Flyers

Morning Puck: Giroux Had a Bad Day, Bryz’s “Boo Boo”

By Kyle Scott

Published: Dec 11th, 2011 · 9:51 AM EST

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Somewhere, Daniel Powter is proud.

I’d imagine that most days for Claude Giroux are good days. I can see him waking up, looking in the mirror and saying some sort of hokey Canadian version of Stuart Smalley’s “I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough” daily affirmation, turning to the chick in his bed and politely asking her to leave, then going about his day further cementing himself as the NHL’s leading scorer.

Yesterday, however, Claude did not have a good day. He had a bad day, in fact.

The Flyers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning, 5-2, and furthered their lead in the Eastern Conference. But in the morning, a CB reader sent this picture, which is alleged to be Giroux after getting into a minor fender bender just outside the Wells Fargo Center (his car in the middle, most confirmed he drives either a Camaro or Mustang– can’t tell which):

Then, last night, Giroux was kneed in the head by Wayne Simmonds:

Claude was taken to the locker room, where HBO 24/7 cameras were asked to leave by the NHL, according to Lisa Hilary:

HBO cameras were kicked out of locker room when Giroux went off. As per NHL.

— Lisa Hillary (@LHillaryCSN) December 11, 2011

That’s presumably because the NHL would rather not have the nation see a dazed player being poked, prodded and tested like a malfunctioning disk drive.

After the game, Paul Holmgren – who is always forthcoming with injuries – addressed Giroux’s noggin: [quotes via the Flyers]

Q: On the injuries

“Ilya, it’s an injury issue, lower body,  [it happened] during the third. We don’t think it’s anything serious.  It’s an off-day tomorrow for the players… I would assume that he will be fine for our next game. Claude was obviously injured late in the second period. He was evaluated by our doctors and held out for precautionary reasons in the third period, and we’ll evaluate him tomorrow and see how he is."

Q: Was he taken to the hospital?

“Claude? No.”

Q: Is he experiencing any kind of symptoms, headaches, things like that?

“No not really a headache or anything like that. This really is just the precautionary at this stage where we just didn’t want to put him back in there at that time. It’s a game in December, and obviously he is one of our better players, so were just err on the side of caution here.

Q: And how, with these situations sometimes, usually you can get a better understanding of what happened the next day and how he feels the next day?

“Yeah, I just spoke with him a minute ago, he feels better so, again we just said to go home and get some rest and we’ll see you tomorrow. Our doctors will meet him tomorrow morning early and we’ll see where were at.”

 

Translation: I lie about these sort of things, you guys know that. Hell, Chris Pronger had a cough that turned into knee surgery and a visit to the neurologist, you really think I’m going to tell you anything? When you see him out on the ice, you’ll know that he’s recovered from his upper-body injury.

Homer also mentioned Bryzgalov. The Russian goalie tried to play coy about his lower-body injury:

Q: Was it an equipment issue or….?

“Yeah.”

Q: Was it equipment or were you stretching? Because it looked a like, from where we were sitting, it looked like you were stretching.

“It's an equipment issue.”

Q: But there was a stoppage in play so you could've come back in then.

“Yeah it was…..no, I'm a bad liar.”

(laughter)

Q: What'd you do?

“It's an old booboo, that's it. It starts (inaudible) for a little bit.”

Q: Do you think you could've come back in but you were just kind of being cautious?

“It was starting to bother me more and more during the game and we decided to be safe.”

Q: Are you day to day?

“Not even, hour to hour probably.”

 

It’s an acquired trait, lying like Homer. You’ll get there, Bryz. 

That’s it. Your full highlights are after the jump. And here’s one more thing, because we couldn’t fit it anywhere else: 

Last month, Howard Eskin and John Bolaris got into a little Twitter spat. Yesterday, Eskin, who is in Miami for the 4-8 Eagles game, took aim at Bolaris, who was roofied by some foreigners during one trip to the sunshine state:

On South Beach in Miami, but didn't let those same Russian Women dupe me like one phila weather guy. No ruffie drug for me.

— Howard Eskin (@howardeskin) December 11, 2011

Heh.

Your Flyers highlights are after the jump.