Carter Hart has earned the nickname Starter Hart in Philly.Why sit him?The most popular Flyers rookie this side of
Gritty the mascot has certainly turned into their most productive one — and Hart
has sparked a franchise on the brink of a breakup with a gleam of hope for the
future.Phil
Varone
Andrew
Shaw Jersey , Travis Konecny and James van Riemsdyk scored to lead
Philadelphia to its season-high fourth straight win, 3-1 over the Winnipeg Jets
on Monday night.Hart has won all four of those games in goal for the Flyers, a
needed highlight for one of the worst teams in the NHL. He stopped 31 shots
against the Jets and won his seventh game since his late-December call-up.“I
feel comfortable at this level,” Hart said. “The boards are the same, the ice is
the same, just got to go out and play. That’s the approach that I have to
have.”Varone knocked in his second goal of the season midway through the second
period for a 1-0 lead. Jack Roslovic tied it on a deflection.Konecny snapped the
tie on a redirection past Laurent Brossoit with 1:14 left in the second for his
13th goal of the season. Hart made the lead stand up and van Riemsdyk scored
late to help the Flyers build a modest winning streak against four teams with
winning records.“I thought we played fine,” Brossoit said. “I thought we
outplayed them, for the most part. The goalie on the other end had a good
game.”The rest of the league should soon know the goalie on the other end’s
name.Philadelphia opened the second half of the season aware that these could be
the final games together for a core group of veterans that have little to show
for several seasons of solid individual statistics — and no deep playoff run.“We
have good players,” general manager Chuck Fletcher said. “We haven’t been a good
team.”The Flyers entered 14 points out of the last playoff spot in the Eastern
Conference and Fletcher is prepared to make changes by the Feb. 25 trade
deadline. He said Monday that All-Star center and team captain Claude Giroux is
the only veteran he won’t trade. Giroux does have a no-trade clause, but a deal
that involved the popular holdover from the 2010 Stanley Cup Final team might
cause a half-empty Wells Fargo Center to completely thin out.“We have a lot of
good players here, but I would never say never to almost anybody besides
Giroux,” Fletcher said.The Flyers can stick the 20-year-old Hart on the
untouchable
list
http://www.officialcanadiensprostore.com/authentic-adidas-antti-niemi-jersey ,
too.Hart made a spot start in the minors Saturday to stay sharp because the
Flyers’ bye week blended into the All-Star break.“That was good for all of us to
have that week off just to kind of not think about hockey and get a little bit
of time away from the game so we can make a push here,” Hart said.The Flyers
would need an improbable run to make the postseason for the second straight year
— and even the GM isn’t sure it’s in the cards.“We’d like to get some pieces
that could be a part of this for a few years,” Fletcher said.Fletcher has talked
to pending free agent Wayne Simmonds about his role in the rebuild. Philadelphia
could stay the course and try to sign Simmonds to a new deal. But the solid
scorer and team leader with a $3.75 million salary cap hit could net the Flyers
key pieces as they look toward the future.“Clearly in the next few weeks, we
will have to resolve that one way or the other,” Fletcher said.Fletcher won’t
wave the white flag on this season quite yet. But the GM who replaced the fired
Ron Hextall in November knows he wasn’t brought aboard to keep the status
quo.“We’re at a stage where we need a big run here,” Fletcher said.NOTES: Flyers
D Shayne Gostisbehere was a late scratch with an undisclosed injury.UP NEXTThe
Jets play Tuesday at Boston. “I don’t want to make excuses after the break,
everyone’s in the same situation, but we have to be sharper tomorrow,”
defenseman Josh Morrissey said.The Flyers play Thursday at Boston. George Parros
is a busy man early in the Stanley Cup playoffs thanks to a rash of questionable
hits around the NHL.The vice president of player safety’s department suspended
Toronto Maple Leafs center Nazem Kadri three games for boarding Boston forward
Tommy Wingels in what the league called a hit made in the name of retribution
and Los Angeles Kings defenseman Drew Doughty one game for an illegal check to
the head on Vegas forward William Carrier.With two suspensions, two misconduct
ejections for boarding that resulted in injuries, plus Capitals winger Tom
Wilson’s hit to the head that knocked Columbus center Alexander Wennberg out of
the game, it has been a rough start to the playoffs – and there have only been
eight games played. In
1
Authentic
Artturi Lehkonen Jersey ,271 regular-season games, there were a total of
37 game misconducts and 22 suspensions.The NHL has made a concerted effort to
rid its game of fighting and questionable hits, wanting to keep skilled players
on the ice and boost scoring. In the postseason, goals are usually harder to
come by and the adrenaline of the moment brings hard hits that cross the line; a
year ago, Penguins star Sidney Crosby missed a game with a concussion after a
cross-check to the head from the Capitals’ Matt Niskanen.Kadri was tossed from
Toronto’s Game 1 loss at Boston for boarding Wingels, and Blue Jackets winger
Josh Anderson was thrown out of their overtime victory at Washington for a hit
from behind that injured Capitals defenseman Michal Kempny.A game misconduct
will likely suffice for Anderson, but Kadri wasn’t as fortunate and will miss
Games 2, 3 and 4.”I certainly wasn’t trying to hit him when he was down like
that,” Kadri said after Thursday night’s game. ”Obviously, if he’s still
standing up, I think there’s nothing wrong with that, but he ended up falling
and reaching for the
puck
Carey
Price Jersey , and I’m not sure what happened after that.”What happened
was another Bruins goal on the ensuing power play that made it 5-1 in the first
game between the bitter rivals. Down the East Coast, Wilson’s hit on Wennberg
allowed the Blue Jackets to tie the score in a game they won in overtime. Wilson
blamed himself for costing Washington Game 1 by taking a bad penalty at a
critical moment.”I’ve got to be better and maybe pass up on that hit,” Wilson
said. ”We’ve got the lead there so maybe a big hit’s not needed. It’s the
playoffs. Trying to finish your checks, and unfortunately I took a
penalty.”Wilson was suspended two preseason games for interference and then for
the first four regular-season games for boarding but had cleaned up his game
since. Part of that stemmed from meeting with Parros in Calgary in the fall and
educating himself on what’s acceptable and what the NHL looks for.”We had a
meeting, me, him and Parros, and went over videos and just what they were
looking at when he was being considered for suspensions and fines and other
examples throughout the league,” Capitals general manager Brian MacLellan
said.Parros spent almost a decade as an NHL enforcer and finished his career
with 159 fights and 1,127 penalty minutes. When he took over the league’s player
safety department last September, he said he intended to crack down on
”non-hockey plays” that have nothing to do with affecting the course of the
game.Some of the hits may alter series because of the resulting
injuries.Carrier, Kempny, Wennberg and Wingels are all day-to-day with
”upper-body” injuries – the customarily vague description in the NHL – with
their statuses legitimately uncertain moving forward. Columbus general manager
Jermo Kekalainen called Wennberg ”doubtful” for Game 2 Sunday at Washington and
considered it a ”dangerous hit” by Wilson that the league deemed wasn’t worthy
of further
punishment.Doughty
Jeff
Petry Jersey Kids , a Norris Trophy contender and Los Angeles’ top
defender, was suspended for Friday night’s Game 2 against Vegas for what the
league called an avoidable hit to Carrier’s head. Kadri’s hit came after Wingels
crushed Toronto forward Mitch Marner, but the timing and force of the hit made
it worse.”The bottom line is, you always have to be disciplined at all times and
emotions are a part of the game, but it’s got to be controlled,” Maple Leafs
coach Mike Babcock said.Kekalainen disagreed with officials giving Anderson a
five-minute major and a game misconduct for his hit on Kempny, which was
definitely a minor penalty but seemed less egregious than Wilson’s later. That
didn’t stop Capitals coach Barry Trotz from voicing his displeasure with
Anderson’s play.”I thought there’s clearly numbers there,” Trotz said. ”Trying
to get that out of the game.”—
