffs.

Briere said the Flyers also should find motivation in the fact that some of the lowly teams they are playing could sneak into the playoffs as low seeds and meet the Flyers in the first round.

"You want to show them that if they get there, [what] can happen," said Briere, who will have 20 to 25 friends and relatives at the game in Ottawa. ". . . It's about finding a way every night, to get back with the same rage we had early on."

The Flyers have blown a third-period lead or tie in three of their last four games. Excluding empty-net goals, they have been outscored, 8-3, in the third periods of their last five games.

"When you're in the home stretch like we are, with 21 games left - and, hopefully, we're in the playoff mix - you've got to play desperate," Holmgren said. "You've got to win battles, you've got to win races. Those are things we have to fine-tune now. . . . The players have been through it before. I think they'll come around."

"We've played well and given ourselves a nice lead, but we're not playing where we want to," defenseman Sean O'Donnell said. "I would say games 40 to 65 are the real tough ones that, mentally, you really have to push yourself. Those are kind of the dog days of the season. And not being in a playoff fight, the way this team was last year, you have to find ways to keep pushing yourself. We need to make sure in the next 20 games we figure this out and we're on the way up."