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Let me tell you about the time Scott Hartnell scored five goals in one weekend with his ex-high school teacher father looking on in approving jubilance. ‘Tis a true tale.

It wasn’t just the fact that Hartnell scored five goals, including a natural hat trick in the second period of Sunday’s game against the Bruins, but it’s where he scored them from.

Look, I made you a picture:

Hartnell_scores

 

#wheresscotthartnell?! In the fucking left-slot

No, that’s not some crazy Illuminati pentagram designed to drive Nicholas Cage batshit crazy– it’s Hartnell’s goal chart from the weekend. Some would say that’s called sniping, to score from there, and I can’t disagree.* In fact, Hartnell’s second goal against the Bruins appeared to have dipped and curved over Tim Thomas’ shoulder like a Cliff Lee deuce on a mission from God. It also looked a lot like Russ Tyler’s Knuckle Puck from D2: The Mighty Ducks.

Look, I made you a video:

 

Hartnell joins Danny Briere and his Luiz Mendoza move in Mighty Ducks mashups.

After the game, the should-be all-star talked about his newfound snipieness:

Q: Fair to say this was the best weekend of your career?

"Yeah. Five goals in two games, it's a good weekend for anybody. so, I'll take it. confidence is a weird thing. I have a lot of confidence and I feel strong on the puck, strong on the ice, my skating is good and when Giroux makes those nice little passes to me, it's nice to get a good shot off and was able to put a couple (inaudible)"

Q: What does it mean to do it in front of your dad?

"To see the smile on his face afterwards is special for me, obviously. He's probably watched a thousand or fifteen hundred games that I've played, traveled around Western Canada growing up and watched every game on the NHL Network. To have him here and have a good game personally is pretty nice."

Q: What is your dads first name and what does he do for a living?

"His name is Bill Hartnell and he's a teacher and principal for thirty years."

Q: Still?

"No, he's retired now."

 

Bill Hartnell, father of a sniper.

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*Let's see how long it takes other teams to pick this up on game tapes or this site (sorry) and start knocking Hartnell out of that spot.

Speaking of coming-out-of-their-shell stories: Brayden Schenn’s balls dropped today. He murdered Steven Kampfer, got into a fight with Chris Kelly (Schenn lost), wiped some blood off his visor, took five stitches to the head… [picture and more after the jump]


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… and then returned to the game and continued to assert himself as the alpha male ala Mike Richards, to whom he was compared by Paul Holmgren before the start of the season. The master plan, it seems, is coming to fruition.

Of course, all this tasty hockey goodness only returned one point for the Flyers. That last sentence can be attributed to the man Tim Panaccio painfully calls The Bryzard of Oz, the $51 million goaltender who hasn’t stopped a shot in a shootout since joining the Flyers. He’s oh…for-five. 

Bryz, post-game:

Q:  Do you think that the team needs to practice these shoot outs a little bit more?

“Goalies need to stop the puck more.  I was five and five this year.  Five attempts and five goals.  I don’t know, they just score the goals.”

 

Thanks, Bryz.

Other news: Danny Briere and James van Riemsdyk are still out indefinitely with concussions. Jaromir Jagr and Zac Rinaldo are out with lower and upper-body injures, respectively.

Quotes via the Flyers city-leading PR department, pics via PhiladelphiaFlyers.com and CSN screen grabs