We’re still a month away from the start of the National Hockey League regular season and just a few short days away from training camp so Flyers fans may need a little something to hold themselves over until puck drop.
Why not take part in a Flyers Impossible Trivia game right here. Ten questions of extreme difficulty. Answers and added facts will be at the bottom. No cheating!
1. Which Flyers player has scored the most goals without ever scoring a power play goal?
2. Since the NHL started tracking time on ice about 30 years ago, which Flyer averaged the most TOI per game during his Philly tenure?
3. Which Flyer recorded the most shots on goal in a playoff game?
4. Three-time Stanley Cup winner Patrick Sharp began his career with the Flyers, playing in 66 games over three seasons. He wore FIVE different jersey numbers in the regular season in Philly. What were they?
5. Which Flyer holds the record for most penalty minutes in a game?
6. Who has the distinction of being the lowest Flyers’ draft pick to ever play in an NHL game? (Hint: he was taken 286th overall in his draft year).
7. Which Flyers played the most shorthanded minutes in a single game?
8. Bobby Clarke owns the record for best career +/- as a Flyer with an incredible plus-507. Who has the worst?
9. There are six Flyers who are the only representative of their native country to ever play for the team. Who are those six players? Bonus points if you nail down both player and country.
10. Which player played the fewest number of minutes per game with a minimum 100 games played with the Flyers?
Answers:
1. Derrick Smith scored 77 even strength goals and three shorthanded goals without ever potting one on the power play. Smith played seven seasons in Philly from 1984-91.
2. If you guessed Ivan Provorov, you were close, but surprisingly he’s not even the top Russian in this category. The answer is Alexei Zhitnik, who averaged 25:30 during his 31 games here during the mostly-forgettable 2006-07 season. Provorov is third (24:16) also trailing Chris Pronger (24:26).
3. It’s not Eric Lindros, who holds the regular season record with 14 in a game he actually didn’t even score. The playoff answer is defenseman Dan McGillis, who fired 11 shots on goal on April 29, 2000 against the Pittsburgh Penguins. No, this was not the five-overtime game. This was actually Game 2 and the Flyers lost the game 4-1 to fall to 0-2 in a series they would eventually win. For the record, McGillis did not score on his 11 attempts.
4. Patrick Sharp wore numbers 9, 11, 18, 32 and 51 in orange and black. Now is probably a good time to remember Sharp, who recorded 287 career goals and 333 assists, was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks for Matt Ellison, who dressed in a total of seven games for the Flyers. Good times.
5. We go back to March 11, 1979 to see that Frank Bathe tallied 55 minutes in the sin bin in a game against the Los Angeles Kings. While Bathe’s totals are impressive, he was outshined by LA’s Randy Holt, who set an NHL record that day with 67 penalty minutes in the old-time hockey affair.
6. With the 286th selection in the 2004 NHL Entry Draft, the Flyers took Triston Grant out of Neepawa, Manitoba in the ninth round. He played eight games with the Flyers, registering one assist. He played three more NHL games in his career with the Nashville Predators but played more than 600 games in the American Hockey League.
7. It was New Year’s Eve in 2005 and Derian Hatcher logged 11:50 on the kill against the Washington Capitals. Hatcher played 33:44 that night and he owns the top-three most shorthanded minutes in a game in Flyers history.
8. Most of Wayne Simmonds’ best plays came on the power play, which might explain why he owns a minus-78 rating in 584 games as a Flyer. Props to Keith Yandle who takes second place with a minus-47 in just 77 games.
9. There are six players who are the sole representative of their native country and most of these guys you’ve probably heard of. They are Oskars Bartulis (Latvia), Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (France), Ruslan Fedotenko (Ukraine), Oliver Lauridsen (Denmark), Maxim Sushko (Belarus) and Dainius Zubrus (Lithuania).
10. Former enforcer Riley Cote played in 156 games for the Flyers and averaged just 4:07 of ice time per night. But Cote didn’t just warm the players’ bench, he spent 411 minutes in the penalty box, too. In comparison, he played 642 total minutes on the ice.
