BillDineen
Former Flyer / Extinct Dinosaur Advisor
- Aug 9, 2009
- 9,377
- 8,109
I want of course congratulate each and every Flyers Player on the Team and thank them for making us proud, giving us a greatly desired and needed PlayOff Team in Philly and for thrilling us over the course of an extremely entertaining RegularSeason, ending with a ticket to to the PostSeason and the hopes and expectations of a very promising future.
With that I want to give a ShoutOut to Wayne Simmonds... as I think about everyone who to one extent or another crucified him -- so to speak -- for his Icing on a failed OpenNet Goal attempt and suggested that that ultimately took away a Point that could keep the Flyers from gaining the PostSeason... Against Toronto he got that Point back for them in a most needed tying Goal in the last minute of the Game... although IMO it was in no way lost by him, but rather by the failure of the Team as a whole to stop two scored Goals while playing down a man with the Jackets' Goalie pulled... and then today he scored both Goals scored with the Penguins Goalie in net. He has been Mr. Clutch as he led the NHL by two Goals on scoring the Goal that took his Team to OT or won he Game for them and has IIRC something like six Goals over the last Five Games keeping the Flyers in the hunt and getting them over the hump today... Simmer has been a lifesaver this Season and without his clutch play there is a good chance the Flyers would be making reservations to TeeOff times on Monday.
That said... it is a Team Game and I expect the TEAM to again make us proud in the PlaOffs... and for all us Flyers Fans to stand behind them in what hopefully will be another extended run.
The mistake that could have kept the Flyers out of the playoffs has been weighing on Wayne Simmonds' mind for more than 21/2 weeks.
It happened on March 22, in Columbus against the Blue Jackets, with the Flyers leading by two goals and on a power play, with less than two minutes left in regulation, with Simmonds in possession of the puck in his team's defensive zone. He had what he described Saturday as a "brain fart." He thought he could ice the puck, to kill time, without stopping play. He was wrong. Out of the subsequent faceoff, the Blue Jackets scored a shorthanded goal, then tied the game seconds after that, then won it in a shootout minutes after that.
To Simmonds, that moment of carelessness had cost the Flyers a point that could prove crucial in the Eastern Conference standings, and it wasn't until the Flyers' 3-1 victory Saturday over the Penguins was over, until he had scored two goals to help them clinch the conference's eighth and final postseason berth, that he could admit that the play had never left his mind.
"It hurt," he said Saturday. "It hurt a lot. It hurt me a lot. It hurt the guys. That was an opportunity where we could have had two points and not possibly leave it to the last game. So I needed to go out there and play my heart out for the rest of the season."
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"I screwed up," Wayne Simmonds said 18 days later, once he could finally let go. "I had a lot to make up for."
This reminds me of the 07 phillies. A crazy run down the stretch that made making the playoffs feel like the championship.
Hopefully they last a little longer than that team did.