Desjardins is gone but hardly forgotten

Perhaps it takes a season of mediocrity to appreciate what Eric Desjardins brought to the Flyers for 11 years.

You wonder what a healthy, mobile No. 37 would have meant on the back line this season. A concussion, a dislocated right shoulder, and a torn labrum in his left hip forced him to retire last summer.

Tonight, the Flyers honor a man who brought grace, dignity, and a sense of responsibility to the organization, despite his differences with Eric Lindros. Desjardins was arguably up there with Mark Howe as the club's best all-round defenseman. Neither player's number is retired.

The ceremonies will include the showing of a highlight video of Desjardins and the presentation of gifts to the former defenseman.

"You know a lot of guys on the team and you want them to do well," Desjardins, 37, said of the Flyers' current plight. "And to see it that they are in last place . . .

"Last year, we finished on the top at the Christmas break. So it's tough.  A lot of people are saying 'Maybe you can help them,' but it's easy to say it. I don't think I would make a big difference. . . .

"Hopefully, they can finish the season on a better note, because sometimes, when you don't have success, that carries over to the next season - and the same thing, when you have success, it helps you for the next year."

His retirement was brought on by daily rehabbing from significant old injuries, more so than playing in pain, which he did in his final years.

"After a while, you just have to make a decision: Am I willing to take this?" Desjardins said. "And if it takes too much time to get ready for games, that is when sometimes you have to make a decision. I was not willing to go through all that stuff."

Chris Therien, his longtime ice partner, nicknamed him "Rico," after Rico Suave because of his dapper dress. Yet Desjardins' mannerisms were conservative.

How would he like to be remembered?

As "somebody that put out a good effort every night and gave everything that I had night in and night out, was consistent, and somebody that really cared about the Flyers' success," Desjardins answered.

How fitting that tonight's opponent is Montreal. Desjardins won his only Stanley Cup there as a young player, and the 1995 trade that brought both Desjardins and John LeClair from that city to Philadelphia changed the face of the Flyers from the mid-1990s into the new millennium.

"It was a big shock," he said of the trade. "Growing up in Quebec, a French-speaking guy, you think that you are going to spend the rest of your life in your country and in your province.

"But once I got to Philly, it was great right from the start. They had a great team.  We started winning right away. We made the playoffs, and we had a great year.  It was a fun year.  Every time we stepped on the ice, we had a great feeling."

Terry Murray, the coach at the time, "really put in a fun system, and everyone really bought into it," Desjardins said.

Club chairman Ed Snider boldly predicted a Cup in the '90s. The Flyers were that deep, that talented. It never happened. The 1996-97 Lindros-led club was swept embarrassingly by Detroit in the Stanley Cup Finals.

The 1999-2000 Flyers, under Craig Ramsay, should have won, yet blew a three-games-to-one lead against New Jersey in the Eastern Conference finals.

The 2004 Flyers, under Ken Hitchcock, were decimated by injuries (the casualties included Desjardins) and lost Game 7 of the conference finals at Tampa Bay.

Yet 2000 was the Flyers' best chance.

"Leading three to one, and Game 5, Game 6 and Game 7, every game we felt like it was slipping from us," Desjardins recalled. "That was probably a tough moment.  After Game 7, we all remember Eric getting hit [by Scott Stevens] again and us losing that game and being one game from another Final. For me, that would have to be the worst moment."

Mark Recchi won the Cup as a youngster in Pittsburgh. He later said that when you win it early in your career, you expect to return to the Finals. As such, you often don't appreciate the moment or realize it may never come again. Recchi got a second Cup last season with Carolina.

"It never comes too early," Desjardins said.  "Sometimes, when the first one has so much excitement involved, you are young and you think it's going to happen every year or every other year, so you don't really enjoy every moment of it.

"It's something that you would love to do twice. Rex was lucky that he had the chance to do it twice.  Everything goes so fast. . . . You don't realize what you are in and you don't feel everything that is happening.  So, yes, it is tough sometimes when you look back and say 'I should have enjoyed it more' or something like that. I would have loved to win another with the Flyers.  It would have been different and I would have probably enjoyed it a lot more."

Desjardins helped the Canadiens win the Cup in 1993, scoring a hat trick in Game 2 of the Finals, against Los Angeles. The game went into overtime.

"It was unbelievable," Desjardins recalled.  "It actually took me a couple games to come back from that game. It was the first time I got booed, when they introduced me in Los Angeles," he said, laughing at the moment.

Desjardins is enjoying his retirement, coaching youth hockey in Quebec. He found a goaltending coach, a power-skating coach, and a stickhandling specialist. Together, the four of them started a program for children.

"That takes a lot of my time," Desjardins said.  "As far as the thoughts to coming back and playing, I would be crazy to think that I can play at the level that I need to be at to be competitive in the league. . . . I am trying to adjust to life after a career."