| Friday, November 3
By Rob Parent
Special to ESPN.com |
|
He would evoke images of a quiet hero; a human calm in the thunderous
storm, a peaceful warrior whose presence alone instills confidence in his
comrades. John Vanbiesbrouck used to be this.
For the Rangers the Florida Panthers -- most notably in 1996 -- Vanbiesbrouck was a goaltender never out of position on the ice and
never wavering out of step in his pre-game talks and post-game interviews. No
matter the odds or the opponent, he would weather the worries in the same
articulate, reasoned manner. A demeanor that matched nicely to the smooth,
almost mathematical fashion in which he covered all the postseason angles.
|  | | John Vanbiesbrouck has accepted his role as Brian Boucher's backup. |
At 36, he's now covering a new one, and in the process has recovered
himself.
"The season has kind of taken on more of an urgency now," Vanbiesbrouck
said. "You're in the playoffs, you know everything's on the line. So that
immediacy and the fact that Brian's the one who's going to be playing in the
games has just made me step up those kinds of things; and it's also something
where I have to practice what I preach.
"What I've tried to say the whole season is that it's his time, and what
I'm trying to bring to him is whatever happened to me in the past, my own
experience, that might be of a help now. And at the same time I have to make
sure I show no animosity to anyone, be it the coaches or him or anybody,
because we have to be all in this as a team."
As the NHL's conference semifinals begin Thursday night, the Flyers are a veteran
team that nonetheless started four rookies and a career AHL center against Buffalo, including a freshman goalie by the name of Brian
Boucher who has displaced Vanbiesbrouck in the crease.
The Flyers have a group of multimillionaires with an impressive collection of Cup
rings, though none were won in Philadelphia. And lately, they've had to
wonder what they've gotten themselves into here.
Almost every day this past season, it's been the same for the
players: Hop in the SUV for the nice drive through South Jersey suburbia.
Stop for coffee at the WaWa and have to listen to the customers talking about
the latest Bob Clarke atrocity. Pick up the newspaper and see the
front-page tease of yet another controversy on -- but always off -- the ice. Flip
on the radio and hear how another teammate had been dissed or the coach with
cancer had been wronged.
"Just another day in the soap opera life that is Team Dysfunctional!" the
host will shout. And of course, he's talking about their hockey team, which
is the most popular and longest-running sports saga in this town of acrid
fans and meddlesome media.
Yet amid it all, Vanbiesbrouck has learned to recapture the admirable
inner peace that was once his; the professorial presence he had lost
somewhere along the line in his last days in Florida, and had never been able
to grasp in almost two stormy years in Philadelphia.
"I think all this stuff that's gone on has really brought us together,"
said Vanbiesbrouck. "In a way, it just makes you rally around each other.
Kind of like a campfire thing, so to speak, where it makes you talk to each
other about how to handle the issues that are going on. And talking between
yourselves in the locker room, that's a good sense of communication that a
lot of teams don't have.
"We've had to play in the playoffs without one of the best players in the
league, and now our coach is out recovering from cancer. So we did have to
get closer together to handle those things."
To replay the major recent Flyer follies ...
Since March, the Flyers -- a team that had suffered through the offseason
deaths of defenseman Dmitri Tertyshny and head coach Roger Neilson's cancer
diagnosis in December -- saw Eric Lindros suffer a fourth concussion, one that
was misdiagnosed by team medical officials and probably misrepresented by a
Lindros who was afraid of what his father, and agent, Carl Lindros would
say. So he played with it.
That triggered a stunning Lindros press conference in which he criticized
club medical officials and GM Bob Clarke, leading to an entertaining volley
of verbal attacks by management on Lindros and some members of the media,
too. And more criticisms of Lindros by some of his own teammates.
But no the reasoned Beezer.
"Believe me, we all want what's best for this guy as a health issue," he
said of Lindros, who's still holding out hope for returning in the third
round should the Flyers get past Pittsburgh. "When it comes to him and the
team, he sees the process. He sees how much this team has come together. As
far as how he would react to it, it's more than him just fitting in. This is
a guy who's been a major part of this team for a very long time. He knows
what it is he has to do when he comes back. He better know."
Meanwhile, Lindros sympathizer Neilson had to give up his job temporarily
Feb. 20 to prepare for a stem cell transplant to combat his bone marrow
cancer. But all along he was being told by doctors that he could return by
the second round of the playoffs if he progressed well. Management told him
the same thing, although that part of the history was recently revised.
Anyway, with the Lindros stuff still hot, Neilson comes back tip-top, only
to be told by Clarke that he'll now be former assistant Craig Ramsay's new
assistant. So the 65-year-old coach promptly goes on a Toronto sports talk
show and rips the team and his old friend Clarke, saying, "I don't think the
Flyers ... want a cancer patient who is a friend of Eric Lindros behind the
bench right now."
But that's OK, for Neilson will call another press conference the next
day, and almost tearfully perform an act of contrition in front of the media
and say that of course he's on board with being an assistant now.
"Roger feels wronged," said Vanbiesbrouck. "You can't tell the guy one
thing and then when he comes back tell him another. The doctors had told him
he could be back behind the bench for the second round. That was what we were
all told -- coaches, players and management. But I think what you have here is
a doctor who isn't used to dealing with a hockey team. He's used to dealing
with a team of doctors, and they do things in a different way."
Ah, but we're only scratching the surface. In the locker room, the usual
hockey issues have been overshadowed. But they've also been dealt head-on by
Vanbiesbrouck -- the calm observer.
For one, he landed the job of answering to the obvious shift in favor by
the coaches to 23-year-old Boucher, who
barely played in the season's first two months. He was starting to play a
lot, even though there were ongoing rumors that Clarke was trying to trade
for another "playoff goalie" as Vanbiesbrouck continued to let in short-side
goals.
Any comments, John?
"I wasn't auditioning for a job down the stretch," said Vanbiesbrouck, who
actually straightened out his midseason problems with short-side softies and
had a strong final two months of the season, even while Boucher was taking
away the starting job. "A few reporters were asking me things about who I
thought was going to be the No. 1 and No. 2 goalies in the playoffs, but I
kind of knew what was going to happen. I knew it as soon as the decision was
made to go with Brian in that first game back from the All-Star break. To me,
the handwriting was kind of on the wall then.
"I still held out the belief that if put in good performances in my game,
I could still get the opportunity to start again in the playoffs. So that's
where those games came from, and during that time, it also allowed me to get
more comfortable with the idea (of backing up Boucher). What also helped was
the situation around the team. All the stuff with Roger and Eric certainly
took precedence (with the media). Had things been settled with the best
player on the team still playing and the coach of the team still in there
coaching, then this goaltender issue would have been more of a front-line
story. But it wasn't and that allowed me the time to get used to it."
Originally, Vanbiesbrouck was a free-agent acquisition by Clarke, who bought him up at nearly half the going rate that Curtis Joseph was expecting
to sign for in Philly. At Vanbiesbrouck's introductory press conference,
Clarke spent the whole time yelling at the media that its charges that Beezer
was the cheesier choice was flat out wrong.
Meanwhile Vanbiesbrouck and his wife sat wide-eyed at the scene.
Then came last year's playoffs, and almost romantically it was him against that
same Curtis Joseph, and it didn't help that he was outplayed by the more
expensive Toronto netminder. And when Vanbiesbrouck didn't play well early in this season, it seemed almost inevitable that he would disappear in a huff.
But no trade was made. And when Boucher was given the job, Vanbiesbrouck
accepted with grace.
"From Day 1, he's been great," Boucher said of Vanbiesbrouck, "and that's
what's allowed me to do my job. If you come to the rink and feel the tension
between the two of us, then you're going to (think), 'Should I talk to this
guy? Should I sit by his side?'
"But I'm not like that with John. I just wanted to learn as much as I
could from him, and he's really been a help to me. Beeze has done that with
so much class ... I want to learn from that, too. Because someday I'll be in
his shoes."
Vanbiesbrouck, who watched the rookie starting ahead of him outplay
Dominik Hasek and go 4-1 with a 1.56 GAA and .935 saves percentage against
the Sabres, remembers what it was like to be in young-sized skates under
pressure. He was the kid goalie in net for the Rangers in 1986, having won
the job early in the regular season.
"But it was different for me," said Vanbiesbrouck. "When I was that age, I
was called cocky and all these other kinds of things, and I'd ask myself,
'Why is that?' He doesn't seem to have those (doubts).
"And I think I was a little more naive about things than Brian is. It
seems like he's got a pretty tight background and a family structure, and
he's been blessed with a maturity that's far beyond his years."
Perhaps some people mature at their own pace. And maybe maturity is
something that comes and goes over time, depending on the situation. All the
Flyers and Boucher know right now is that Vanbiesbrouck has been a model of modern maturity under very
trying conditions.
The franchise player is fighting with management and his teammates aren't
in his corner, and the GM is calling press conferences to call a beat writer
"a lying jerk" on live TV and rookies are displacing veteran players and the
assistant coach is now the head coach and that has made the old coach not
only uncomfortable but angered to tears ... Amid it all, the Flyers have won 20 of their last 28 games. And Vanbiesbrouck is one guy who helped settle things down.
"I wanted to respond to this situation the best way I knew how," Vanbiesbrouck said. "I'm called to be the best teammate I could possible be. That's what's happening here and if we do get all the way to the end in the
playoffs, I'll know that I contributed to that."
Making progress ... quietly
Don't look now, but Eric Lindros, not addressing any leftover
controversies with the Flyers, says he's determined to return to the club
before its playoff run is over.
"I'm getting in a groove and looking forward to getting back," said
Lindros. "I still have some (headache symptoms) whenever I get my heart rate
up, but the doctors say that will go away. With time, I should get in gear."
The Flyers plan to leave for Pittsburgh Monday afternoon, and Lindros
hopes to be in Chicago that day seeking clearance from Northwestern
University concussion specialist James Kelly to begin full-contact work. If
his headaches completely disappear by then and he wins Kelly's approval,
Lindros could fly right from Chicago to Pittsburgh in time to catch Game 3
Tuesday night and practice with the club the next day. He said he'll be ready
to return sometime during the conference finals.
"Say as a player, you can play 10 years," said Lindros, who in his eighth
year is in the process of missing his second consecutive playoff season. "You
look at that as a potential of 10 chances to play in the spring for a
championship. So you've got to make the best of every opportunity you can
have."
Around the East
If the Penguins have any chance against the Flyers,
not only will Jan Hrdina have to get over his back pain and Jaromir Jagr have
to shake his nasty cold, but Matthew Barnaby is going to have to act like a
cold-blooded pain in the back. The Penguins' master instigator has a gift for
getting under the Flyers' skins, and one of the main reasons they were able
to beat Buffalo is because they drove the Sabres to distraction and into the
penalty box. If Barnaby can do that to the Flyers, the Pens can take
advantage of Philly's very average penalty killing unit. Of course, when's
the last time Barnaby drew penalties instead of took them?
Everyone's looking for the Devils to ride cleanly to the conference finals now that
"they've found themselves." But the Devils are a team with several rookies
and several old guys who had trouble bonding down the stretch. Just
because they swept the Panthers doesn't mean the problems
that underscored their disastrous final two months of the regular season are
solved. Unless Martin Brodeur steals a game or two, the Devils will have
plenty of problems with Toronto. Expect a long, nasty series there.
Quote of the week
"They'll probably (play me) the same way they did those 16 games -- 'Let's kill him. Kill him! Kill him!' ... But that's all right. Maybe when you play one game that works, but this is not only about one game. This is
not the Super Bowl. This is not football. This is hockey and you know you have to beat a team four times, and I think that's going to be tougher for them to do that," -- Jagr, on how the Flyers have won 16 straight
games against the Penguins in Philadelphia dating to Feb. 1994.
Rob Parent covers the NHL for the Delaware County (Pa.) Times. His NHL East column appears every week on ESPN.com. |  |
