Report: Chris Pronger Travels to Buffalo, but Won’t Play in Game 3 at LinesMaker.com

Report: Chris Pronger Travels to Buffalo, but Won’t Play in Game 3

If you lis­ten to some seg­ments of the Philadel­phia Fly­ers fan base, there’s a Sergei Bobrovsky vs. Brian Boucher debate that rivals the Team Edward vs. Team Jacob cam­paigns among “Twi­light” fans.

(That being said, I don’t expect some­one to make a pro-Boucher argu­ment because he’s “sen­si­tive and pro­tec­tive,” although I guess the lat­ter might apply to the Fly­ers’ net.)

Tim Panac­cio writes that the early indi­ca­tion is that Philadel­phia will go with Boucher for Game 3 on Mon­day night, but hon­estly, this debate wouldn’t hold the same impor­tance if one player could get healthy. That would be hulk­ing defense­man Chris Pronger, an expe­ri­enced and intim­i­dat­ing player who fre­quently turns decent goalies to good ones and makes good ones great.

Pronger trav­eled with the team to ice-cold Buf­falo, but Panac­cio reports that he won’t be avail­able for Game 3. Pronger report­edly won’t give another inter­view until he plays in a game, so expect lit­tle more than cur­sory updates about the game-changing defense­man. He’s doubt­ful for Game 4 as well, which indi­cates that we will need to take a wait-and-see approach while the team lists him as day-to-day. If he gives him­self an unex­pected green light, how­ever, we’ll let you know.

If you ask me, Pronger was the top rea­son this team man­aged to suc­ceed while Boucher and Michael Leighton exchanged the start­ing job (and time on the injured list) in the 2010 play­offs. The Sabres wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily be a pushover with him in the lineup, but it will be a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge to best them with­out Pronger on the ice.

It wouldn’t be sur­pris­ing if their net­min­ders end up look­ing quite human in the process, whether the team hands the torch to Boucher, Bobrovsky or even Leighton.

Related Posts:

• Chris Pronger Won’t Play for Philadel­phia Fly­ers Tonight
• Eddy Curry Pulls Out of Miami Char­ity Game, Caron But­ler to Play
• Rex Ryan Drops Strong Hint That Man­gold Won’t Play
• Boston Top­ples NHL Bet­ting Favorite Philadelphia
• Spurs’ Gino­bili Out Vs. Griz­zlies in Game 1

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