Flyers hoping Bryzgalov is a great story

ILYA BRYZGALOV loves to tell a good story.

And inside the Flyers' locker room, the $51 million goalie has yet to meet an audience that does not appreciate his humor and candor.

Just a few days ago, beaming from ear to ear, he started weaving his latest tale.

"There's this story," Bryzgalov began with his Russian accent, where stories don't always translate well to English and American culture. "Once, evil met this guy. The guy, this random guy, he chose a chair with a high seat. He always wanted to see things from the top.

"Once, when sitting there, he fell down from the seat and spilled water all over his pants and everything, and he looked ridiculous. Stepping down, he decided that he liked the seat lower."

So, Bryz, where exactly are you going with this?

"When you fall from a low seat, it's not as painful," Bryzgalov responded. "I am new here. I want to take small steps. Let's go step-by-step, day-by-day, and try to build something."

Like it or not, Bryzgalov is already on that pedestal - not only in the Flyers organization, but around the NHL.

When the Flyers open their 44th season tonight in Boston, as they watch the Bruins raise their Stanley Cup banner to the rafters, they will do so with an entirely different organizational philosophy put into practice on the ice.

Paul Holmgren's new experiment starts with Bryzgalov, the league's highest-paid goaltender this season, whose acquisition was the leading domino when the Flyers' roster crumbled last summer. This is the most the Flyers have ever spent on one position in the proud history of their franchise.

Now, with perhaps the best one-two goaltending punch in the league, the Flyers will try to tackle their Stanley Cup drought from a different angle.

"I came here to win," Bryzgalov said. "No other reason. I came here for the long haul."

Chris Pronger was raving about Bryzgalov's resume and pedigree on Tuesday. In addition to injecting life and laughter into the locker room, he has been worth his weight in gold for bringing confidence to others.

"I guess we just went out and got the funniest guys from every team," Bryzgalov said about the Flyers' suddenly bright locker room.

He has not even played a regular-season game for the Flyers, but few names in hockey can quell fears in the crease like Bryzgalov.

For once, goaltending isn't the Flyers' question mark. One or two players won't need to shoulder the weight of an entire team in the blame column, unlike the seemingly last decade-and-a-half since Ron Hextall began to falter.

And that's no disrespect to backup Sergei Bobrovsky or former goalies Brian Boucher, Roman Cechmanek, John Vanbiesbrouck, Tommy Soderstrom, et al.

"The last few years, it was getting old hearing the same stories again and again," forward Danny Briere said. "It was probably even tougher for those goalies, hearing their names mentioned as the concerns for the Flyers.

"It's exciting going into a season where there is really no question mark there. We know who they are and what they will give us. It's a nice change."

For Bryzgalov, 31, it will be a nice change, too. More money. Better living situation. He just settled on a house in South Jersey earlier this week after living in Rittenhouse Square since August. He has a daughter, Valery, who is 7, and a son, Vladislav, who is 5.

He's also finally playing in a true hockey market - something he could not say about stops in Anaheim and Phoenix.

And the geography, as well as the opponents, should pad his already excellent statistics. Instead of back-to-back games in, say, Denver and St. Louis, the Flyers play the bulk of their schedule within a 1-hour flight in the same time zone. That's important for a goaltender who has not played fewer than 65 games in each of the last three seasons.

In front of him, he has the best defense corps in the Eastern Conference - one that will make him look far better than anything he played behind in Phoenix.

With all of those nice perks comes pressure to win. It's a real pressure that is not included on the job descriptions in probably 24 or 25 of the other NHL markets.

"So far, everybody expects for me like every game we're playing during the season that we need to win by a shootout or that we can't give up more than one goal," Bryzgalov said. "That's not going to happen every night. Some nights, yes, it will be like that. Some nights, not. It's hard to predict."

Hard to predict. Hard to reason why the Flyers have waited this long. Starting tonight, that wait is over. This is the starter, in his prime, who the fan base has craved.

"I can't promise everything," Bryzgalov said. "But I can promise that I will be faithful, be honest and work hard."

He might just have another, slightly more magical tale brewing for this season.

ILYA's INKLINGS

If you don't follow Flyers goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov on Twitter (@bryzgoalie30), you're missing out on one of the truly hilarious and honest streams of consciousness of a professional athlete.

Here's the Best of Bryz on Twitter (all spelling and phrasings are his own):

"I saw man today in park, he dressed in women clothes and high hills." - Strolling through Rittenhouse

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"You don't have to go to Amsterdam, we have lots of mushrooms here in Philly." - - Tweeting a picture of a mushroom in the grass on Sept. 13

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"I can't wait to see Lion King in 3D, pumba my hero." followed by "Pumba just saved Simba. Great guy." - Sept. 17

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"We all have to make choice in our lives, I choose to be happy!" - Sept. 20

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Hot chocolate: such nice drink." - Sept. 20

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"Childhood is when you are running from the bathroom in the middle of the night, happy you didn't get eaten." - Sept. 11

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"Choosing the house it's nightmare." - Picking out a house in South Jersey on Aug. 20

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"Today was driving around Moscow city and was amazed by one dog! This dog was crossing the road exactly at pedestrian crossing. What an amazing dog!" - June 20

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"Driving through Brooklyn, I've never seen this side of NY." - Driving to JFK Airport June 18 on the way back to Moscow

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"Dolphin tail heartwarming movie. This is the way the world should be." - After watching the new movie, "Dolphin Tale," on Sept. 24

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For more news and analysis, read Frank Seravalli's blog, Frequent Flyers, at www.philly.com/FrequentFlyers. Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/DNFlyers.