#changed Jordan’s dialogue a bit to fit him more naturally

[ssecond-hand-faith]

I got this scene stuck in my head so I drew it with my OCs

[davidmann95]

Superman & Lois Pilot Script Review

I’ve been reliably informed that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and indeed as my laptop and everything on it have been unusable for a couple months after a mishap, I went from ‘maybe I’ll write something on the pilot script for Superman & Lois’ to ‘as soon as I can get my hands back on that thing I’m writing something up’. I’m actually surprised none of you folks asked about it when I’ve mentioned several times that I read it; I was initially hesitant, but I’ve seen folks discussing plot details on Twitter and their reactions on here, so I guess WB isn’t making much of a thing out of it. Entire pilots have leaked before and they just rolled with it, so I suppose that isn’t surprising. Anyway, the show’s been pushed back to next year, and also the world is literally sick and metaphorically (and also a little literally) on fire, so I thought this might be fun if anyone needs a break from abject horror. 

(Speaking of the world being on fire: while trying to offer a diversion amidst said blaze, still gonna pause for the moment to add to the chorus that if opening your wallet is a thing you can do, now most especially is a time to do it. I chipped in myself to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and even a casual look around here or Twitter will show people listing plenty of other organizations that need support.)

What I saw floating around was, if not a first draft, certainly not the final one given Elizabeth Tulloch later shared a photo of the cover for the final script crediting Lee Toland Krieger as the director rather than a TBD, but the shape of things is clearly in place. I’m going for a relative minimum of spoilers, though I’ll discuss a bit of the basic status quo the show sets up and vaguely touch on a few plot points, but if you want a simple response without risk of any story details: it’s very, very good. Clunky in the way the CW DC shows typically are, and some aspects I’m not going to be able to judge until the story plays out further, but it’s engaging, satisfying, and moreover feels like it Gets It more broadly than any other mass-media Superman adaptation to date.

The Good

* The big one, the pillar on which all else rests: this understands Lois and it really understands Clark. Lois isn’t at the center of the pilot’s arc, but she’s everything you want to see that character be - incisive, caring, and refusing to operate at less than 110% intensity with whatever she’s dealing with at any given time, the objections of others be damned. Clark meanwhile is a good-natured, good-humored dude who you can see in both the cape and the glasses even as those identities remain distinct, who’s still wrestling with his feelings of alienation and duty and how those now reflect his relationships with his children. The title characters both feel fully-formed and true to what historically tends to work best with them from day one here in ways I can’t especially say for any other movie or show they’ve starred in.

* While the suit takes a back seat for this particular episode, when Superman does show up in the opening and climax it absolutely knows how to get us to cheer for him; there’s more than one ‘hell yeah, it’s SUPERMAN, that guy’s the best!’ moment, and they pop.

* While the superheroics aren’t the biggest focus here, when they do arrive, the plan seems to be that they’ll be operating on an entirely different scale than the rest of the Arrowverse lineup. Maybe they scripted the ideal and’ll be pared-down come time for actual filming and effects work, or maybe they’re going all-out for the pilot, but the initial vision involves a massive super-rescue and a widescreen brawl that goes way, way bigger in scope than any I’m aware of on the likes of Supergirl. I heard in passing on Twitter from someone claiming to be in the know that the plan for Superman & Lois is that it’ll be fewer episodes with a higher budget, more in line with the DC Universe stuff if not exactly HBO Max ‘prestige TV’, and whether it’s true or not (I think it’s plausible, the potential ratings here are exponentially higher than anything else on the network so they’d want to put their best foot forward) they seem to be writing it as if that’s the idea.

* This balances its tones and ambitions excellently: it’s a Kent-Lane family drama, it’s Lois digging in with some investigative reporting to set up a major subplot, it’s Superman saving Metropolis and battling a powerful high-concept villain, and none of it feels like it’s banging up at awkward angles with the rest. There are a pair of throwaway lines in here so grim I can’t believe they were put in a script for a Superman TV show even if they don’t make it to air, and they in no way undermine the exhilaration once he puts on the cape or the warmth that pervades much of it. This feels as if it’s laying the groundwork for a Superman show that can tackle just about any sort of story with the character rather than planing its feet in one corner and declaring a niche, and so far it looks like it has the juice to pull it off.

* While the pilot doesn’t focus on him in the same way as the new kid, Jonathan Kent fits well enough for my tastes with the broad strokes of his personality from the comics, albeit if he had made it to 14 rather than 10 without learning about his dad being Superman. A pleasant, kinda dopey, well-meaning Superman Jr. - the biggest deviation, one I approve of, is that he can also kinda be a gleeful little shit when dealing with his brother in ways that remind you that this is very much also Lois Lane’s boy.

* We don’t know much about the season villain as of yet, but it’s an incredibly cool idea that I’m shocked that they’re going for right away, and I absolutely want to see how they play out as a character and how they’ll bounce off all the other major players.

* The way this seems to be framing itself in relation to the Superman movies and shows before it feels inspired to me: there are homages and shout-outs to and bits of conceptual scaffolding from Lois & Clark, Smallville, Donner, and more, but they’re all shown in ways that make it clear that those stories are part of his past rather than indicators of the baseline he’s currently operating off of. We get a retrospective of his and Lois’s history right off the bat with most of what you’d expect, and combined with those references the message is clear: this is a Superman who’s been through all the vague memories that you, prospective casual viewer, have of the other stuff you saw him in once upon a time, but this series begins the next phase of his life after what that general cultural impression of him to date covers. It strikes me as a good way of carrying over the goodwill of that nostalgia and iconography, while building in that this is a show with room to grow him beyond that into something more nuanced (and for that matter true to the character as the comics at their best have depicted him) than they tended towards. Where Superman Returns attempted to recapture the lightning in a bottle of an earlier vision of him in full, and Man of Steel tried to turn its back on anything that smelled of Old and Busted and Uncool entirely, perhaps this splitting of the difference - engaging with his pop culture history and visibly taking what appealed from some of those well-known takes, while also drawing a clear line in the sand between those as the past and this as the future - is what will finally engage audiences.

The Bad

* This is the sort of thing you have to roll with for a CW superhero show, and that lives and dies by the performances, but: the dialogue varies heavily. There are some really poignant moments, but elsewhere this is where it shows its early-draftiness; a decent amount is typical Whedon-poisoned quippiness or achingly blunt, and some of the ‘hey, we’re down with the kids!’ material for Jon, Jor, and Lana’s kid Sarah is outright agonizing. I suspect a lot of it will be fixed in minor edits, actor delivery, and hopefully the younger performers taking a brutal red pen to some of their material - this was written last January and the show’s now not debuting until next January, they’ve got plenty of time for cleanup - but if this sort of the thing has been a barrier to entry for you in the past with the likes of The Flash, this probably won’t be what changes your mind.

* There are a few charming shout-outs to other shows, but much moreso, Superman & Lois actually builds in a big way out of Crisis. Which is a-okay with me, except that what exactly that was is rather poorly conveyed given that lots of people will be giving this a spin with no familiarity with that. Fixable with a line or two, but important enough to be worth noting.

Have to wait and see how it plays out

* The series’ new kid, Jordan Kent, is so far promising with potential to veer badly off-course. He’s explicitly dealing with mental illness, and not on great terms with Clark at the beginning in spite of the latter’s best efforts, the notion of which I’m sure will immediately put some off. Ultimately the commonalities between father and son become clear, and he’s not written as a caricature in this opening but as a kid with some problems who’s still visibly his parents’ boy, but obviously the ball could be fumbled here in the long term.

* Lois’s dad is portrayed almost completely differently here than in the past in spite of technically still being her military dad who has some disagreements with her husband. There are some nice moments and interesting new angles but it seems possible that the groudwork is being laid for him to be Clark’s guy in the chair, and not only does he not need that he most DEFINITELY doesn’t need that to be a member of the U.S. Military, especially when one of the first and best decisions Supergirl made when introducing him was to make clear he had stopped working with the government any more than necessary years ago. Maybe it can be stretched if his dad-in-law occasionally calls him up to let him know about a new threat he’s learned about, and maybe they’ll even do something really interesting with that push-and-pull, but if Superman’s going to be even tacitly functioning as an extension of the military that’s going to be a foundational sin.

* As I was nervous about, Superman & Lois has some political flavor, but much to my delighted surprise, there’s no grossly out of touch hedge-betting in the way I understand Supergirl has gone for at times. As of the pilot, this is an explicitly leftie show, with the overarching threat of the season as established for Lois and Clark as reporters being how corporate America has stripmined towns like Smallville and manipulated blue collar workers into selling out their own best interests. Could that go wrong? Totally, there’s already an effort to establish a particular prominent right-wing asshole as capable of decency - without as of yet downplaying that he’s a genuinely shitty dude - and vague hints that some of the towns’ woes might be rooted more in Superman-type problems than Lois and Clark problems. But that they’re going for it this directly in the first place leaves me hopeful that the show won’t completely chicken out even if there’ll probably be a monster in the mix pulling a string or two; Greg Pak and Aaron Kuder’s Action Comics may justify Superman punching a cop by having him turn out to be a shadow monster so as to get past editorial, but it’s still a story about how sometimes Superman’s gotta punch a cop, and hopefully this can carry on in that spirit of using what wiggle room it has to the best of its ability.

So, so far so good. Could it end up a show with severe problems carried on the backs of Hoechlin and Tulloch’s performances? Absolutely. But thus far, the ingredients are there for all its potential problems to be either fixed, subverted, or dodged alright, and even when it surely fumbles the ball at junctures, I earnestly believe this is setting itself up to be the most fleshed-out, nuanced, engaging live-action take on these characters to date. And god willing, if so, the first real stepping stone in decades to proper rehab on Superman’s image and place in pop culture.

[cannoli-reader]

in your opinion what were sandersons worst mishandlings in the last 3 books?

There were different issues with Sanderson’s writing. Some of which are personal dislikes of mine, others have to do with his style or talents being unsuited to the series, and some are just flat out things he did wrong. I’ll go into considerable detail under the cut.

Poor match of writing style and skills to the series

Sanderson lays everything out there, and he uses dialogue to convey information to the reader, in the same way that movies and TV shows do. Wheel of Time is about secrets and knowledge, and people knowing different things, so they act in conflict, because their perceptions are different. This is undermined by a story where everyone is telling each other everything, even their innermost thoughts.  Especially when those thoughts don’t make sense for the characters to say out loud based on what we have seen of them for the last eleven books.

From what I understand, Sanderson’s strength as a genre author is in his world-building, and his clever use of magic systems.  These are not strengths needed for this project, in which the world-building was done already, and most of the ins and outs of the One Power and other preternatural phenomena were already established. Even when Sanderson tried to carve out a space to use his skills, it backfired, with the inflation of the role of Androl, and things like his limit-breaking gateway Talent. That’s not how Talents work. It seems like a derivation of the one Kinswoman who could shield far above what her strength seemed to warrant, but that was due to centuries of practice. There is no reason why Androl can suddenly make gateways much larger than other people using even more of the Power, which is established as the limiting factor on gateway size.  

Inadequate comprehension of the ideas and ethos of Wheel of Time

Sanderson was writing fan service.  To a certain extent, that was conscious and deliberate, an act of love to his fellow fans, and the series. And not to get all snobby here, but he generally wrote to gratify the lowest common denominator of fans. His focus was on feats of arms and channeling and leadership, but he was not so much interested in the characteristics and qualities that informed and were informed by, those things.

When Sanderson divided the story into three books, he showed by his choices that he prioritized events and spectacles over themes and coherence. A major theme was that everyone was all in it together, that while they might be separated by distance, they were all being woven into the same Pattern and their actions were intertwined.  Sanderson, instead, decided that since Rand & Mat & Perrin did not occupy the same real estate for the beginning of the story, there’s no need for them to be in the same books. 

Poor command of the worldbuilding and details

This really destroyed my immersion.  Sometimes Sanderson made up all new things to serve a purpose in his story, that didn’t seem anything like what was normal for WoT, like new characters who appeared with names that did not fit their supposed country of origin, and who turned out to be Wheel of Time fans & webmasters he met at conventions and such. Which is fine for the few dozen fans who met him and recognize each others’ cameo, and less fine for the millions of other readers, while Jordan’s impressive stable of bit players, extras and supporting cast members fell into neglect. 

There would be mistakes like an Aielman refering to his homeland as the Waste, or the sudden drop in IQ of the whole White Ajah, going from highly trained masters of logic and philosophers, to stoned freshman having their minds blown by half-assed syllogisms. Or the head of the Yellow Ajah suddenly reinventing the mentality of the Ajah in a way that directly contradicts everything we’ve been shown about the Yellows. Or the Warder bonds suddenly not working the same way, to the degree that a bonded couple can surprise one another by walking in on them unexpectedly or wonder how the other is feeling when they are in the same building. 

Sanderson’s idea of servicing Siuan’s background was randomly sticking the word fish on the end of nouns in her dialogue, whether it made sense or not. The Aiel suddenly started talking like fantasy barbarians, with their stilted, simple diction and preoccupation with combat skills and honor. The Aiel are good with weapons, but they have other interests.  When the situation does not call for military skills or combat, they don’t obsess over weapons or fighting. They talk about the opposite sex, they gamble, drink, joke, play pranks, read, pay attention to the social dynamics of other cultures. Aviendha is barely recognizable as the same person, and that’s before you realize that Sanderson gave her an extended conversation to learn something that she already knew eight books before. 

If he wants us to care about an Asha’man suffering belated manifestations of the taint, maybe use one of the Asha’man Jordan created and we’ve come to know up until now, instead of some new guy Sanderson just made up with a weird name like “Naeff” that just contribtues to the all-round immersion-breaking. 

The biggest mistake: Breaking up the books

This is related in some ways to the above issues. Part of it has to do with the ways that Sanderson failed to grasp aspects of the series and part with Sanderson’s writing style. Robert Jordan, for all that he had a reputation for excessive descriptive detail, was also very economical with his words.  He conveyed a lot with his descriptions.  Sanderson needed many more words to say the same things.  The story planned out for the portion of the series Sanderson wrote was intended to be in a single book, though Jordan acknowledged it was likely to be significantly larger than the others. 

That means something, because for all the serialized nature of the latter half of the series, there is still a thematic unity to those books.  That means that Jordan’s plan was for the events in Arad Domon, with Mat and the Band, with Perrin and the Whitecloaks, Egwene in the Tower and the lead-up to Merrilor and Tarmon Gaidon, were all supposed to be part of the same story, not just the same general story as the farmboys fleeing Trolloc raids or travels among the Aiel, but all connected together to express the same idea. 

In my opinion, the best way to break up that final book, if Sanderson could not keep it contained in one physical medium, would be in a serialized fashion, one book under two or three separate volumes, with the pace of the story encompassing the whole thing, instead of having three separate beginnings, escalations of conflicts, climaxes and endings.  If it had to be broken into three separate novels in structure as well as format, then the division should have been by time, rather than characters.  

Throughout Jordan’s books, the point is reiterated that the whole story is all of a piece, that the main characters are part of the same Pattern, and their seperate efforts all contribute to the overall struggle. Ultimately, Rand’s mission of unifying humanity to fight the Shadow was not getting them to all take orders from the same source, but to get them all agreed and committed to the same goal. From the time they first split up for extended arcs, with Loial saying “here or there, it is all the same fight” to Moiraine’s appearance at Merrilor, that has been a consistent notion.  And when you treat Rand’s and Nynaeve’s and Egwene’s stories as having so little to do with Mat’s or Perrin’s or Elayne’s, that they don’t even go under the same book cover, you are totally undermining that. 

And if you really must separate the major character arcs into different books, the order in which Sanderson released them was absolutely wrong.  He gave the two biggest conflicts the first book, to either score a quick win to get the readers on board with the new writing, or in fan service, giving fans the stories they were most impatient to see.  

So Rand, the critical figure, whose indispensibility was key to Jordan’s vision of the series, hits his nadir halfway through the first book of the trilogy, which is 1/6th of the way through the overall finale. He reaches his apotheosis, and resolves his major personal struggle with two thirds of the finale left to go!  Rand finds his heart again, Egwene wins her fight for the Tower, and achieves full power, with a dramatic set piece battle and then we go to Mat and Elayne comically bickering about cannons and taking out a handful of Darkfriends and a single Shadowspawn before plunging abruptly into the rescue of Moiraine. Perrin engages in a legalistic conflict with Galad over ridiculous minutiae, given that they are now in the penultimate book in the series and the world is visibly falling apart around them.  That battle had less danger and lower stakes than the much maligned Faile-Malden storyline, but it was supposed to be Perrin’s penultimate leadership crisis?  All the attempts to keep the stakes high in Towers of Midnight are completely undermined by the knowledge that the struggles Rand is going through at the same time will have a happy ending. Where is the drama in finding out after the fact that Perrin was buffering Rand from Tel’Aran’Rhiod on Dragonmount? How are we supposed to be concerned about Perrin’s efforts when we already know the exact outcome?  Knowing that Dragonmount has not happened during the early events of ToM does not change the way we see the conflicts playing out concurrently with Rand’s descent into darkness, because we know the happy resolution is coming.  We know Tam is going to survive his adventures with Perrin and be in a position to tell Rand, with no discernable dissembling, that Perrin is going to have everything in hand, and Morgase’s secret identity issue will be happily resolved. 

Even the book titles are stupid.  “The Gathering Storm”? Setting aside how incredibly trite that title is, what the heck has been going on all this time before that book?  And the storm is only gathering now?  Is Rand’s happy-ending-apotheosis still part of the gathering of the storm, or the beginning of the storm? What about the White Tower being unified & better than ever?  Does that mean Mat inventing cannons and Perrin arguing with, and then rescuing Whitecloaks are “the storm”?  The storm has been gathering for the length of the series. “Towers of Midnight” means nothing, and people still argue about what it means, since it refers to a location on the other side of the world from the events in the books.  By contrast, the title Jordan selected, “A Memory of Light” could be both symbolic of the whole, with the Shadow so strong that Light is just a memory, and a specific reference to Rand’s finding himself. Except that was the climax of a storm gathering. 

[flauntpage]

A Pulse, A Hart-Beat and a Couple of Brain Cramps – Thoughts after Flyers 2, Stars 1

It finally happened. After such a long drought, it finally came to pass.

No, I’m not talking about the end of the Flyers eight-game losing streak – although that too did come to an end Thursday.

Instead, I’m talking about a glimpse of what the Flyers thought they were getting when they signed James van Riemsdyk to a five-year, $35 million contract.

JVR had a hand in both Flyers goals in the team’s first win of 2019. His goal, the game-winner, was a bit fortuitous. His assist on the first goal of the game was nifty.

It was his sixth multiple-point game in 28 games since returning to the Flyers. That’s not a terrible percentage in this day and age.

That said, there have been far too many goose eggs. There were far too many games where JVR has been just a body skating around on the ice. He’s hardly lived up to his reputation as a potential 30-plus goal scorer who sets up shop in the greasy areas in front of the net and goes to work.

Maybe it was returning somewhere he had played before and expecting things to be similar, but they’re not. Maybe it was an expectation that he could play the same way he did in Toronto, where he was pretty successful for six seasons, and found out that won’t fit in the Flyers system.

Heck, the critics will say he’s playing like a guy who is comfortably sitting on his wallet after his big pay day, but knowing JVR, I doubt that’s the case.

A lot of the same weaknesses that have always been in JVR’s game are still there today. They’ve never gone away. But they are the kinds of things you can live with when the guy is potting 30-plus goals in a season.

Except, that wasn’t happening for him with the Flyers.

Yes, he missed some time with an injury that cost him six weeks early in the season, but he has now played in 28 games, and the Flyers were hoping for more than seven goals and nine assists through that many games. Extrapolated over a full 82, that’s about 19 goals and 24 assists for 43 points – a far cry from his totals last season in Toronto where he had 36 goals last season and was between 54 and 62 points in each of the four seasons he played nearly a full schedule of games.

It had gotten so bad for JVR, who before Thursday had only scored one goal in nine games that he was demoted to fourth line duty against Washington on Tuesday.

He cleared the air with coach Scott Gordon and seemed to get a better sense of what the Flyers interim coach wants him to do, and was given a chance to be put back on the top line with Claude Giroux and Travis Konecny against the Stars and it paid off.

It might have been JVR’s best game of the season for the Flyers. One, the team hopes, he can build off of and start playing like the player they were hoping would be a big part of the team’s success in the coming seasons.

“That’s professional sports right there,” van Riemsdyk said. “There should be dialogue between your coaches and players, that’s the only way you get growth. Especially I think for me, again I’m in a new situation and a new team and I want to try to get my bearings right and again there’s always some things you can clarify so things become a little second nature. I mean when you’re playing in a certain place for a long time, things become second nature that maybe they want you to do a little differently here so there’s been some good communication and dialogue about some of that stuff and yeah it’s good.

“I have a good relationship with Gordo since I played for him in Toronto and some USA hockey stuff so I appreciate him taking some time to talk me through some things that he wanted to see and some different things that we’re trying to do.  So yeah I think it makes it easier when you have that dialogue.”

Here’s the assist, which was his best play of the game:

TRAVIS KONECNY TIPS HOME JAMES VAN RIEMSDYK'S FEED!#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/sdIZoNyMGR

— Hockey Daily (@HockeyDaily365) January 11, 2019

Radko Gudas really makes the play with a great keep and shot from the point (more on him later), but JVR made a slick little no-look pass to Konecny to get the Flyers on the board first.

His goal was a bit fluky, but if you get to the spots on the ice where you have your most success, good things can happen:

The pigeon! pic.twitter.com/IvzDUMnW5R

— Broad Street Hockey (@BroadStHockey) January 11, 2019

There’s been a lot of double doinks in Philly sports recently, hasn’t there?

Anyway, JVR addressed this as well, saying that getting to the right spaces on the ice is part of where scoring success comes from in this league.

“The roles that I’ve been in are a lot of net-front stuff and being the stretch guy and a lot of that is reading the other players and playing off their speed. It’s kind of funny because guys who score goals – guys like Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos – it’s not like they’re always blasting around and sprinting and stopping. They’re kind of meandering and they find that soft spot. People wonder, ‘how’d they get there?’ Well, they know where to go and how to get to the right spot when [their teammate] is ready to pass it. That’s what you try to learn over the course of your career.”

Dodging the missed opportunity bite

For one night, JVR was able to get to the right spot multiple times and it parlayed into a Flyers win. One that ended up being a nailbiter because the Flyers missed out on three consecutive odd man rushes. A 3-on-1 (shorthanded) a 2-on-1 (shorthanded) and a 2-on-0 with JVR and Konecny:

Anton Khudobin makes the save on the 2-on-0 rush. pic.twitter.com/ZQ90WmZg47

— Broad Street Hockey (@BroadStHockey) January 11, 2019

“It was funny because me and TK had just been talking about it after the 2-on-1 right before our chance and we were saying how [Stars goalie Anton Khudobin] likes to sit on the pass so we have to shoot one and sure enough we make two passes back and forth like dummies after we had just talked about it,” van Riemsdyk said. “It’s a fine line though, you don’t want to be the guy who goes in on a 2-on-none and misses either.”

Funny game, hockey. In almost any other sport, the players have a me-first attitude. Hockey is the other way around, to a fault sometimes.

“The Kid looks really good.”

On the elevator ride and subsequent jaunt to the locker room after the game, I happened to ride down with Dallas Stars goaltending coach and former Flyers goalie coach Jeff Reese.

After checking in on him and his family and talking about how well the Dallas goaltending duo of Khudobin and Ben Bishop have been playing, and crediting their coaching, Reese said, “Nah, my job is to just wave the pom-poms.” He then changed the subject to talk about Carter Hart.

“The kid looks really good,” he said. “His positioning and quickness is good for sure, but the thing that impresses me the most is his poise. He’s not rattled. That’s impressive for a 20-year-old kid.”

This was unsolicited mind you. It’s the kind of thing that indicates there is a buzz going on around the league about Hart and the way he’s looked so far.

His save percentage is now a solid .920. He makes a lot of saves look easy. His flaws – based solely on inexperience rather than an inability to do something – seem to get corrected quickly. Early in the season – in Lehigh Valley – Hart had a tendency to go down too soon and leave room upstairs for goal scorers to shoot for the top shelf. Now, Hart stands taller longer and relies on his quickness to get down, if he has to do so.

He still struggles a little bit with rebound control, but that’s also something that comes with experience. He tracks the puck so well that it won’t hurt him long term.

Hart has been a bit of an eye-opener. His play might just be changing the mind of GM Chuck Fletcher. Hart was originally called up for a short stint in the NHL, but the kid has earned his keep.

Now, to be fair, the Flyers are uber-defensive in front of him. They tend to put their bodies on the line to block more shots for Hart than they do other goalies, so that helps (They blocked 18 against Dallas, with Christian Folin leading the way with seven), so there’s that too. But Hart made 37 saves against a red hot Stars team. That’s no small feat, even if very few of the saves seemed to be of the 10-bell variety.

It’s likely to a point where the Flyers won’t hurt his development – at least for awhile anyway (things can always go sideways at some point) – and will be better suited to have him keep playing.

Miscellaneous

Nolan Patrick looked… OK. That’s an improvement over what he’s been looking like recently. But, he’s still giving you the same offensive output as Dale Weise. And his advanced metrics aren’t even as good as Jordan Weal, who can’t stay in the lineup. I still think Patrick would benefit from a little time in Lehigh Valley.

The defense was decent – Gordon switched up the second and third pairs. He went with Gudas and Shayne Gostisbehere and Folin and Robert Hagg.

Gudas has been playing pretty solid hockey for the Flyers for an extended period of time now. He’s truly looking like a very useful piece, and maybe one that could interest other teams at the deadline. He’s really been the most consistent defenseman on this team this season (apologies to Travis Sanheim, who has improved greatly).

There was a moment in the second period where Hagg was getting an extended one-on-one coaching session on the bench from assistant coach Rick Wilson. In the middle of the game, Wilson was hunched over, in Hagg’s ear and drawing frantically on the dry-erase board. There was extended conversation too. Nothing loud or angry. Just a good teaching moment. At the end there were a few pats on the back from Wilson, and Hagg played pretty solid hockey after that. I’m starting to be convinced that the hiring of Wilson may end up being the most underrated move by this organization this season.

Finally, I’m hearing there could be more news coming about the whole Jori Lehtera cocaine ring situation. While one of the members arrested in the ring is now backing off a story that he sold directly to Lehtera, I was told after the game that there might be another connection directly to Lehtera involved in this in Finland. I’m working to confirm what I was told (I’ve actually called a phone number in Finland for the first time in my life) so until I do, I won’t report it here, but I’m honestly perplexed as to why the Flyers are keeping him on the roster at this point. Just waive Lehtera. No one will claim him because of his salary and this investigation. At which point you can either bury him in the minors or give him his outright release. You can’t tell me that it’s better for this team long-term to keep him on this roster at this point than to give someone like a Nicolas Aube-Kubel a real chance to play in the NHL.

  The post A Pulse, A Hart-Beat and a Couple of Brain Cramps – Thoughts after Flyers 2, Stars 1 appeared first on Crossing Broad.

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A Pulse, A Hart-Beat and a Couple of Brain Cramps – Thoughts after Flyers 2, Stars 1

It finally happened. After such a long drought, it finally came to pass.

No, I’m not talking about the end of the Flyers eight-game losing streak – although that too did come to an end Thursday.

Instead, I’m talking about a glimpse of what the Flyers thought they were getting when they signed James van Riemsdyk to a five-year, $35 million contract.

JVR had a hand in both Flyers goals in the team’s first win of 2019. His goal, the game-winner, was a bit fortuitous. His assist on the first goal of the game was nifty.

It was his sixth multiple-point game in 28 games since returning to the Flyers. That’s not a terrible percentage in this day and age.

That said, there have been far too many goose eggs. There were far too many games where JVR has been just a body skating around on the ice. He’s hardly lived up to his reputation as a potential 30-plus goal scorer who sets up shop in the greasy areas in front of the net and goes to work.

Maybe it was returning somewhere he had played before and expecting things to be similar, but they’re not. Maybe it was an expectation that he could play the same way he did in Toronto, where he was pretty successful for six seasons, and found out that won’t fit in the Flyers system.

Heck, the critics will say he’s playing like a guy who is comfortably sitting on his wallet after his big pay day, but knowing JVR, I doubt that’s the case.

A lot of the same weaknesses that have always been in JVR’s game are still there today. They’ve never gone away. But they are the kinds of things you can live with when the guy is potting 30-plus goals in a season.

Except, that wasn’t happening for him with the Flyers.

Yes, he missed some time with an injury that cost him six weeks early in the season, but he has now played in 28 games, and the Flyers were hoping for more than seven goals and nine assists through that many games. Extrapolated over a full 82, that’s about 19 goals and 24 assists for 43 points – a far cry from his totals last season in Toronto where he had 36 goals last season and was between 54 and 62 points in each of the four seasons he played nearly a full schedule of games.

It had gotten so bad for JVR, who before Thursday had only scored one goal in nine games that he was demoted to fourth line duty against Washington on Tuesday.

He cleared the air with coach Scott Gordon and seemed to get a better sense of what the Flyers interim coach wants him to do, and was given a chance to be put back on the top line with Claude Giroux and Travis Konecny against the Stars and it paid off.

It might have been JVR’s best game of the season for the Flyers. One, the team hopes, he can build off of and start playing like the player they were hoping would be a big part of the team’s success in the coming seasons.

“That’s professional sports right there,” van Riemsdyk said. “There should be dialogue between your coaches and players, that’s the only way you get growth. Especially I think for me, again I’m in a new situation and a new team and I want to try to get my bearings right and again there’s always some things you can clarify so things become a little second nature. I mean when you’re playing in a certain place for a long time, things become second nature that maybe they want you to do a little differently here so there’s been some good communication and dialogue about some of that stuff and yeah it’s good.

“I have a good relationship with Gordo since I played for him in Toronto and some USA hockey stuff so I appreciate him taking some time to talk me through some things that he wanted to see and some different things that we’re trying to do.  So yeah I think it makes it easier when you have that dialogue.”

Here’s the assist, which was his best play of the game:

TRAVIS KONECNY TIPS HOME JAMES VAN RIEMSDYK'S FEED!#LetsGoFlyers pic.twitter.com/sdIZoNyMGR

— Hockey Daily (@HockeyDaily365) January 11, 2019

Radko Gudas really makes the play with a great keep and shot from the point (more on him later), but JVR made a slick little no-look pass to Konecny to get the Flyers on the board first.

His goal was a bit fluky, but if you get to the spots on the ice where you have your most success, good things can happen:

The pigeon! pic.twitter.com/IvzDUMnW5R

— Broad Street Hockey (@BroadStHockey) January 11, 2019

There’s been a lot of double doinks in Philly sports recently, hasn’t there?

Anyway, JVR addressed this as well, saying that getting to the right spaces on the ice is part of where scoring success comes from in this league.

“The roles that I’ve been in are a lot of net-front stuff and being the stretch guy and a lot of that is reading the other players and playing off their speed. It’s kind of funny because guys who score goals – guys like Alex Ovechkin and Steven Stamkos – it’s not like they’re always blasting around and sprinting and stopping. They’re kind of meandering and they find that soft spot. People wonder, ‘how’d they get there?’ Well, they know where to go and how to get to the right spot when [their teammate] is ready to pass it. That’s what you try to learn over the course of your career.”

Dodging the missed opportunity bite

For one night, JVR was able to get to the right spot multiple times and it parlayed into a Flyers win. One that ended up being a nailbiter because the Flyers missed out on three consecutive odd man rushes. A 3-on-1 (shorthanded) a 2-on-1 (shorthanded) and a 2-on-0 with JVR and Konecny:

Anton Khudobin makes the save on the 2-on-0 rush. pic.twitter.com/ZQ90WmZg47

— Broad Street Hockey (@BroadStHockey) January 11, 2019

“It was funny because me and TK had just been talking about it after the 2-on-1 right before our chance and we were saying how [Stars goalie Anton Khudobin] likes to sit on the pass so we have to shoot one and sure enough we make two passes back and forth like dummies after we had just talked about it,” van Riemsdyk said. “It’s a fine line though, you don’t want to be the guy who goes in on a 2-on-none and misses either.”

Funny game, hockey. In almost any other sport, the players have a me-first attitude. Hockey is the other way around, to a fault sometimes.

“The Kid looks really good.”

On the elevator ride and subsequent jaunt to the locker room after the game, I happened to ride down with Dallas Stars goaltending coach and former Flyers goalie coach Jeff Reese.

After checking in on him and his family and talking about how well the Dallas goaltending duo of Khudobin and Ben Bishop have been playing, and crediting their coaching, Reese said, “Nah, my job is to just wave the pom-poms.” He then changed the subject to talk about Carter Hart.

“The kid looks really good,” he said. “His positioning and quickness is good for sure, but the thing that impresses me the most is his poise. He’s not rattled. That’s impressive for a 20-year-old kid.”

This was unsolicited mind you. It’s the kind of thing that indicates there is a buzz going on around the league about Hart and the way he’s looked so far.

His save percentage is now a solid .920. He makes a lot of saves look easy. His flaws – based solely on inexperience rather than an inability to do something – seem to get corrected quickly. Early in the season – in Lehigh Valley – Hart had a tendency to go down too soon and leave room upstairs for goal scorers to shoot for the top shelf. Now, Hart stands taller longer and relies on his quickness to get down, if he has to do so.

He still struggles a little bit with rebound control, but that’s also something that comes with experience. He tracks the puck so well that it won’t hurt him long term.

Hart has been a bit of an eye-opener. His play might just be changing the mind of GM Chuck Fletcher. Hart was originally called up for a short stint in the NHL, but the kid has earned his keep.

Now, to be fair, the Flyers are uber-defensive in front of him. They tend to put their bodies on the line to block more shots for Hart than they do other goalies, so that helps (They blocked 18 against Dallas, with Christian Folin leading the way with seven), so there’s that too. But Hart made 37 saves against a red hot Stars team. That’s no small feat, even if very few of the saves seemed to be of the 10-bell variety.

It’s likely to a point where the Flyers won’t hurt his development – at least for awhile anyway (things can always go sideways at some point) – and will be better suited to have him keep playing.

Miscellaneous

Nolan Patrick looked… OK. That’s an improvement over what he’s been looking like recently. But, he’s still giving you the same offensive output as Dale Weise. And his advanced metrics aren’t even as good as Jordan Weal, who can’t stay in the lineup. I still think Patrick would benefit from a little time in Lehigh Valley.

The defense was decent – Gordon switched up the second and third pairs. He went with Gudas and Shayne Gostisbehere and Folin and Robert Hagg.

Gudas has been playing pretty solid hockey for the Flyers for an extended period of time now. He’s truly looking like a very useful piece, and maybe one that could interest other teams at the deadline. He’s really been the most consistent defenseman on this team this season (apologies to Travis Sanheim, who has improved greatly).

There was a moment in the second period where Hagg was getting an extended one-on-one coaching session on the bench from assistant coach Rick Wilson. In the middle of the game, Wilson was hunched over, in Hagg’s ear and drawing frantically on the dry-erase board. There was extended conversation too. Nothing loud or angry. Just a good teaching moment. At the end there were a few pats on the back from Wilson, and Hagg played pretty solid hockey after that. I’m starting to be convinced that the hiring of Wilson may end up being the most underrated move by this organization this season.

Finally, I’m hearing there could be more news coming about the whole Jori Lehtera cocaine ring situation. While one of the members arrested in the ring is now backing off a story that he sold directly to Lehtera, I was told after the game that there might be another connection directly to Lehtera involved in this in Finland. I’m working to confirm what I was told (I’ve actually called a phone number in Finland for the first time in my life) so until I do, I won’t report it here, but I’m honestly perplexed as to why the Flyers are keeping him on the roster at this point. Just waive Lehtera. No one will claim him because of his salary and this investigation. At which point you can either bury him in the minors or give him his outright release. You can’t tell me that it’s better for this team long-term to keep him on this roster at this point than to give someone like a Nicolas Aube-Kubel a real chance to play in the NHL.

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