The phrase “baptism by fire” refers to a soldier’s first experience coming under enemy fire in battle. It’s the best way I can describe opening night for the 2011-12 Philadelphia Flyers, who will kick off the season tonight against the Stanley Cup winning Boston Bruins.
Only five forwards from last season’s division-leading team remain, and one of them is currently suspended for five games. This offseason was as about as tumultuous as you can get in the NHL, and the Flyers are now relying on the hope that a “potpourri” offense balanced with a deep back end is enough to win the Stanley Cup.
For the offense to succeed, young stars James Van Riemsdyk, Claude Giroux, Wayne Simmonds, Jakub Voracek will all have to take their respective games to the next level. Jaromir Jagr will have to survive a grueling 100+ game schedule after spending three years in the KHL. Rookies Matt Read, Brayden Schenn (when he is called up in about two weeks), and Sean Couturier will have to learn very, very quickly how to play smart and competitively in the NHL.
Zac Rinaldo will have to take his meds.
There really is no way of predicting how this team will perform. One has to hope that the preseason and training camp provided enough time for players to develop chemistry with each other and that everyone has bought into coach Peter Laviolette’s system.
While the offense is ultimately built for the future, the defense and goaltending are really built to win now. The tandem of Sergei Bobrovsky and Ilya Bryzgalov should perform well, despite the possibility that they may facing more shots on net after all the roster changes.
The defensive corps of Chris Pronger, Kimmo Timonen, Matt Carle, Andrej Meszaros and Braydon Coburn hasn’t changed in a year, and rightly so. As for the addition of Matt Walker to the starting six, I see no issues with it in the short term. Having successfully cleared waivers, the Flyers have thirty days to decide what to do with him before he has to clear waivers again. He wasn’t given much hope entering the preseason due to the size of his contract, but he arguably earned the sixth defenseman position over Andreas Lilja.
The quality of the special teams’ units may reverse this season. The powerplay has been phenomenal all preseason between the additions of Jagr and Simmonds, but the loss of Blair Betts to the waiver wire is going to hurt the penalty kill much more than people realize. Talbot and Nodl are good PKers, but Read is still a question mark as a one-to-one replacement of Betts.
I’ll say it again- this season is baptism by fire. I have faith in Pronger that they won’t get burned.
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