Jonesing To See What Happens!

While the Flyers won't lace up their game skates until Saturday morning, things "Off-ice" in the past 48-hours have been not quite Dwight.


Wednesday morning, following the teams 4-2 loss in Washington, Holmgren announced that Simon Gagne will be returning to the LTIR - his asylum for much of the 2007-2008 season. The source of discomfort - not one, but TWO, hernia's. Only needed one more for the trick (or treat), Simon. But hey, two is the new three in Washington...

I realize we are closing in on Halloween, but Gagne really needs to stop mimicking his teammates for the holiday. Dressing up as ex-Flyer Keith Primeau in '07 was one thing, but he's gone too far with this years Danny Briere costume.

The scary thing...both injuries occured within a week of All Hallows Eve. An elbow to the head from, now Flame, Jay Bouwmeester spawned Gagne's concussion demons. The date? October 24th, 2007. This year, Gagne left October 25th's contest against San Jose with a lower-body injury - an ultrasound later revealed two small hernias - this coming after a game in witch he scored his first ghoul of the season.

Danny Briere's sports hernia limited him to 29 games a year ago.

Another haunting statistic coming your way. Since Danny Briere's arrival in Philadelphia, the two French Canadians have only been in the lineup together 60 times. Which is astounding, considering the Flyers have been on the ice for 174 regular season games during that span. For all those angsty math rebels - 60/174 = .345, or 34.5 percent of the GP.

That would be a good number, if say, IT WAS A BATTING AVERAGE. Watch out Pujols, Gagniere is coming to get you! In fact, Gagniere could be the first batting triple crown champion since the infamous Carl Yastrzemski in 1967.

Okay, moving on, this injury stuff is killing me.

In other news, Randy Jones was put on re-entry waivers Wednesday afternoon. Sure enough by Thursday, he was no longer a Flyer. Gee, what a surprise. The LA Kings snatched him up, meaning the Flyers are stuck paying half of Jones' salary. A contract spot was gained, however, that remaining salary is going to be shelled out to a ghost.

And that is the tale of how the Holmgren limerick began:

There was once a GM in Philly
Whose waiver affairs were silly
He gambled with Jones
And was stripped to the bones
leaving Flyer fans asking, "Really?"

In closing, I'd like to mention that John Stevens actually cancelled a scheduled day off on Wednesday. The effort hasn't been good enough to win, he said.

What's that? Is our beloved coach finally getting a:

Happy Halloween to all those in Flyerdom!