The Carolina Hurricanes take on the Philadelphia Flyers tonight, and let me just "objectively" say that I hope the Flyers "Fly Away" back home with a loss! The Flyers are riding a 2 game losing streak including a 6-2 beatdown by New Jersey, (when Martin Brodeur won his 500th game), on Saturday night. The Canes are coming off a 2-1 win over the Panthers also on Saturday night, but lost the 2 games previous to that in a bad way to Tampa and Atlanta. Carolina is 6-3-1 at home and 6-4-0 over their last 10 games. The Flyers are 5-6 on the road and 5-4-1 over their past 10. The last time that these teams met, the Canes played very well but ended up losing in OT, 3-2.
Look for Cam Ward between the pipes for the men in red, and Marty Biron to be there for the orange and black. The Flyers leading scorer over the past couple of years, Simon Gagne will not play, but they have many other weapons to look out for including Daniel Briere. The big question for Caniacs is whether or not Erik Cole will play. John Forslund is reporting that he is 50/50 for tonight, but in my opinion the odds are longer than that. Cole didn't practice yesterday and left practice early with an injury the day before. It just seems to me that one should error on the side of caution, rather than rush coming back. Besides, how effective can he be if he's not at 100 per cent? If he does play, I wouldn't expect to see a lot of hits or rushes out of him, but who knows? Nic Wallin came back early and played very well on Saturday night. Okay, maybe Cole should play tonight, what do I know? One thing I do know is that Scott Walker will not play tonight, although he continues to make progress in practice.
Both teams are rested and are looking to make a statement tonight, it should be a good one. Game time is at 7!
Lenny Kravitz