Another 6 Goal Performance

The Flyers have been put in the back seat for the most part in the Philly sports area. The Phillies are fighting for their lives to claw their way back to a World Series title, and the Eagles have hit the halfway point of their season and just reached first place after beating the Giants this past Sunday. However, it may be a good thing considering they lost two of their top forwards and were not playing well the past few weeks. Last night’s 6-2 routing of the Tampa Bay Lightning is their second straight 6-goal performance by the orange and black leading to a very decisive win.

Laliberte scored yet again as the rookie who came off of his first game with a goal anid assist as he continues to do well with Carter and JVR on his line. James Van Riemsdyk moved to the top scoring rookie so far this year with 3 assists last night as he has a total of 13 points (2 G, 11 A). Hartnell punched in another 3-point night along with Carter and Richie who scored twice each last night. This team’s offense is really getting going and I’m starting to like what I’m seeing. The top three lines are scoring threats on every shift at this point, and even the 4th line becomes one as I see them as a huge workhorse for us in getting pucks in deep and controlling the tempo. Ray Emery has also made some outstanding saves recently and has been making the saves he has to. When you have forwards who are scoring, a good goaltender and a solid defensive corps who bends but doesn’t break, you have yourself a good team and hopefully our guys start to work on that confidence and become the dominant team we know they can be.

The team is playing a lot better as a TEAM at this point and we’re starting to get wins under our belt. 15 points with a 7-4-1 isn’t bad heading into the rest of November. We’re banged up but we’re not out, we just need to keep winning these games; especially ones in our conference. We’re sitting at 6th place in the conference right behind Jersey by one point and the Rangers by 3 points. The rest of the teams are all up between 3 and 7 up to the top where Pittsburgh has 22 points. It is going to start getting a lot more competitive in our conference so we need to do the right things to come out with wins on most nights. Next game is this Friday at Buffalo who has been experiencing a decent start to their season.

Injury Updates
Danny Briere hopes to return on Friday for that to face his former team but no say on whether or not he will be ready as it is too early to tell. Gagne had surgery this morning and will miss approximately 6-8 weeks for the two hernias. Ryan Parent re-injured his groin and will sit out for a few days to a week in lieu of Ole-Kristian Tollefsen.