Three-plus months later, however, it's fair to ask if the Flyers might be better-served by naming someone - Kimmo Timonen, Danny Briere, Jaromir Jagr, Scott Hartnell, Claude Giroux, and Max Talbot would all be solid choices - as their captain down the stretch and into the playoffs.
No offense to any of those six players, but none would ever carry the presence of Pronger, a fiery, in-your-face leader who was the Flyers' unofficial captain even before he was given the "C" this season.
Still, when you consider how the Flyers have struggled over the last six weeks - a 7-8-3 record and zero winning streaks - one wonders if having a main voice in the locker room would be beneficial.
Briere politely disagreed.
"I've said it from the beginning, it's overstated," Briere said when asked if naming a captain was needed. "It doesn't matter who has a letter on his shirt."
That makes sense, but the Flyers skid doesn't support the theory.
"It seems we're inconsistent right now," winger Wayne Simmonds said. "We play one good game and then don't play good the next."
At this time of the season, with playoff spots at stake, there is no excuse for taking periods off - as the Flyers did in the second period of their 2-0 loss in Edmonton on Thursday.
If Pronger had been around, there would have been a between-periods outburst that would have peeled the paint off the locker-room walls.
Do the Flyers need someone to read them the riot act and keep them focused?
"A lot of us have tried," Briere said. "But leadership is not an issue in this room. It's a matter of digging down and finding a way to get out of it."
