I attended the Leafs-Flyers exhibition game on Friday night at the Air Canada Centre, and it featured a little emotion, in terms of some scraps, but they were really more like wrestling matches, where the major maneuver was the sweater tug. There was even a punch or two that were thrown and landed. The best hit of the night, was the Flyers Darroll Powe on Dion Phaneuf, as he absolutely flattened the Leafs captain in the first period. The second best hit of the evening was in the third period, when the Flyers Jody Shelley caught Toronto’s Joey Crabb with his head down,and leveled him with a shoulder check under the chin. Much to the relief of their anxiety filled fans, Toronto even managed to score a power play goal, with former Blackhawk Kris Versteeg getting his first goal of the exhibition campaign. A little more than a minute later, the Leafs scored again, as Phil Kessel took advantage of a lot of traffic near the front of the Flyers net to make the score 2 – 0. As it turned out, the Leafs blew a 3-1 lead in the third period and lost to the Flyers in a shootout 4-3. While it is the pre-season, and the games are for experimentation by the coaches, as well as conditioning for the players, it would be difficult to ignore that the Leafs are a team that has had trouble at times, holding on to leads over the last couple of seasons.
It was a surprising to see a small turnout by some Flyer fans, at the game. I know that Philly fans are pretty intense with a passion for all of their teams, but I never imagined that they would show up in any number for a pre-season match. A trip to the Stanley Cup finals the previous season, probably leads to that. The Flyers have been the best of all the expansion teams that ever came into the NHL, in terms of their consistency with competitive teams. It has been a very rare occurrence, when Philadelphia has not had a team that was at least average, if not one that can make a run in the Stanley Cup playoffs. They almost always play in front of a sold out stadium, whether it was their original home, the Spectrum, or their second facility, now known as the Wells Fargo Center. Last season’s Flyers, were a major disappointment in the regular season, as most hockey experts predicted that Philadelphia would finish near the top of the Eastern Conference. They made it into the playoffs on the last day of the regular season, and their goalkeeping, led by Michael Leighton, helped them get to the finals. The Flyers have almost always managed, to maintain some of the toughness that has been part of their image since the days of the “Broad Street Bullies”, where a combination of tremendous skill, plenty of intimidation, and exceptional goalkeeping from Hall Of Famer Bernie Parent, were the key factors in Philadelphia’s back to back Stanley Cup wins, in 1974 and 1975.
I was pleased to see West Ham United, and manager Avram Grant, get their first Premiership victory of the season, and silence some of the many critics who have doubted his ability to strategically manage a team, that needs some genuine coaching or tactical input. In the Hammers 1-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur at Upton Park on Saturday, in front of 34,190 anxious supporters, Grant established that he could lead an inferior team, and one with significant injury woes, to a win over a stronger side. I don’t really understand those, who suggest that in his past managerial roles with Chelsea in 2007-2008, and last season with Portsmouth, that all he did was manage someone else’s team, and didn’t really impact the club. His Chelsea squad made it to the final game of the Champions League in Moscow in May of 2008, losing to Manchester United, after a slip on wet turf by John Terry on a penalty kick, cost the Blues what would have been their first title ever in the Champions League. That’s as far as the club has ever gone, in their entire history of that competition. Yes, the Blues were a very good team that Grant inherited from Jose Mourinho, “The Special One”, as he refers to himself, but they haven’t made it back their since. As for the Pompey, the Israeli took over a team that was in disastrous shape financially, had no funds to bring in better talent, and was close to relegation and receivership, right from the start. Factor in a severe injury problem, and Grant should have earned Manager of the year honors, for guiding the Fratton Park based Portsmouth, to the FA Cup final, and a good effort in a hard fought game at Wembley, against Premiership Champions Chelsea, the same team that Grant guided so effectively the year before. So he’s led a very good team to a championship game, and done the same with a team that was doomed to go nowhere, other than to fall into bankruptcy and relegation. What else is it that they want from him ? It seems that because he doesn’t deliver great sound bites, and isn’t a smooth talker with a sense of humor, the media tends to discount him as a manager. I hope the Hammers continue to climb the ladder in the Premiership, so Grant can finally get the respect that he should have been given already.