Philadelphia
Daily News - January 29, 1997
Philadelphia
Daily News - January 29, 1997
o
appreciate Rod Brind'Amour's streak of 287 successive Flyers games
played, you needed only to witness what happened to teammate Karl
Dykhuis.
Dykhuis missed a check and careened awkwardly into the back boards 9 minutes, 11 seconds into the third period of the Flyers' 4-1 victory over visiting Phoenix last night at the CoreStates Center. Dykhuis was helped off the ice with one of the most gruesome shoulder dislocations in recent Flyers memory. Medical personnel had to strap weights to his left arm in order to properly pop the shoulder back into place.
Team orthopedic surgeon Dr. Art Bartolozzi noted that most such dislocations involve tearing of ligaments. Bartolozzi said a typical recovery time would be four to eight weeks.
Brind'Amour, who tied Rick MacLeish's franchise record for consecutive games played, afterward was asked the key to such a streak. He said the crucial element was being lucky enough “to avoid plays like what happened to ‘Dyker’ -- where you go off-balance into the boards and you're out for six weeks.”
Earlier, Brind'Amour survived a minor scare, limping off after he blocked a shot with his skate, late in the second period.
“I'll probably feel it more tomorrow than today,” Brind'Amour said. “It was one of those deals where as long as you don't take your skate off, you don't feel it.”
Brind'Amour remained low-key about his streak, currently third-longest in the league behind those of Montreal's Mark Recchi (430) and Edmonton's Doug Weight (306). Doug Jarvis holds the all-time mark of 964.
“It's nice for me to have some sort of mark with the Flyers,” Brind'Amour said. “I'd probably rather have something else, though.”