Contrary to most outward appearances, there is a hint of excitement these days at the Spectrum.
It is happening quietly, subtly. It is obscured by disappointing losses and maddening ties. It is drowned in a sea of offensive ineptitude.
But it`s there.
Goalie Ron Hextall looks as if he`s just about back.
The injuries appear to have healed. The temper, but not the enthusiasm, seems to have been checked at the door. There still are miles to go in the season, miles to go before he`s sure, miles that will pass by incredibly slowly as the Flyers stare at the chasm between them and the playoffs.
But the signs are there. Things aren`t perfect yet-the one goal he allowed Tuesday night against the Blackhawks, on a rebound, was ”savable,”
in his words-but they are tons better than they were.
The most important things are the injuries. And Hextall looks as if he`s overcome them-the pulled groins, the tendinitis in the shoulder, all of them. ”He definitely does, definitely does,” coach Bill Dineen said after another tie, a 1-1 job with the Blackhawks. ”He played a real solid game. He wasn`t off balance once in the game. He hardly went down.
”He looks like he`s right back to where he was four or five years ago, when he had his great year.
”Hopefully, that will continue.”
Mention this to Hextall and he gets this pained look on his face. No, nothing physically hurts. He jokes that ”it`s like I traded my body in from last year and got a new one, even though it doesn`t look any different.”
But he says he hasn`t proved anything yet. And he is loathe to offer even a suggestion of satisfaction while the team still is so far down.
”Some positive things are happening personally for me right now, but it`s tough to take any good out of it because we`re not winning a lot of games,” he said. ”We`re certainly not winning as many as we need to win.
”I don`t feel that I`ve established anything. My consistency hasn`t been that great. I`m a little disappointed with that. I just have to pick up the pieces and go to work.”
Hextall missed six games after his annual trip to NHL Executive Vice President Brian O`Neill`s office for a preseason slashing incident with Detroit`s Jim Cummins. He missed 11 games in November and December because of tendinitis in his shoulder.
Since he came back on Dec. 21 with a shutout at Minnesota, he has allowed only 16 goals in seven games. He was good to excellent in all but one of them, a dreadful 5-5 tie last week against Buffalo.
The groin?
”The maintenance exercises I`ve been doing during the season and all the work I did in the summer is paying off,” Hextall said. ”There were times before where I`d feel it, but this year, I really don`t. I guess it`s so strong there now that I don`t even feel it.”
The shoulder?
”Feels great,” Hextall said.
The only bad thing since he came back was the Buffalo game. Two bad goals and one miserably bad goal voided what otherwise was a pretty good effort by a team that doesn`t always enjoy that particular luxury. He left the dressing room that night without speaking to reporters, which isn`t like him. Oh, yeah- the Spectrum crowd also booed him.
”It just seemed like that one game, it was really frustrating,” he said. ”I thought things were going all right, and then, all of a sudden, I play like that. It ate at me for a couple of games.
”I`m really glad Bill (Dineen) put me in there in the next game.”
But there is little consolation in the turnaround. This team is going nowhere this season in the standings, and everybody knows it. As things stand, they are 14 points out of a playoff spot with 37 games left to play. They are 14 points behind New Jersey.
If the Devils play at the same pace they are now, they will finish with 93 points. If they play at that pace, the Flyers would have to go 28-8-1 to pass them.
If the Devils play at a .500 pace the rest of the way, they will finish with 87 points. To get by them at that pace, the Flyers would have to go 25-11-1. This isn`t pretty. Everyone knows it.
”It`s pretty tough,” Hextall said. ”Like I said, we all know how desperately we need to win hockey games right now. We`re just not getting it done for some reason. We`ve got to pick it up from here. We can`t look at the standings. We`ve just got to win hockey games.
”Right now, we`ve just got to worry about ourselves and stop watching what`s going on in our division.
”As athletes, we don`t look at the big picture-a year or two or three from now. We look at now. We`re playing better, but we`re not winning. Obviously, that`s the bottom line. I`m encouraged with the way we`re playing most nights, but we`ve got to get it done.”
Hextall`s return poses an interesting scenario. For years and years, the Flyers relied on great goaltending and their work ethic to get it done. Those were the two largest blocks in the foundation. Everything built on top of that.
And now that Hextall appears to be on the way back, what about the other half of the equation? Where is that?
Listen to Bill Dineen talk about Tuesday night`s game with the Hawks:
”Our problem was that we weren`t getting the puck down deep,” he said.
”We were trying to finesse it and we were getting stripped on the blue line, which has been a problem for us all along.
”We`re most effective when we are throwing it in, when we are going down low and banging it. If we`ve had any success at all, those are the games we`ve had it in. For some reason or another, we do it certain games and have success, and we don`t do it, like tonight, we run into trouble.”
This would appear to be relatively easy to fix. One quick glance at the standings would seem to be enough motivation for everyone to suppress his ego just a bit. But Dineen says it hasn`t happened, not yet.
And so, we sit and wait. There are miles to go, months and miles. You take your progress where you can find it. And right now, you can find it in the Flyers` goal.
