When It Rains, It Pours

In case you missed it, Derian Hatcher damn near killed Joffrey Lupul the other night in Toronto. While it was nice to see Hatch lay out Alex Steen with a flying burrito, it kind of sucked that he then flew into Lupul driving him to the ice with a cross body block that left Lupul looking like Patrick Swayze in Youngblood.

Now, here's the bad news from Flyers GM Paul Holmgren:

“Yes, Lupul has been diagnosed with mild concussion. However, the more concerning injury is that he sustained a spinal cord contusion at the level of his fifth & sixth cervical vertebrae, which are located in the neck area. It’s creating some tingling sensations in his hands. The X-rays are negative on any real damage. But right now we have to give Joffrey some complete time off. He’s going to take a couple weeks off from doing pretty much everything and then we’ll evaluate him at that point two weeks from now.”

The Flyers are now down their best goal scorer (Gagne) and their second best goal scorer (Lupul). Plus, they also have injuries to depth players like Scottie Upshall and Sami Kapanen. Now, to make matters worse, my new favorite Flyers, Steve Downie, is about to best suspended...AGAIN. This time he suckered punch cancer patient, Jason Blake.




I'm sorry, but I find this incident kind of humorous. I sure hope he doesn't get suspended.

One last point about the game the other night: Nitty made 54 saves...yes 54, and no the game did not go into triple overtime...in the victory over Toronto. I think he deserves more starts. Martin Biron has been pretty good, but I think he wears down. I would like to see Nitty get more starts because he finally looks healthy and ready to regain his status from a couple years ago when he led Finland to the Silver Medal in the Winter Olympics.