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Keith Primeau was worried. The Flyers' captain believed he was part of a very good team at the end of last year, a feeling that was borne out by the first leg of the 2003-04 season.
Do you remember November? The Flyers played 12 games. They didn't lose any of
them. Their 10-0-2 record for the month gave them a head start they wound up
needing very badly. A couple of points here or there and they might be going
on the road for the second round of the playoffs this week.
Two things happened to that team: injuries and trades. One led to the other, but both added up to serious concern for Primeau.
"I thought our team had balance, depth and chemistry," Primeau said
after yesterday's practice. "Those things are hard to attain. So I was
really worried when we began making changes."
There are two ways to go when a player gets hurt. Sit tight and wait for him
to get back, using kids from the Phantoms to fill in if necessary. Or try to
replace the departed player through a trade.
That means change on a couple of levels. There's a new player where the injured
player was, and a healthy teammate or two leaves in the trade.
For the Flyers, this year, the change was revolutionary. General manager Bob
Clarke took the aggressive approach in almost every case, but that wasn't new.
Clarke has always been quick to move players around. The radical departure from
form was in the players he acquired.
Danny Markov. Alexei Zhamnov. Vladimir Malakhov.
Notice a pattern? Ov course you do.
"Getting three Russian players," Primeau said, "is something
we hadn't seen in this locker room in a long time."
That's "long time" as in forever. It has long been assumed that the
Flyers had some kind of bias against Europeans, especially those from the former
Soviet bloc countries. The truth is that the bias extends throughout the NHL
and comes from the league's Canadian roots.
Simply put, the equation goes something like this:
Canadians = Tough.
Europeans = Soft.
Such obvious prejudice can't still be going on, can it? Not out in the open,
right? Think again.
After the Flyers eliminated the New Jersey Devils Saturday, ESPN hockey analyst
Barry Melrose was asked to assess their chances to win it all. Melrose, a former
NHL head coach, wasn't optimistic.
"All of their defensemen are Europeans," Melrose said, adding that
they might not be tough enough to withstand the pressure in the later rounds.
Somewhere, Rush Limbaugh and Al Campanis smacked themselves on the forehead:
Russians! Why didn't I think of that?
It was poetic justice when Markov scored the series-clinching goal Saturday,
with assists from Zhamnov and Malakhov no less. And it was Zhamnov who scored
the first goal against Martin Brodeur in Game 5.
But it goes deeper than that. With his previous NHL teams, Markov established
a reputation as something of a maniac. He'd break his nose, take stitches, and
be back on the ice the next period.
"If we had 20 more guys like that," Phoenix teammate Claude Lemieux
once said, "we'd win 90 percent of our games. He's one of the toughest
guys I've ever played with."
Here, Markov plays with Primeau, who returned from a nasty concussion to dominate
the Devils in the first round, and Jeremy Roenick, who twice bounced back from
brutal facial injuries this season and has been as physical as ever.
And Markov plays with Malakhov, who missed less than three weeks after his jaw
was broken by a puck on March 18.
These are tough, tough people - regardless of their place of birth.
"They have fit in so well," Primeau said of the three Russian players.
"There was this notion that the world championships were more important
to Europeans in general. I think that's become a fallacy."
Primeau was worried as he watched players such as Justin Williams and Jim Vandermeer
depart. He was worried as new players came in. Not because of their nationalities,
but because it would be tough to re-create that sense of team after so much
change.
Late in the regular season, it was fair to wonder whether there had been too
much change. Roles were in flux as Primeau and Roenick returned from their serious
injuries. The team looked much less like a contender in March than it had in
November.
Primeau's worries evaporated with the New Jersey Devils. These are not the same
Flyers who ruled November. The question is whether they have a chance to be
better, to go further, to make a real run at the Stanley Cup after all the change.
Ov course they do.