Keith Primeau

After spending a week rolling around on a giant, blue rubber ball, doing all sorts of abdominal work to strengthen his back and promote flexibility, center Eric Lindros is eager to do something else. Like play hockey. The Flyers' captain will return to the lineup today against the Boston Bruins. Joining him will be center Keith Primeau (fractured rib) and defenseman Ulf Samuelsson (injured left rotator cuff). All three practiced yesterday at Northeastern University. Lindros and Primeau both say they're not 100 percent but they're close enough to play.

Petr Nedved has played 14 seasons in the NHL primarily on offense, though he has not had a 20-goal season since 2002-03. Beginning tonight in Pittsburgh, Nedved will take on one of the most important Flyers jobs - replacing the retired Keith Primeau as the "shutdown" center against the opponent's top line. "I don't think he has to reinvent himself, but it is important for him . . . he is going to end up playing against a lot of teams' top players," coach Ken Hitchcock said.

When the Flyers traded center Mike Comrie to Phoenix on Monday for goalie Sean Burke, they were five deep at center. Suddenly, they're three deep. In a span of 32 seconds in the third period of last night's 2-1 win over the New York Rangers, the Flyers lost their top two centers - Jeremy Roenick and Keith Primeau. An exam found that Roenick, playing with a sore left hamstring, suffered a fractured left jaw when he was hit with a slapshot by Rangers defenseman Boris Mironov about five minutes into the final period at Madison Square Garden.

The Flyers are two games away from an early summer, trailing their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semifinal series against the Pittsburgh Penguins by two games to none. Tonight in Pittsburgh, they will try to get back into the series amid a pair of lineup changes. The biggest change involves dropping center Keith Primeau from the first line to the second and moving Daymond Langkow up one line as Primeau's replacement. The other involves defenseman Adam Burt's entering the lineup in place of Mark Eaton, a rookie.

The players were trickling onto the ice when they were summoned back to the dressing room. Flyers coach Bill Barber recalled his players for a team meeting to discuss all the little breakdowns that have seen them regress with a 4-3 record since coming off the Olympic break. The players eventually returned to the ice to practice, but it was the team meeting that might prove more valuable tonight in Toronto when the Flyers meet the Maple Leafs for the second time in three days.

Three games into the Flyers' season, coach Bill Barber says he has already given his players enough time to get comfortable. Now it's time for the lines to be productive. "You don't sit pat," Barber said. "When something is not getting done on the ice, I make a change right away. " Barber made a bunch of changes at practice yesterday in Columbus before the Flyers headed off to Buffalo for tonight's game against the Sabres. Barber wasn't happy with the overall look of Monday's 2-2 tie with the Blue Jackets.

Time and again these last several years, the Flyers have gotten to the postseason and their big guns have gone silent, their veteran leadership wilting under pressure. Tonight, the Flyers either win Game 5 against the Buffalo Sabres or head for the golf course. Sure, the Flyers have never won in the postseason when trailing by three games to one. But coach Bill Barber asks, So what? Barber suggested yesterday that if he could get every one of his players to perform the way Keith Primeau had in two games with a bad knee, his team wouldn't be in such dire straits.

The waiting game on Simon Gagne and Keith Primeau may take longer than expected for the Flyers. General manager Bob Clarke said yesterday that he can't go on vacation until he gets Gagne under contract. As for Primeau, whose concussion symptoms have returned, Clarke believes the club is obligated to wait until the beginning of September to see if the team's captain can play. Gagne's signing is the major issue at the moment. Clarke and Gagne's agent, Bob Sauve, have exchanged various proposals and will talk later this week.

One week after several veteran Flyers expressed concern that management was trying to trade Eric Lindros to Carolina for Keith Primeau, general manager Bob Clarke stressed that it wouldn't happen. Clarke addressed the team Sunday morning in Kanata, Ontario, before the Flyers' 3-3 overtime tie against the Senators. "He thought [a team meeting] was the best way to handle it," Lindros said yesterday. "It was very rare for him to come into the room and address the team. I was happy he said it. " Lindros had met privately with Clarke in his Ottawa hotel suite on Saturday.

Three days into the season is a tad soon for the Flyers to play one of those games in which they become unglued and frayed around the edges. A game where they're more like spectators instead of participants. "It's an early season wake-up call to realize what we accomplished last year has no bearing on this year," Keith Primeau said after the Boston Bruins routed the Flyers, 5-1, before a noticeable number of empty seats at the First Union Center. "We have to understand we have to play harder than this.

ONE OF THE proudest moments of Keith Primeau's hockey career was blasting a wrist shot over Ron Tugnutt's left shoulder on May 4, 2000, to end the longest game in modern NHL history, the Flyers beating the Penguins in the fifth overtime. An equally proud "life" moment was when he was able to finally phone his parents, Mike and Peg, in Whitby, Ontario, last fall to tell them he had completed all his curriculum requirements to earn a degree in liberal studies from Neumann University in Aston.

SO HERE WE GO AGAIN. One week off has turned into 1 month off and counting. The latest number thrown around is that Sidney Crosby will be re-evaluated in 7 to 10 days. There is even talk that he might not return to the ice until March, which invites this rather obvious question: Why at all? Oh, right. Because the Penguins need their 23-year-old captain if they are to make any serious run at a Stanley Cup. "It's a bad day if we're making the Stanley Cup relevant to the conversation," Keith Primeau was saying yesterday.

It seemed only fitting that Derian Hatcher referenced his relatives when he expressed his gratitude for his selection to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame. After all, his big brother, Kevin, will be inducted with him. The Hatchers and former Flyers center Jeremy Roenick are part of the 2010 class that will be inducted Oct. 21 in Buffalo. They are joined by Team USA physician Dr. V. George Nagobads and administrator Art Berglund, both of whom have been involved with the organization since the 1960s.

THEY TELL THE STORIES, fans of this team do, tell the stories of valiant efforts in face of all odds. They tell of Hexy carrying an injury-plagued team past a more talented Montreal team in 1987, tell of that rally from 3-1 to scare Wayne Gretzky and the greatest hockey team ever assembled in a seventh game. They still talk about what might have been if Leon Stickle wasn't so awfully human in 1980, what might have been if Keith Primeau had not been so hurt and worn down in that Game 7 against Tampa Bay in 2004.

EVERYBODY HAS A theory, an innovation that will bring the NHL to national prominence. Some big, some small. Designate a weekly hockey night, former Flyers captain Keith Primeau says. That's how his family - like so many others - came to love the game in Canada. Focus on the barely breathing small-market teams, a sports business expert at Temple University says. And why not give the viewer a window into the players' personalities during the broadcast? Rick Tocchet, who has spent 27 years in the NHL as a player and a coach and is now an analyst for Comcast SportsNet, remembers seeing Flyers captain Dave Poulin take seven needles to his ribs before every game of the 1987 Stanley Cup finals.

RALEIGH, N.C. - A longtime Carolina Hurricanes season ticketholder, Bruce Dunn has no love for the Flyers. He hated them long before Keith Primeau ever went there after a holdout that still leaves a sour taste for many Hurricanes fans. Yet the bonds Peter Laviolette built with the Hurricanes, their fans and the Research Triangle community are so strong, Dunn will be rooting for the Flyers, not the Blackhawks, when Game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals begins tonight. "I hate Philadelphia, hate them with a passion," Dunn said.

Ed Snider and the Flyers faithful would love to see this list grow by one. If the Flyers somehow manage to win the holy grail of hockey this year after barely squeaking into the playoffs and with a goaltender they claimed off waivers at midseason, the Cup clincher will have to check in at No. 3. But until then, here's one person's list: Rick MacLeish tipped in a Moose Dupont wrist shot, then the Flyers dogged the Bruins all over the ice and...

Why does Willis Reed's name get invoked whenever an NBA player triumphantly comes back from an injury in the playoffs? Because that kind of thing doesn't happen in the NBA as much as it does in hockey. Or in other sports for that matter. Not to diminish what Reed meant to the Knicks when he unexpectedly hobbled onto the court in Game 7 of the 1970 Finals with a torn thigh muscle. Reed scored New York's first four points and his brief appearance inspired the Knicks to the win. Great stuff, no doubt.

I'M BROAD STREET Bully, inviting you to please keep e-mailing your favorite stories and photos of your Flyered-up families and puck-passionate pets to:     LITTLE SAMMY'S SHINER: Paul and Heather D'Antonio of Deptford are so Flyered up that they almost named their son after Keith Primeau because Paul was blown away by the great Flyer captain's domination in the 2004 playoffs. Instead, they named the kid Samuel after his Flyers-loving grandpa, Paul's dad, a season-ticket holder for 39 years.

Simon Gagne is making progress. He can now lift weights using the heel of his broken right foot, and he is riding an exercise bike and able to walk with a protective boot. But the veteran left winger, whose presence the Flyers miss dearly in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the Boston Bruins, won't be able to resume skating until Friday at the earliest. That means the best-case scenario would be for Gagne to return to the lineup Monday in Boston, if Game 5 is necessary.