May 13-19, 2004

city beat

Sami I Am

scrum in front of the net: Sami Kapanen has been showing his scrappy side all season long. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

As the Flyers team tries to make history, one player already has.

by Brian Hickey

Ashbee. Barber. Clarke. Parent. When it comes to Philadelphia Flyers history, they’re the Mount Rushmore, the players who meant so much to the organization that their numbers will never again be worn.

Dornhoefer. Howe. Kerr. Poulin. While their numbers are still donned on the ice by players of today, their names also hang on banners from the Wachovia Center rafters, among those who earned Flyers Hall of Fame status.

Flockhart. Hextall. Linesman. Tocchet. They're the fan favorites still spoken of in the highest regard, gone from the rink, but never forgotten.

When goaltender Robert Esche leads the team out onto the ice tonight with "Rock You Like a Hurricane" blasting through the speakers, about 19,800 people will be, well, rocking like a hurricane. The 20 players suited up for Game Three of the Eastern Conference finals against the Tampa Bay Lightning might just be cementing their places in those tiers.

Seven more victories could almost elevate some to the pantheon where their then-front-teethless general manager twice stood, Stanley Cup in hands. The stakes are high but nobody seems to be getting that far ahead of themselves right now, thanks to coach Ken Hitchcock's one-game-at-a-time mantra.

So instead of mentioning championship droughts, let's talk 'bout practice. As in last Thursday at the Flyers Skate Zone in Voorhees, N.J.

In about three hours, the team will board a plane for Tampa Bay for Game One. About a day and a half earlier, with 12 minutes and 21 seconds left in overtime against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Jeremy Roenick blasted a series-clinching, overtime wrist shot into the net and danced up the side of the rink.

It was one of those unforgettable plays, yet it wasn't the topic of conversation. Instead, many minds were still replaying what had happened 44 seconds earlier.

Joni Pitkanen passes to Michal Handzus. Handzus fires a wrister that sails over the net and around the boards out toward the blue line. Sami Kapanen darts in to keep the puck in the offensive zone when thwap. Right in front of a rink advertisement reading "Famous Players," Toronto's Darcy Tucker catches Kapanen just wrong.

The impact of the collision leaves Kapanen parallel to the ice before his body falls 5 feet and slams into the playing surface. Blue-jerseyed Leafs fans roar. Kapanen doesn't seem to know where he is, but play continues. He tries to get up, he falls. He tries to get up again, he falls again. Finally regaining some semblance of clarity, he makes his way toward the bench.

Captain Keith Primeau -- who's rapidly approaching that top tier -- reaches out from the bench with a stick to pull his teammate to safety, just seconds before Roenick gets the puck, skates over the ice where Kapanen was just flailing and ends the game. The teams line up for the traditional post-series handshake line; Primeau doesn't join them until heading to the bench to check on his wounded teammate who'd soon recover enough to shake hands with the Leafs' himself. ("He'll leave a lot out on that surface," says an announcer of Kapanen, a 30-year-old Finn in just his second season with the team.)

"With all the desperation and tension, especially on the Leafs' part, it will go down as a hit I'll never forget," says John Buccigross, host of ESPN's NHL 2Night. "Whenever ignorant media types talk of hockey's demise, I'd like to pop in the tape of the Flyers and Leafs overtime and tell them to shut up."

About 36 hours had passed when Hitchcock was asked in Voorhees about Kapanen's condition. Discussing the first time Kapanen was back on the ice since the Tucker shot, Hitchcock responded, "He knew my name, which was a pretty good sign."

It was also a pretty good sign Tuesday night, when Kapanen -- a forward playing defense in a 6-2 Game Two victory that evened the series at 1-1 -- scored a wicked, top-shelf shorthanded goal to put the Flyers up 3-0 just 11 minutes and 17 seconds into the game. As the puck smacked the netting, Kapanen fully extended an arm, stick in hand in celebration. It was hard not to think the game was already clinched.

Tonight, the Flyers and fan-favorite Kapanen -- who told reporters Tuesday night that he wasn't entirely happy with how he'd played that night -- will take another step toward defining a season, and some players' places in history. As they do, many eyes will still be following Kapanen.

"Those players are hard to come by," Primeau says of a teammate who wasn't about to tell anybody if he was hurting. "Is it inspiring? It is for me."