Latest / Hattrick's Unofficial Flyers Podcast / Episode 9: Flyers vs San Jose| March 21, 2026

Transcript

Episode 9: Flyers vs San Jose| March 21, 2026 · Hattrick's Unofficial Flyers Podcast

• Rick Mullen: Hey everyone, welcome to Hatrix unofficial flyers podcast. I'm Rick Mullen. I'll be hosting the show tonight and yo, the Flyers played the San Jose Sharks today and they actually won four to one. It's the first time since October that the Flyers have won three games straight. It was a good game, sort of. They had their problems. You know, it was a much tighter than you know what the scoreboard showed. However, they found a way to come up with a big win. They closed off their West Coast trip with a three game sweep. So they have six total points going back home. you know, overall, it was a really good, really, really good trip at West. ⁓ played fantastic today. He is getting better and better every game. He did score a goal. And he is showing what the Flyers needed him to show. If he was playing like this all year, his name never would have came up in trade rumors because the Flyers would never have even thought about moving this guy. Owen Tippett is the heart and soul of this team presently. He's going out every single game and his speed is creating. He is hitting hard. He is skating the puck down the ice. and he's one of the only guys to actually do it. You know, as fast as Zegras is, he struggles when he gets in the zone. I think he's too small. He's too light. He's not strong enough. He gets knocked off the puck easily. But Owen Tippett is an absolute bear. He's out there throwing big hits and he's skating this puck up. He's getting shots. He's actually starting to do some moves. He's being creative. He's doing a lot of things that we wanted to see Owen Tippett do. So kudos to Owen Tippett. I hope he only gets better and better from here out. And, you know, let's talk about the game for a little bit. Garrett Wilson, he comes in, he fights Reeves right away. He drops the gloves and he goes at it and was pretty fair, fair fight. I wouldn't say really one or the other one. They threw some, they threw some and really, honestly, I don't, if you look at the replays of it, it didn't look like many hit if any landed. So, but he, he dropped the gloves with Reeves and you know, Reeves is a heavyweight here in the NHL. So it was really, really good to see. Great game. Great game. think Kate's gotten a flight today. He actually was duking it out with somebody. It was a pretty spirited game. Celebrini was flying all over the ice and you know, the kid's going to be amazing. He's 19 years old, I believe. And he looks really fantastic. He's a hell of a pickup for San Jose and He's only going to get better and better. Mishkov had a nice game today. You know, he's still struggling from time to time. You see, he's making some some bad decisions. He's still not skating fantastic. But when he does get the puck, he for the most part, if he makes 10 good passes, you know, or he has 10 opportunities to make good passes, he'll hold back. Get eight of them off and two of them are like picked off. And you're thinking, man, why do you throw that over there? But you can't. really hold that against them much. If you don't try, you're never going to create that big play. And I think a lot of the times our flyers are just like that. That's half the problem. They're taught they're like, hey, you're going over the blue line, you dump it in, you don't take a chance going across the ice, you don't go backwards with the puck, you go forwards. And a lot of times it's boring hockey. It's like forward if someone's there, and that's it. But Mitch has that Creativeness to him where he gets the puck he slams on the brakes where he does a little curl and he looks for that That guy dragging the play, know following up behind and he makes little saucer passes and he finds some open space and I'll throw the puck there because he knows like a flyer can get to it. So it's nice to see You know him creating those opportunities and helping his line mates out trying to get some ⁓ some shots on that or some cycling going so Overall was a really good game. know, the Flyers were hemmed in their zone a little bit. It was like 28 shots to San Jose's 25. So 28 for the Flyers, 25 for San Jose. Hits were 23 Flyers, the 19 San Jose. Penalty minutes were 18 Flyers, 20 San Jose. Faceoff, San Jose had 53.4 and the Flyers had 46.6. So pretty even stats. No one really blew anyone out in either category. But the faceoffs kind of for the Flyers were probably had Kutz out again. Barki was out again. He didn't play. So it took Kutz out of the faceoff obviously. And you kind of expect losing one of your better faceoff takers to not have such a great faceoff percentage. But very good game. Let's bring it home now and let's hope we can keep this going. You know, the Flyers are not out of it. it's actually pretty amazing that they're still in it. I keep ⁓ thinking, okay, today's the day where you're going to look at this and think, ⁓ okay, they're out. just lost, they're out. ⁓ But that's not happening. You know, the Flyers are doing well right now. They have what, I think 80 points? ⁓ The Islanders have 83, Columbus is at 80, what 85, Pittsburgh's at 86 and Carolina's at 94. You know, so the Flyers are very slowly creeping up. You know, they're, they're doing really well. So recap another game. Good game. everyone looked really solid. Garrett Wilson did what he had to do. He dropped the gloves and it was good to see it. And let's hope we can carry that over to the next game. So, you I had talked to you guys before about covering a book that I'm reading and, ⁓ I know if this will mean as much to some of the newer Flyer fans, but some of the older Flyer fans from the 70s, know, lot of this strikes home. So I read this book and it's by Ed Groover. It's called The Games That Saved the NHL. ⁓ really good game or book. It's about the Flyers when they played the Russians back in the Super Series of 76. And pretty amazing. I remember I was six years old back then. Love the Flyers. I remember it a lot. I still watch the game in a kid's perspective. So as an adult reading books or articles or watching the games again, mean a little more now because I understand more. But I remember being six years old. And I remember always going to school and back then it was the Cold War and the Russians and it was going to be a World War III against America and all the free countries against Russia. I remember our school, I went to St. Matthew's Catholic school growing up and I remember the school having bomb shelter drills where you had to get down under your desk or go to the cafeteria and it was a different world we lived in back then. It was a scary world. I'm not saying today's not a scary world either, but for us in Russia back then, was scary. When this Super Series 76 came about, there was so much going on in the world of hockey about how good Russia was and how their team was phenomenal. You know, the Russians really didn't come over here and play in the NHL then. And it was really kind of like the world versus Russia. you know, Russia felt that their team could compete and beat, you know, all these North American teams and they wanted to come over and show what they could do. So they set this super series 76 up back then. And they played some of these NHL teams. because the North American teams like Canada, when they were playing Canada against the Russians, it was looked at like, hey, you this isn't really our team. Like our teams is filled with Canadians that aren't used to playing together, you know, and the Russians were a team that played together all the time. Every day they trained together for years and they felt that, you know, Russia had a upper hand back then. than if they played a Canadian team or a USA team because they weren't really teams. were guys thrown together for a short period of time. They might gel, they might not gel. So they felt the Russians weren't getting the top of the competition that they should be getting. So the thought was these NHL teams that are used to playing together all the time would do better against the Russians. So They set up this six game, I believe, right? Series, believe it was or seven game series. I think it was seven games and the fires were the last team for them to play against. There was these Russians and anyhow, I don't remember all the details. I probably should have wrote some down so I could talk to you about them better. But the book is pretty amazing. The book goes into talking about Fred Shiro, you know, the fog, they called them and how he like instituted things. you know, I learned a lot from this book. So if any of those flyer fans out there that lived through the seventies and kind of just watched the game on TV and didn't really see any of the things behind the scenes, this is a really good book. It's a really cool book. They read, it gives you a perspective from the players. talks a little bit about Fred Shiro. It talks about Russian hockey. Fred was a way away in front of his times. know, ⁓ Fred's parents from what I heard was, were from Russia. He like, they came over here from Russia. So he had some ties over there, not much, just some. And Fred had always watched the hockey games over there and followed them. And, you know, he really was intrigued by the Russian system and what they did and how they played and... He went over I think twice over to Russia in the off season to watch them train and you know See how they play and he put a lot of time and energy into the game You know Fred was a student of the game and you know He just craved knowledge and wanted to know more about these Russian this Russian team and the Russian system and What kind of came into play was? Fred created according to this book Fred created a lot of things that never were like really around before like the Russians played a game where they cycled in the it's kind of like a three on three hockey right now in overtime. The Russians would fall back with the puck and cycle and do drop passes and cycle and drop pass and as they brought the defender in the four check on the puck. That's when they would pass in the open space in front and you know their wingers would then take off down the ice and get shorthanded. or two on ones, three on two, three on ones, things like that. So they played that cycle in this center of the ice to suck you in and then blow past you. ⁓ And what Fred the Fog, Shiro came up with was the trap. know, Freddy actually invented the trap. know, him creating this trap, his thought process was ⁓ pretty unique. They were going to put four players across the blue line, their blue line, and they would have one four checker. know, Bobby Clark is quoted as saying inside this book that, you know, they, they knew what they had to do. They couldn't get, bought into chasing these Russians and they had to let the Russians come to them. ⁓ and, they created this, you know, trap basically that like the devils had made where you put four across the blue line, one guy, four checks and, ⁓ It worked out. It worked out well, right? It worked out well. The Russians came in and I think they won five games. think they underestimated the Buffalo. Buffalo did beat them, I think like nine to six. But they had said the Russian players who are quoted on this book said that they felt like Buffalo was the worst team in the league and they weren't scared of them or afraid of them. And they really went out there and just played open hockey thinking they were blow them out and, the Buffalo Sabres, surprised them ⁓ and back and, won. But they said that they learned from that not to take any of the NHL teams lightly. ⁓ And ⁓ because that, had one loss, but the rest was five wins. So they felt that they ⁓ won the series, ⁓ And they came in to play Philly ⁓ and they were You know, they were scared of the bullies. ⁓ It was a really cool story. Like in this book, they actually had ⁓ these Russian players years and years later, they interviewed them and asked them questions like, what was it like playing Philly? And basically they said, you to this day, they still say they were animals. They were animals on ice. It was not hockey. The bullies didn't know how to play hockey. They can't believe that it was legal for them to come out on the ice and hunt down their players and all this stuff. all these years later, you know, what, 50 some, 50 years later, right? They're still saying that the bullies didn't play hockey. The bullies were out there as a bunch of animals just hunting them down and trying to take their heads off. And to a degree, they did. They were allowed to go out and hit and they did. The flyers hit them well and often. But anyhow, you start reading a little bit about ⁓ Fred Shiro and he actually, I think was the first coach to ever have an assistant coach. he there were no assistant coaches from what I read back then. And looks like Fred, according to this book, had ⁓ started he wanted somebody else to come out there and coach and help do things. And he went to focus on certain things and he didn't want to focus on everything. And, they had assistant coaches, they, they, did all these different things. did ⁓ so many, so many systems because of Fred and then a Freddie system where it looks like they're like from today's hockey were taken over. You know, all these systems nowadays are doing the same thing Freddie did. I don't think there was any video replays like, ⁓ back but Freddie did them. He actually had them like looking at videos and how they played. he was he was a way a friend of his time. he really was. He had a great hockey mind. And they actually read the book and see what he brought to the to the Flyers and what he developed and how all these other teams, you know, followed his lead and, mimicked. his trap ⁓ everything through the years now is kind of amazing to see, how much respect Freddie had and what he bought to the game. ⁓ Reading the book and hearing Bobby Clark talk about, ⁓ being on the ice and the guys like, don't get sucked in, stay back, he for checked and he put pressure on the puck. And once he got the guys to ⁓ try to start moving up like one side the other, That's when one of the defensemen would step in and try to lay them out, know, coming up the wall. And it worked, it really did it. was, ⁓ it ⁓ reading book was ⁓ really You got to see the insides of the outsides of what was going on in people's minds and how they looked at the flyers and, the NHL actually hated the flyers back then. They hated their brand of hockey. half the rule book that's made from today. is because of all the things the Flyers instituted back then. Pretty crazy, you know, so they were like the demons back then. Now, the NHL hated the Flyers. However, when the Flyers were playing the Russians and this was like the last game, ⁓ I think Russians were 5-1-1 at the time. I think they tied the Canadians. And, ⁓ or the Canadians tied them. forget which way it went, but it was a tie game for them at the end. didn't tie Buffalo beat them by a fluke because Russia was caught off guard. just didn't put a lot of effort into Buffalo. And, the NHL came to the fires and basically said, like, look, you're, you're our last line here. You're our last line of, of showing what the NHL has. Like you have to beat them. You know, the commissioner at the time went down into the flyers locker room and, ⁓ told them we need you, we need you to win, you can play your game. Like so all the things they cried about and were mad about and fought about, they came down to the fires and said, tonight you can do that, play that way. So, ⁓ you know, kind of, kind of really interesting to just read this book, see what it was like. They did some play by play, you know, pages in here about the game and how it went and ⁓ DuPont deck in Karlomov. I believe it was Karlomov, he buried and the the Russians leaving the ice and not coming back. Really, really good read. So if you're from the seventies and you kind of lived through this or the sixties and you you know about it and you saw the game, but if you didn't read the book, read the book, read, read this book. You know, again, it's what Ed Groover, it's the game that saved the NHL and there it is. There's a copy of it for those looking on video. Get yourself the book. It's not a real big read. It's really interesting. It goes fast. But after I got done reading the book, I actually YouTube the game, the Soviet game, and I watched the game and, seeing what was going on on the ice and the plays and knowing ⁓ who the players were on for Russia because they go over in detail in the book, who the players were and what they did and ⁓ who they for. And ⁓ pretty, pretty So if you find You have some downtime if you really love the flyers and the history. Get this book. I really do think you'll like it. get nothing from it. I don't know who Ed Groover is. I'm not making money from it. ⁓ I'm just saying it was a really, really good book. I wish I read this years ago and I didn't. ⁓ Really, really cool book. So with that said. Really good game tonight. The Flyers did very well. We're coming home and we're on a tear here. We got three wins. You know, we blew out the Ducks. We not blew them out, but we won three to two. We beat the Kings four to three and we finished the road trip with the Sharks four to one. Next up, I believe is the Blue Jackets and we need to beat them. You know, we're chasing them in the standings. We need to beat them. So hopefully next show we have. We're going over a Flyers win, a big win against the Blue Jackets and we keep our playoff hopes alive. With that, we're out of here. Please make sure you follow us on YouTube. You can find us on YouTube, podcast, Spotify, Apple, and we're even on Facebook. So come find us, follow us, like our episodes. We truly appreciate you listening and taking the time out of your day. Get that book. Get that book. Really good read. Until next time, go Flyers.