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Parent, Betts return; Jones gone for good
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For the Flyers' final home game of the NHL's 2009-10 opening month they will have two unsung heroes back in their line-up.
Blair Betts, a training camp invitee and NHL veteran, earned himself a contract during training camp. He will once again fill his role at fourth line center this Saturday against the Carolina Hurricanes.
The Flyers went 3-0-0 to start the season with Betts in on the roster. Since he went down the team has not looked nearly as good.
Though you cannot blame the team's lack of runaway success early on to the injury to Betts, he does fill a very important void upon his return. When with the team he excels at the penalty kill. This allows more offensively gifted forwards such as Mike Richards, Jeff Carter, and Claude Giroux to focus on their even strength game. Betts will never get much credit outside of the locker room for his importance to the team, but for every amount of energy the Flyers' elite scorers spend killing penalties, they have that much less in the tank late in the third period with the game on the line.
“I think Blair is a great penalty-killer,” said John Stevens. “He just wills his way to get in front of the puck, he’s really competitive on faceoffs, he thinks the game defensively, you can play him against anybody, and he really works hard and skates well.”
Ryan Parent, who went down later in the month to a lower-body injury, performs much the same role for the defense that Betts provides for the offense. Without him in the lineup, the bottom pairing of Danny Syvret and Ole-Kristian Tollefsen was limited drastically in their ice-time. The Flyers' big four, Chris Pronger, Kimmo Timonen, Braydon Coburn, and Matt Carle, were playing that many more extra minutes.
For now Parent will replace Coburn on the opposite side of Timonen since Coburn has not been playing very well recently.
“[Timonen and Coburn have] had a little bit of trouble there, and I think sometimes you switch it up a little bit,” Stevens mentioned while explaining his new pairing. “We’ll give Ryan some time there. It was a good pairing last year.
“I think [Coburn] will see some time there, certainly in special teams, and we could see a mixture of different pairs as we move through the hockey game.”
Right now, whether it is Coburn or Parent in the top four, the Flyers have options. The options may be a little less than expected now that defenseman Randy Jones was claimed by the Los Angeles Kings off of waivers though.
Jones obviously has a history of let-down while wearing a Flyers' jersey. He has not played well since returning from an injury he suffered during the 2008-09 preseason in either the NHL or the AHL. The move to place him on re-entry waivers was clearly sparked by the loss of Simon Gagne indefinitely. Gagne's cap hit, now on LTIR, gave the Flyers plenty of options. Jones was their first choice, but the move was an interesting one due to the consequences involved.
Because the Los Angeles Kings claimed Jones off of re-entry waivers, the orange and black are responsible for half of his $2.70 million cap hit. Though it would not have hurt them with Jones in the line-up since he could have just been sent down later, once Gagne returns the organization will have to struggle to remain cap compliant.
Unfortunately, Gagne is not expected back any time soon. His injury right now appears to be much like the injury to Danny Briere last season. Nothing but patience will get him back on the ice.
Sunday marks the last game for the Flyers in October. If they lose their record will be at .500 going into a much easier November schedule. Coach John Stevens though, is taking every possible step to get the team back on the right track.
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