Ryan O'Halloran is on the prowl at K-Plex so I could trek up I-95 last night to spend a day with the Flyers at their practice facility in Voorhees, N.J. There is something about this state and my car not being able to find hotels regardless of which Internet directions service I use. Tarik and I drove around for about a half hour trying to the find our hotel in Newark earlier this season, and I struggled mightily with the hotel in Deptford last night.
Here were the forward lines at the beginning of practice:
Hartnell-Briere (in a white jersey with a red cross on it, and he's not out there anymore)-Prospal
Lupul-Richards-Thoresen
Upshall-Carter-Knuble
Cote-Umberger-Dowd (Umberger replaced Briere later)
Kapanen-Tolpeko-Downie
The defense pairings are:
Timonen-Coburn
Modry-Kukkonen
Parent-Jones
Hatcher (like Briere trying to return from injury)
UPDATE: Briere left practice about halfway through, and Flyers coach John Stevens said afterward that was the plan. It also was the plan for him to be ready to play Friday night at Verizon Center. Defenseman Derian Hatcher was not as sure about his availability for Game 1, but he said he expects to play at some point in the series. The big mystery up here is defenseman Jason Smith, who did not practice and is out with an upper-body injury.
I'll have a story in tomorrow's paper about how the Caps and Flyers are similar in many ways (like how they improved greatly from last year and have talented young cores to build around for years to come), but also pretty different in how they went about retooling their rosters. Flyers GM Paul Holmgren was pretty creative in building this team and deserves a lot of credit for how quickly he made it happen.
