Ray Emery says he'll play nice off the ice. On it, he's still a wild card.
The Philadelphia Flyers don't play again until tomorrow. Until then, enjoy this piece from The Hockey News Archive. Original story written by Ken Campbell.
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Back in the Dead Puck Era, Bob Clarke came up with a rather novel concept on how the NHL could increase goal scoring beyond what it was in the days when Eddie Shore terrorized his opponents and players weren’t allowed to make forward passes. “Get more bad goalies,” was Clarke’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion.
Heaven knows, Clarke and the Philadelphia Flyers went out and did their part. Actually, that’s a bit of a shot. The Flyers tried, they really did. It isn’t entirely their fault that the two guys who were supposed to be stopping pucks for them right about now played for the Ste-Marie Poutrelles Delta (Maxime Ouellet) and the Hamburg Freezers (Jean-Marc Pelletier) last season.
With a few notable exceptions, the Flyers have done almost everything right since they came into the NHL in 1967. They’ve drafted well, won two Stanley Cups, made gobs of money, been a perennial contender and enjoyed a long-term relevance in their marketplace rivaled in the U.S. only by the Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers. But over the past decade, it seems the Flyers have been a team where goalies go to have their careers grounded.
If you can believe it, Roman Cechmanek was actually a pretty darn good netminder during the regular seasons, as his .921, .921 and .925 save percentages with the Flyers attest, but don’t even get former coach Ken Hitchcock started on that guy.
Since the Flyers last went to the Stanley Cup final with a curious tandem of Garth Snow and Ron Hextall in 1997, they’ve tried Sean Burke, John Vanbiesbrouck, Pelletier, Brian Boucher, Cechmanek, Ouellet, Neil Little, Robert Esche, Antero Niittymaki, Jeff Hackett, Michael Leighton, Jean-Francois Houle and Martin Biron, and have won a whole lot of diddly-squat.
Actually, that’s not quite the truth. In addition to being the Toyota player of the month a couple of times in the American League, Niittymaki led the Philadelphia Phantoms to the Calder Cup in 2005. Eight months later, he had three shutouts in six games at the 2006 Olympics and was named the best player – not just the best goalie, but the best player – in the entire tournament.
He won all right. Across the street and across the pond, he was spectacular. But for the Flyers, not so much. That hardly puts him in a minority.
Into that backdrop skates the soon-to-be 27-year-old Ray Emery, a refugee of the Ottawa Senators via Atlant Mytishchi of the Kontinental League. Emery’s agent J.P. Barry began sending tapes out to NHL teams in January, “but it became very clear in the discussions that Paul (Flyers GM Holmgren) was very sincere and very interested. It was pretty clear to me, even by February, that if it could come to pass, Philadelphia would be the best fit.”
So the Flyers allowed Niittymaki and Biron to walk away this summer and revamped their goal crease with Emery and a returning Brian Boucher. Are they any better in goal? Who knows, but the Flyers were obviously convinced they couldn’t win with what they had. And they didn’t have much salary cap room either, so a long-term deal to the likes of Nikolai Khabibulin was a non-starter.
But in case you haven’t noticed, the Flyers are loaded this season. In fact, we made them our pre-season pick to win the Stanley Cup in 2010. By acquiring Chris Pronger in June, they have a top-four defense corps that will be feared for a number of reasons and dynamic forwards that, if they remain healthy, are a dangerous group.
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