“You have to win on the road to win a Stanley Cup,’’ Hartnell said. Scott Hartnell said he recalls the Los Angeles Kings winning 10 in a row on the road when they won the Stanley Cup, so it can be done. It (the playoffs) is not going to be easy.’’ “We wanted to get home ice, that was our goal,’’ Claude Giroux said. So the Flyers will start the playoffs on the road, regardless of the opponent. The New York Rangers clinched second place by defeating the Buffalo Sabres 2-1. The loss means the Flyers can finish no higher than third place in the Metropolitan Division. Tied 1-1 after two periods, Tampa picked up goals from Richard Panik (4:33), Eric Brewer (9:43) and Steven Stamkos (14:14) to get the win at Tampa Bay Times Forum. That's my game.TAMPA - With a chance to stay alive in the chase for home-ice advantage in the upcoming playoffs, the Flyers once again played poorly in the third period Thursday night and lost to the Lightning 4-2. Or, as he explained afterward: "I was finishing my check. The point is, what happened on Tuesday - Downie absorbed a hit along the boards during an exhibition game against the Ottawa Senators, immediately lost his cool, went looking for someone to punish, and wound up leaving his feet and levelling Dean McAmmond with a shot to the head that left him unconscious on the ice, concussed for the second time in a few months, his career perhaps in jeopardy - came as a surprise to absolutely no one who has followed Downie's hockey life. In the extreme, there are plenty of examples of the exploitation of extremely damaged, socially maladjusted young men - as in the Mike Tyson story. But the extreme violence of football makes good use of them as well (one big difference: the penalty for "losing it" during a football game, the way it hurts a team's chances, tends to keep all of that aggression within an approved framework).Īnd though the guys who actually fight for a living, boxers and martial artists, can be cool and rational inside the ring and out, they still need to be willing to cross a line that most of us won't. It's not only hockey - though because hockey continues to allow players to enforce their own extra-legal "code," because it tolerates fighting and intimidation tactics and because it doesn't explicitly prohibit shots to the head, it has a particular need for those willing to do what would get you arrested in any other forum. The uncomfortable truth, though, is that what might make you troubled in other circumstances and what might make you dangerous on the street or in a barroom, can make you all the more valuable in sports. There were mitigating, human-interest circumstances, the fact that he persevered despite a hearing impairment, and especially the trauma of his childhood, when he saw his father die in a car accident.īut watching Downie play, watching him occasionally snap, you couldn't help but wonder what was going on in his head. Sure he tends to cross boundaries - bullying a teammate and fighting with him in practice while a member of the Windsor Spitfires losing it on the ice several times and being suspended. To stick at that level, he'd have to show them something else. The hockey skills that were enough to make him a scorer in junior hockey probably wouldn't carry over to the NHL. ![]() ![]() In camp with the Flyers this fall, Downie is life and death to make the team.
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