It's Rod Brind'Amour Night in Carolina

Here's a quick roundup of news as we head in to tonight's ceremony for Rod Brind'Amour. If you live under a rock, the Carolina Hurricanes will retire his No. 17 tonight, and it's pretty awesome that they waited until the Flyers were in town to do it.

- For starters, I highly recommend this feature at SBNation.com on Brind'Amour from an old Flyers fan living in Carolina who adopted the Hurricanes after the trade. 

While never the star player on the Flyers, in many ways Brind'Amour was the face of the franchise: an old-school hockey player who looked the part of a '70s Broad Street Bully. That's not to say No. 17 was a play-on-the-edge mauler who used physical intimidation to rattle opponents. Yes, he had his share of fights in his youth (a surprising 27 regular season tilts, plus one against Carolina's Adam Burt in the 1999 playoffs), but he was rarely, if ever, a player looking for a scrum.

- The Flyers will wear No. 17 during warmups tonight in commoration of Brindy's time in Philadelphia.

- The entire ceremony will be shown on NHL Network, and that should be available in Philly starting at 7 p.m. If it's blacked out, CSN is running the ceremony on tape-delay starting at 7:30 p.m. 

- To the game: Sergei Bobrovsky is your starter tonight, according to the reporters on the ground in Raleigh. 

- It looks like Ville Leino is fine to play tonight. At least, that's what he said. Peter Laviolette isn't allowed to talk about injury stuff with the media. If he plays, which seems likely, Nikolay Zherdev and Jody Shelley will be the healthy scratches. 

- Back to Brind'Amour: Was the trade to acquire him the best deal in Hurricanes history? Seems that way, although it worked out pretty well for us, too.

Should be pretty cool tonight. Wish I was there.