Spectrum Memories: Claude Lemieux Still Sucks

Courtesy of Le Journal de Montreal

by Bob Herpen 

Phanatic Hockey Editor 

On this mid-winter evening at the Spectrum, Public Enemy No. 1 Claude Lemieux – like PootieTang – done did it again.

In a crucial Sunday night nationally-televised game between two teams expected to be championship contenders, the two-time Stanley Cup winner and Avalanche winger stole the show from a dynamic teammate and sunk the Philadelphia Flyers with the go-ahead goal in the final minute of regulation of a 5-3 road victory.

To recap: almost eight months earlier to the day, Lemieux took the starch out of a hostile crowd at the Spectrum on a steamy June afternoon and put the New Jersey Devils ahead in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Finals by a 3-2 score. The winning score, seen below as one of the most infamous whiffs in Ron Hextall's storied goaltending career, also staked his club to a 3-2 series advantage.

Once called "The Bill Laimbeer of Hockey" by the Hartford Courant, Lemieux was also called "clutch" long before Justin Williams stamped his indelible mark on multiple playoff Game 7s.

The timing of the goal deflated the host Flyers, who had fought through the frustrating neutral zone trap to erase a 2-0 deficit and tie the game with the sellout throng firmly in their corner. A win could have ensured a chance to close things out in a home-bound Game 7 even in the event of a Game 6 loss on the road.

"I was tied up with (Eric) Lindros and when Marty (Brodeur) made the save and it went into the corner, I just saw a lot of open ice on the right side," Lemieux said of his series-turning score.

"I wasn't sure if I should make a play or shoot. (Petr) Svoboda backed up a little and I fired it. It was lucky."

Instead, two nights later, despite scoring the first and last goals in that Game 6 at the Meadowlands, the Devils rifled home the middle four scores and ensured their first-ever trip to the championship round.

Lemieux, of course, had a hand in that crushing defeat, too.

Flash forward to the calendar year 19-naughty-six. Lemieux landed in Colorado thanks to a series of trades just prior to the start of the regular season that saw fellow contract refugees Steve Thomas (from New Jersey to NY Islanders) and Wendel Clark (from Colorado to NY Islanders) also change locations. deflated the Philly crowd once again.

The stakes weren’t nearly as high, and the goal wasn’t nearly as clean, but it did the job nonetheless. With two Stanley Cup rings plugging his ears, there was no way Lemieux heard the Philly faithful turn on him again.

It's what he does best. Remember all that...unpleasantness...in Montreal?

The dribbler -- another one Hextall should have snagged -- gave the visitors a 4-3 edge and took the starch out of a speed-for-speed, talent-for-talent matchup which featured second-year center and former Flyers first-round draftee Peter Forsberg record a hat trick – including the empty netter which accounted for the 5-3 final in the Avs’ favor.

The player for which he was packaged, Flyers captain Eric Lindros, chipped in with two goals and one assist including the tying score earlier in a frantic, six-goal third stanza.

Drafted No. 6 overall by then-Flyers GM Russ Farwell in 1991, Forsberg made his NHL debut in the Spectrum a little more than a year prior, on Jan. 21, 1995 when the Nordiques helped open the lockout-shortened season. Also there that Saturday afternoon but absent on Sunday night, Avs center Mike Ricci -- one of the other active Flyers also shipped to Quebec in the 1992 Lindros mega deal -- sidelined due to a bad back.

This time, Forsberg made his re-debut in a new uniform for the same franchise and posted the first of his eight career trifectas – accounting for exactly half of his career goal total vs. the Flyers in one evening. The often-injured super Swede went on to record 15 points (6G, 9A) over 15 appearances until signing here to a metric ton of anticipation before the 2005-06 campaign.

If you’re in contention for a division title and a top-two conference seed, it’s better to lose to a non-conference club that’s also competing for first overall and a shot at the President’s Trophy for home-ice throughout the playoffs. The Flyers split that part of the job: beating the eventual 62-win Red Wings but falling to the 47-win Avalanche. 

Colorado *really* needed this one. Coming off a homestand which ended in a tie with Tampa Bay and loss to Hartford, the Avs dropped to 12 points behind Detroit for first place in the West and first place overall.

It’s also best to shore up the home side down the stretch, and the Orange and Black passed muster there, as well. They lost only two more home games from Feb. 11 through the end of the regular season, to the Devils and Bruins, going 10-2-1 in the Spectrum ahead of the playoffs. This loss ended a bad stretch of 2-4-3 on home ice since a rousing win over the Penguins just before Christmas.

Just about the only star-caliber player not involved with the contest was future Hall-of-Famer Patrick Roy. Roy, traded from the Canadiens to the Avalanche two months prior, had a horrendous overall record vs. the Flyers to this point in his career. That dismal mark included surrendering all 7 goals against Philly in both clubs’ season opener at the Forum back in October when he still toiled for the Montreal Canadiens.

Instead, Stephane "I deserve to be a starter in the NHL" Fiset got the nod in net for the visitors and nabbed the win with a 26-save effort. Although a potential Finals matchup between the Avalanche and Flyers never materialized for that season and during the remainder of the era, Lemieux continued his career-long torture game four years later. 

Traded once again due to impending unrestricted free-agent status late in the 1999-2000 season from the Avs back to the Devils, Lemieux was part of the sinister squad which rallied from a 3-1 series deficit in the Eastern finals to beat the Flyers in 7 games and eventually went onto win the second of three Cups in 9 seasons.

Old Time Hockey costs more now than it ever did

by Bob Herpen

Phanatic Hockey Editor

Mike Keenan was Rick Tocchet's first NHL coach, beginning with their respective NHL rookie season of 1984-85. 

Keenan oversaw the first 278 games of Tocchet's illustrious playing career but it took just 44 games for the new boss to become same as the old boss, the one every player on those memorable teams spat a curse at more than once. 

The Christmas Eve Bag Skate of 1984 is legendary and multiple players have mentioned it publicly over the years. After a rousing home win over the Capitals the night before allowed the Flyers to keep pace in the race to first place in the Patrick Division, a planned easy practice the next day ahead of holiday travel turned into a nightmare of epic proportions. Two days later, they laid an absolute stinker in a 6-0 road loss at Washington.

Following a 5-1 loss to Tampa at home on Monday, Tocchet and the Flyers proceeded with a normal routine the following day. On Wednesday, however, facing the first of a back-to-back road stint at Buffalo ahead of a 7:30 pm national TV start, he conceded to the ghost of Iron Mike and declared the team would have a practice at noon instead of a pre-planned day of rest ahead of travel. 

Interesting move for a team looking like and playing like the Walking Dead ever since their 5-2 home win on Jan. 6 against the Anaheim Ducks left them devoid of energy and emotion as a whole and down two additional players: Bobby Brink and Jamie Drysdale. 

Two nights later, it wasn't the power play that doomed an eventual 2-1 overtime setback to the Maple Leafs, but the general lack of power which saw them score the game's first goal but unable to do anything other than bear witness to that slender 1-goal edge melting away in the late stages of regulation and OT. 

Then, down Brink, Drysdale and Travis Konecny on Saturday night, the Orange and Black's burst of brio early on was savagely slapped down by the Lightning in a 7-2 slaughter. Although Konecny returned in the back end of the home-and-home on Monday, no life was detected until the hosts were already down 3-0 in the second period of an eventual 5-1 defeat. 

Worse still, facing 3-and-4-goal deficits, the Flyers expended whatever lifeforce remained in meaningless pissing matches during the entire third period, mostly started by the battling Bolts and joyfully joined in by the hostile hosts. It played out like an entire chapter of Old Time Hockey, where score settling and calling cards in a blowout were more important than, y'know, trying to score and reduce the margin of defeat. 

It added 15 to 20 real-time minutes to a game that should mercifully have ended much sooner than it did. Harp on the bad officiating? Argue with a wall. I get it. a big part of the Tocchet ethos is a callback to what made him a respected player. Win and go full bore to do it. Lose but don't take it sitting down and cause some chaos. 

What's starting to wear already is the lack of any insight into the learning process. When asked point-blank on Monday in the postgame what lessons the young team could learn from these back-to-back embarrassments, Tocchet offered the following word salad:

"I mean, it's a good hockey team over there. It's a measuring stick. You know, you can't get frustrated, you gotta keep working and just do the proper things," he said. "We gotta hold onto pucks. We need some guys ... let's face it, their best players are very good. There's a level we gotta find some of our guys to get to and that's what we're trying to get to, every day."

Courtesy of FoxSports.com

Anyway, the result was inevitable. A tired visiting team made more tired-er by a vigorous practice touched down in a city whose team was justifiably upset at losing their previous game to the 2-time defending Cup champion Panthers late in regulation. 

The Sabres, winners in 12 of their last 14, bolted from the block and could have been ahead 5-0 in the first period. Instead, they settled for a 2-0 margin which was extended to 4-1 after two and closed out at 5-2. 

Among the brain-dead highlights in that one: Trevor Zegras and Konecny sprung on a 2-on-0 break from their defensive blue line that resulted in zero shots on goal after Zegras opted to curl left, deke, then attempt a drop pass to a then-covered TK. Three Flyers including the comedy duo Seeler & Juulsen, standing within 6 feet of Sam Ersson, covering no one, as Vince Dunn scores from atop the crease. 

The vortex also managed to swallow up first-half team MVP and nominal starter Dan Vladar, who left the game with an apparent lower-body injury spotted on a routine save early in the contest. Later updates termed the injury "not serious" but a timetable is still unknown.

"I just think we maybe we've got to ... get our spark, our mojo back a little bit," Zegras said in the Sabres postmortem. "We just got to, I guess reboot our brains a little bit and know that it's a hard league and that you're going to go through these tough stretches."

"We're a pretty young team and I know we've played well up to this point, but we haven't really accomplished a whole lot," he added. "Got to keep the foot on the pedal and just keep going."

Oh Trev. So close I can taste it. Blink once if I'm on the right track.

Onto Pittsburgh. And the same thing happens. 

The hosts pumped home two goals in the first and added another score early in the second before any Flyers answered. It took several minutes but the adrenaline burst arrived and helped carry the club, which had the better of the play until the middle buzzer. 

But it was only just before Rodrigo Abols cut the visitors' deficit to two, instead of right after Egor Chinakhov scored, when Tocchet decided to replace Ersson with call-up Alexei Kolosov. And despite the goal and uptick in energy and puck possession, they still faced a 3-goal hole entering the final 20 minutes. 

Despite promising signs like Denver Barkey adding two assists and his customary solid play with and without the puck along with Matvei Michkov notching a goal and a fight, it didn't matter and the night ended with a 6-3 defeat to a Penguins club on an 8-3-1 run since their 8-game skid prior to Christmas. 

Thanks to the Tribune Review

 There's a matinee tomorrow with the struggling Rangers who will surely have a collective case of the red ass after the Senators put an 8-4 whipping on them at home on Wednesday. Heading into the game, the Flyers have given up a robust 5 goals per over their 5-game skid. 

The only club worse recently, the Blueshirts themselves, at 6.75 GPG against in their last 4 contests. 

Tocchet laid it all bare after the loss last night. He blamed the terrible power play and the lackluster penalty kill. He called out the excessive passing and lack of shooting. He assailed players making bad choices that lead to penalties, bad choices which result from "playing too hard" and being soft in the corners. 

Yet, not a peep of accountability for himself or his coaching staff.

Might be the right time for a Rangers Eve bag skate. That'll teach 'em to keep losing and not learning any lessons.

"There's adversity (that) hit our team and in your career you're going to have adversity. I don't care who you are and (how you improve is) how you deal with it," he added, with no context as to how this patchwork roster can accomplish it.

Remember back in May, when I wrote that hiring Tocchet was a calculated gamble based on nostalgia? Despite the Flyers' above-expected performance in the season's first half, I can't point to anything objective that he's done to help the team win. Just showed two glaring examples of something he's done that put the team into, then failed to break them out of a slump -- right out of the old time playbook -- and might have amplified the main issue behind this current losing stretch. 

When all NHL players adhere to similar, year-round regimens, sweat equity can become a physical and psychological punishment, not an edge. In his time, Keenan was way ahead of the curve on health, exercise and the need to push athletes to their limits, thanks to Pat Croce riding shotgun. It was a key component of the Flyers' youth movement, which often won games in the third period due to that significant edge in fitness.

I don't think it's coddling to let a beaten batch of youngsters facing a stretch of 6 games in 9 days rest in the midst of a losing skid. Tocchet obviously didn't think so, so I hope he's learned a lesson about the proper time to push the pedal to the floor. He'll certainly be given a wide berth to figure it out.

As it stands now, the choice to run the kids down in the midst of a spate of depth-killing injuries, overall malaise and quality conference opponents might be enough of a negative inflection point that could grease the skids upon which another empty April are greased.

On Jan. 6, the Flyers rose to sixth place in the Eastern Conference. Ten days later, they've managed to backslide all the way to 11th place while seeing Washington, Toronto and Pittsburgh race past them. All losses hurt. But these losses coming in the midst of a veritable (bleep) storm hurt more. 

New York may be waiting to settle a score, or willing to engage. Either way, they're playing with house money after team GM Chris Drury admitted a retooling of the roster around younger talent would be underway soon.

Twenty-five days ago, Philly wasted leads of 3-1 and 4-2 at Madison Square Garden before dropping a 5-4 OT result, one which featured Nic Deslauriers illegally checking, then legally abusing, Rangers newbie Brennan Othmann. Thereafter, the Orange and Black embark on a brief road swing, part of going 5 of 6 away from home. 

The smart move would be for Tocchet to hammer home the importance of staying cool and focused on winning the game. The actual move remains to be seen.

Trenton makes another pitch to host minor-league hockey

by Bob Herpen

Phanatic Hockey Editor

Earlier this week, the prospective ECHL franchise intended to relocate from Salt Lake City to the Delaware Valley for the 2026-27 season finally gained a name.

On Tuesday, in a ceremony within the club's home located smack in the middle of all the action in Jersey's capital, the Trenton IronHawks were born.

"Today marks an important milestone as we officially announce our franchise name, the Trenton IronHawks, and prepare to bring a new era of professional ECHL hockey to Trenton," said new team president Bob Ohrablio to a gathered media throng which included city mayor Reed Gusciora and Mercer County Executive Dan Benson. "The hawk symbolizes strength and spirit, while the iron industry and its workers remain vital to Trenton's economy through their grit and determination."

The sale was officially announced in early September, after the ECHL Board of Governors signed off on the transaction. 

The ECHL team in Trenton will be called the Trenton IronHawks pic.twitter.com/h23vFKOAkV

— Kyle Franko (@kj_franko) January 13, 2026

There will be no swap of affiliations for the new Trenton franchise despite its proximity to Philadelphia. It is expected to be the second-level minor team attached to the Colorado Avalanche. The Reading Royals are expected to keep its agreement current with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Minor league hockey last graced the CURE Insurance Arena in 2013 -- the last season the NHL decided to try and implode and whose labor strife delayed the season until late January -- when the Trenton Devils played there during the last of their 6-season sojourn. Prior to that, the club was known as the Trenton Titans who were linked primarily to the Philadelphia Phantoms of the American Hockey League and Flyers. Secondary affiliations once hooked the double-A level franchise to the Islanders and Bridgeport Sound Tigers.

The original iteration of the Titans played from 1999 to 2007 in Trenton, missing out on the postseason only once in eight years and winning the Kelly Cup in 2005 in a 6-game triumph over the Florida Everblades. Head coach of that champion was Middletown, NJ native Mike Haviland, who parlayed that and a previous league title in Atlantic City into a long string of coaching gigs from Division 1 NCAA to the NHL.

The initial franchise rebrand arrived for the 2007-08 season with an affiliation switch north to the New Jersey Devils, but then reverted back to the Titans moniker in 2011, This club made the postseason just once in four years, and not in the two years thereafter when the roster was a grab-bag of never-weres attached to the Flyers and Devils as well as untethered free agents.

The only name of consequence on the Titans' final roster was Scott Wedgewood, who made the leap to Albany in the AHL that season and eventually cracked an NHL roster with the Devils in 2015 before finally sticking to the big league in 2020 with New Jersey. Wedgewood is currently part of the Colorado Avalanche's blistering start to the 2025-26 campaign.

The cancelled 2004-05 NHL season as well as the four-month labor stalemate begun in September 2012 afforded an excellent opportunity to get a feel for the teams and the league itself. However, hockey fans and even those casuals and families to whom ECHL franchises cater, clearly felt different. 

It is clearly a hard sell for a low-level minor-league franchise to gain any kind of semi-permanent foothold in a region where there are major-league options within a 2-hour jaunt. Yet, Delaware-based owners Pro Hockey Partners, LLC are taking the risk.

According to HockeyDB, attendance in Trenton was strong early on but cratered thereafter, with average nightly attendance peaking in the first season of 1999-2000 at almost 7,100 per night and slipping to 3,515 per game eight years later. Same thing for the second stage, with a high of 3,315 per game coming in 2007-08 and bottoming at 2,390 four seasons later. Paradoxically, attendance rose from just over 3,000 per game in 2011-12 to 3,360 in that final turn on the ice. 

CURE Insurance Arena capacity, by the way, is still listed at just a hair over 7,600 seats for hockey. 

The franchise which is relocating, the Utah Grizzlies, are the spiritual brothers with a previous franchise located in SLC which bore the same name. The original Grizz were born as a rebrand from the highly-successful CHL Salt Lake Golden Eagles -- an affiliate of the Calgary Flames whose most famous alumnus might be Theo Fleury -- and played in the now-defunct International Hockey League from 1995 to 2001. 

When the IHL folded after that season, the club was one of a small handful given new life in the AHL. While only lasting four years as a top-flight minor-league team, they were dropped back to the ECHL in 2005 and stayed there ever since. The Norfolk Admirals did the same thing, sort of. After being successful enough and with a consistently large enough fan base in the ECHL to warrant a promotion, the club arose to the AHL in 2000 and stayed until 2015 before its dissolution. The second generation Norfolk team that roams the ECHL today was born from the ashes of the old Bakersfield Condors.

Over the last several seasons calling the Maverik Center in West Valley City home, the Grizzlies average attendance was around half of the 12,600-seat venue. But with the relocation of the nomadic Arizona Coyotes to Utah's largest city three years ago, there clearly wasn't enough room in town for both minor and major hockey. 

What remains to be seen is whether this separation would bring to an end an almost unbroken chain of top-level minor hockey in the city stretching back more than five decades, to the original Golden Eagles in the original Western Hockey League.

CURE Insurance Arena, by the way, is in a not-so-great part of the city, accessed through other not-so-great parts of the city. It is not really close to anything approximating other family-friendly entertainment in the historic locale. 

Funny how the revitalization always packaged with and promised by developers when a new venue is constructed in a depressed area never really arrives.

My first job in hockey was unpaid, as a member of the off-ice stats crew in Reading. We learned from the crack staff in Trenton and we, in turn, taught the newbies in Atlantic City.

The postgames became a tight-knit circle of stats crew, team staff, players and game officials where nothing was off limits and nothing was repeatable in public. Whether fan or worker, you can get a real sense of what life is like on the margins. If players last long enough, they bond with the fans and become part of the community. The lucky few end up putting down roots.

I recall having a seat in the press box at Trenton during the winter of 2013, when a team higher-up called the team's nominal beat writer into the hall between periods for a hush-hush conversation that served as silent confirmation that it would be the curtain dropper for the second version of the Titans. No fanfare for the open secret.

By then, the only selling point was afternoon games aplenty, particularly on non-school winter holidays. Fans -- many of them with children or young adults in tow -- showed up early but left as soon as they could, day or night. 

If Trenton couldn't really work in its original formation with bitter rivals Reading and Atlantic City nearby along with favorable scheduling that featured these clubs on the regular, how could it survive and thrive now? That may be a loaded question. 

The Boardwalk Bullies drew flies and the disembodied voice of Bert Parks despite winning clubs and a Kelly Cup title because historic old Boardwalk Hall was apparently less of a a selling point than Grant's Tomb. The Royals somehow keep hanging on despite Sovereign Center roughly one-third to two-thirds full at best 25 years on and affiliations that switched from the Kings to the Capitals to the Flyers. 

It seems to be part and parcel of the process at this level to shuffle the deck every couple years, try one location then cut-and-run when the going gets tough. It's better than a bust-out. The ECHL made its bones in the late 90s and early 2000s by getting ahead of the NHL's Sun Belt expansion by setting up shop in a more than a dozen southerly locations. Only a precious few remain. They also failed in mid-size cities that traditionally welcomed minor hockey while also trying and failing and trying again in other markets like Dayton, Toledo, Indianapolis, Atlanta and Wichita. 

"The arrival of the Trenton IronHawks is an exciting moment for our city," Gusciora said at the introductory conference. This team brings new energy to the CURE Insurance Arena and creates opportunities for residents, visitors and local businesses alike." 

It is unknown at this point when the Trenton club's schedule for next season will be announced but the club already has a website in place where all team-related news will land.

Best anyone can say at this point is, go while you have the time. Enjoy it while it lasts.