Articles by Bill Meltzer (42)
View image | gettyimages.com Two seasons ago, the Philadelphia Flyers exuded resilience. The club could scarcely have faced more in-season adversity and battled through it successfully. That year, the Flyers established a new franchise record for comeback victories after trailing at some point within the third period. The club won 11 such games. Correspondingly, […]
After getting off to a solid start through their first seven games (4-2-1), the Philadelphia Flyers have played a miserable stretch of hockey that has seen the club drop seven of their last eight games (1-5-2). Taking the good with the bad, here are five early-season trends to keep an eye on in the weeks to […]
Only time will tell as to whether Philadelphia Flyers rookie head coach Dave Hakstol is the right man for the job of leading the personnel with which he's been to work to greater heights than his predecessor, Craig Berube. A proper evaluation is likely to require a couple of years while the organization is in […]
Flyers right winger Jakub Voracek has always been far more concerned with his team's record than his personal statistics. Last season, when he led the race for the Art Ross Trophy — the top scoring player in the NHL — for much of the season, he inevitably responded to questions about his own numbers by […]
Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of talking before the game to Flyerdelphia's Bill Minchin, who was covering his first game from the Wells Fargo Center press box this season. It got me to thinking about my own first few games with credentials, and what a thrill it was. It is not usually my style […]
Kimmo Timonen was not the type of hockey player who drew attention upon himself. He was not a flashy player or a marquee attraction, but was nevertheless an indispensible part of his teams. For his NHL career, Timonen played 1,108 regular season games (117 goals, 571 points) and 105 playoff games (four goals, 35 points) […]
There is a longstanding belief in hockey that the best time to play an elite-caliber opponent is often either very early in the regular season or else at the tail end of the campaign shortly before the playoffs begin. Early on, even the top teams may still need a little time to get various facets […]
Until this summer, Flyers goaltender Steve Mason spent most of his off-seasons playing as a forward in an Ontario ball hockey league and working out on the ice with a group of friends who play professionally in the National Hockey League and other circuits. Coming off a statistical career year in 2014-15 and having played […]
From the time Ron Hextall took over as general manager of the Philadelphia Flyers, he has said that the organization will not rush players to the NHL. He repeated that mantra when the team drafted Ivan Provorov and Travis Konecny with the seventh and 24th overall picks of the 2015 NHL Draft, said it again […]
Many NHL teams use a benchmark of special teams success that is derived by combining their power play and penalty killing success percentages to arrive at an index number. Now with the St. Louis Blues, former Philadelphia Flyers head coach Ken Hitchcock has said that he uses 105 (in any combination) as a target goal […]