Around the Rink

by Bob Herpen
The Phanatic Magazine

Note to Stevens: Coaching Required

This past weekend was pure luck, nothing more.

On Saturday, the Bruins pretty much stopped taking the play to the Flyers
after going up 3-1, and the flukiest of all fluky bounces off a wild shot from
Randy Jones in overtime proved to be the game-winner.

On Sunday, the club's personal punching bag (Atlanta) decided to mail it in
for the first 46 minutes and watched Philly take a 3-0 lead before snapping
back and almost tying the game.

A win is not just a win anymore, my friends, not in the final two months. Not
when the New Jersey Devils have snapped back to attention after riding the
wave from the signing of Brendan Shanahan.

Since the ageless wonder came out of the mothballs in mid-January, Los Diablos
have merely gone on a 10-2-0 tear to rise from fourth to first in the
Atlantic, a comfortable six points ahead of the Flyers as of Monday.

In an 82-game season, it does pay to be lucky. But it pays even more to be
good, and the Flyers haven't been since the turn of the year.

Injuries or not, simplified system executed well or not, if the Flyers
continue to play as inconsistently as they have since the All-Star break, they
will play themselves out of a decent seed. And maybe out of the postseason
altogether.

Sounds like last year, doesn't it?

Maybe Martin Biron's distracted play means he's saving it for the end of the
season. Maybe that's the lessons the rest of the team took away from last
March and April - you need to turn it on late just when everyone else is
gassed - and come out ahead.

Whatever the reason, John Stevens has to assume more control over his club and
he needs to do it now. He's gotta be the one cracking the whip in practice,
skating and drilling his club to death until they get the message that
February is no time to take mental vacations and that stupid penalties will
cost.

One thing that is within his grasp at this point is the way to handle Biron.
Antero Niittymaki has played well in games where he's not facing the
Thrashers, and keeping him in net more down the stretch is a sure way to
reestablish Biron's focus and test his sense of professional pride.

For the players, the suggestion that they be fined or otherwise punished for
taking dumb penalties was laughed off last week, according to several sources.
It's a perfect opportunity for Stevens to do something drastic and snap his
boys back to reality.

Otherwise, all that's left to say is "Congratulations to the New Jersey
Devils, Atlantic Division champions."

Earth to Forsberg: Give It Up

Too often, an athlete's ego and drive blinds him to certain facts
of life obvious to others around the athlete. A simple fact of life in any
business, even professional sports, is that you rarely get to call your own
shots on the way out.

Peter Forsberg is sadly now one of the marked.

Forsberg "officially" ended his "comeback effort" for this season last week
after he didn't like the way his surgically-repaired ankles responded to
skating.

I don't know what he's waiting for, but it's a pretty good indicator that if
you don't feel comfortable in a boot specifically molded to your exact
contours and foot size after successful surgery, it's never going to be right.

Don't get me wrong, this may end up to be a story with a similar ending
like the one Claude Lemieux is writing in San Jose after 5 1/2 seasons away;
however, while Lemieux was clever enough to inflict damage on others,
Forsberg's cannonball-like playing style has wrecked his own body.

It looks like the parabolic path of the tail end of Foppa's career is going to
look more like Mario Lemieux than Steve Yzerman: a rousing comeback at an
unknown future date suddenly derailed by another freakish set of injuries
related to previous ones.

He has played in a grand total of 66 NHL games over the last three years. That
gangbuster start to his last comeback with Colorado in March ended in
frustration with groin problems as the Avs collapsed in the playoffs.

Beyond his competitive desire, Forsberg doesn't have anything to prove
anymore. He has a Calder Trophy, Art Ross Trophy, Hart Trophy, two Stanley
Cups and an Olympic Gold medal. What else can there be to push him except pure
hubris?

And that's infinitely more dangerous than any physical malady.

Celebrating the Underrated

In the spirit of the month, I decided to look up a list of all current
players of African descent. There are an all-time high of 26 skating in the
league or in the AHL affiliates of NHL clubs: 16 forwards, eight defensemen
and two goaltenders.

Below that was the list of former players. Names like Willie O'Ree, Grant Fuhr
and Sandy McCarthy stood out for obvious reasons, but I managed two whom I
genuinely forgot about - two players from the 1980's who made their mark not
only for their background, but also for their skill and toughness - Tony McKegney
and Dirk Graham.

McKegney was an African-Canadian who was adopted and raised in Montreal. He
was a second-roiund pick of Buffalo in 1978 who broke in with the Sabres later
that year. In the most stable stretch of his career, from 1978-83, McKegney
scored 127 goals with 268 points in 363 games.

Over the next eight seasons, though, he spent time with six teams including
two stints with the Quebec Nordiques. His longest stretch came in parts of
three seasons with the North Stars (1984-87), scoring 15 times in his lone
full season there, and his best statistical campaign overall happened with St.
Louis in 1987-88, with 40 goals and 78 points.

In parts of 13 years in the NHL, McKegney posted 320 goals and 639 points in
912 total games, collecting 20-or-more tallies in nine seasons.

Graham made his bones as a tough, leadership-minded player as a fifth-round
choice of Vancouver in 1979. It took him 10 years from the start of his junior
career in Saskatchewan to reach the NHL, done in 1984 with Minnesota.

He finally hit his stride in his last year with the North Stars in 1986-87,
scoring 25 goals with 54 points on a last-place club. Midway through the next
season, Graham was shipped to Chicago and his career took off. Then-head-coach
Mike Keenan recognized Graham's ability to persevere and lead a down-on-its-
luck club led to his being named captain, a post he held through his
retirement at the end of the lockout-shortened 1995 year

A 33-goal, 78-point year in 1988-89 was his best statistical year for a
fourth-place team, and he recorded 219 goals and 489 points over 772 career
games, but his value with the "C" superseded his numbers.

As his mother was half of African-Canadian descent, it made Graham the first
player in the NHL of such ancestry to be named a team captain. During that
tenure, the Hawks had long playoff runs in 1990, 1992 and 1995, bowing in the
Stanley Cup Finals to Pittsburgh in 1992 and in the conference finals the
other two years.

Hearts on Fire

Five years ago this coming Saturday, the Flyers topped the Rangers, 6-2, at
Wachovia Center in what is known in some circles as the Valentine's Day
Massacre.

Patrick Sharp (remember him?) posted his first-ever multi-goal game and won a
fight, Donald Brashear pounded Matthew Barnaby and Chris Simon, while Danny
Markov got a game misconduct for beating the daylights out of an unwilling Dan
LaCouture.

Oh yeah, the Flyers built a 6-1 lead after two periods and cruised to victory,
one game removed from a contest where Keith Primeau was lost with a concussion
and Jeremy Roenick suffered a broken jaw and other facial cuts when hit
squarely in the face with a puck.

Let's hope the club has something similar up its sleeve for Saturday's matinee
against the sinking New York Islanders.