FanHouse Sami Kapanen

Sami Kapanen, the spunky jack-of-all trades saw the writing on the wall when the Flyers made him a healthy scratch/bit player during their playoff run. After a regular season which saw the little bugger get a whopping eight points in 74 games, it's not as if the Flyers were going to utilize Kapanen in a big role.

Kapanen said "To hell with that!", and decided to call it quits on his lengthy NHL career, returning to play with the club he is a partial-owner of.

Flyers right wing Sami Kapanen has decided to end his NHL career with the Flyers and play in his native Finland next season.

Kapanen, who will turn 35 on June 14, has agreed to return to KalPa Kuopio of the Finnish League, where he played 10 games during the 2004-05 NHL lockout.

Kapanen had one year remaining on a contract that would have paid him $1.25 million next season. That salary will come off the Flyers' books for the 2008-09 season.

Part of me has always thought as Kapanen as a disappointment. Given his speed and smarts, I figured he be able to put up much better offensive numbers than he did. Sure, 458 points in 831 games is nothing to scoff at, but Sami only ever crossed the 60-point barrier twice in his career, and took a huge nosedive in 2002, when he was 29 and still in good shape.

On the other hand, Kapanen has been one of the most flexible and useful players during his later career. How many other players would you be comfortable playing at both forward and defense, and in any situation? Sami could do it all and never put up a fuss about it, unlike Sergei Fedorov.

Flyers fans are probably feeling a bit sad and glad today, given how much Kapanen busted his balls for the Flyers, but also knowing that this gives Philly a much needed bit of cap room to use on a younger player who isn't skating with a giant fork in his back.

Some might say that in a fairer world that the Washington Capitals deserved to win Game Seven of their Eastern Conference Quarterfinal playoff series against the Philadelphia Flyers. But just as Clint Eastwood reminded Gene Hackman in the final moments of the film Unforgiven, "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

So whether you're a corrupt sheriff living on the frontier, or a hockey team desperately battling back from a 3-1 series deficit and throwing your all into winning a seventh game at home, it's all about earning it. And like it or not, in between long stretches where the Capitals completely dominated the run of play, the Philadelphia Flyers leaned on goaltender Martin Biron and did all the little things they needed to do to bury the chances they had and eek out a 3-2 win in overtime to advance to the second round of the playoffs.

Each of Philadelphia's three goals demonstrated just how slim the margin between these two teams was over the course of the seven game series. After falling behind 1-0 on yet another goal by rookie Nicklas Backstrom (his fourth of the series and fourth straight game with a goal), Philadelphia tied the score on a power play goal by Scottie Upshall with the puck just barely trickling past Cristobal Huet and into the back of the net. But as agonizing as that score must have been for Washington, there was more aggravation just around the corner.