On Racism and Herb Carnegie

I'm a lucky man. I've been raised in a household that held virtually no prejudices to any person, and I was raised by a family that instilled to me a sense of respect for all people. It also helped that my best friend in grade school was the daughter of a native of my small community and an immigrant from the Philippines, thus my interaction with an ethnicity other than my own came at an early age and let me know first hand that even people that don't look like me are still just people like myself. I think this is a valuable thing to learn when growing up.

I am sorry for people who have been trapped in a cycle of racism, in which their surroundings have branded into them a disrespect for other cultures and a misplaced anger, a fear of the other and a resulting hatred thereof.

To me a root cause of racism is a homogeneity of interactions during a persons first experiences in life. It is easy to hate something you don't know when you never even have to deal with it and never met a person that disagrees with you in this regard. To me, most racists, (as well as people with other prejudices) simply don't have a sense that other people are still just people.

So why am I talking about racism on a hockey blog? Thankfully it is not because some dumbass has thrown a banana at Wayne Simmonds or Evander Kane. Rather it's because I recently read Herb Carnegie's biography "A Fly in a Pail of Milk".

Carnegie was virtually the first black star player, but since he played his professional career during the 40s and 50s he was denied a place in the highest tier of professional hockey, the NHL. Most infamous is still an incident in which Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe proclaimed that he would pay any man $10.000 to turn Herb Carnegie into a white man.


However, while the book brings up the racism Carnegie faced during the childhood and his playing career, it does a whole lot more than simply tell us that racism is a bad thing. It also shows why racism is a bad thing. The biography does a wonderful job at portraying Herb Carnegie as a genuine human being, with passions, ambitions, talents and feelings. The respect he has for his parents, the love for his wife and their elopement, his struggle to balance his hockey career and his home life, his dejectedness after the New York Rangers refused to put him on their NHL team rather than a farm team, his desire to teach children valuable lessons about life as well as hockey, his passion for hockey and for golf, his thankfulness for being given a real chance at a career when he applied for a job in sales after his playing career ended. They all provide a sense of humanity, and it illustrates that racism is bad because it robs a person of this humanity.


That black men like Carnegie were and still are disrespected and had and still have to overcome artificial cultural barricades is most unfair because they are still just people. Carnegie himself also seems to touch on the root cause of racism I explored earlier. As he explains, he never faced racism from any teammate, who I presume have gotten to know him quite well. Rather the most racism he has experienced were from strangers, people in the crowd and executives. People who don't seem to understand that even people who look different than themselves are still people.

While I don't think that racism can be cured by forcing a racist to interact with a person of a different race on a real human level, I think it is most definitely a stepping stone and definitely something that would help kids that are growing up to never become racist. However, even reading a book like "A Fly in a Pail of Milk" could provide such an understanding of a person of a different race as a person just like the reader, and this is genuinely a good lesson to learn.

Hockey, Punk Rock, and why the Flyers should make Rise Above their goal song

In a recent episode of Marek vs. Wyshynski, the two hosts were asked what style of music is most like hockey. When I heard the question I thought "Punk rock" because this is the only legitimate answer in my opinion. Hockey is all about raw energy, it is disrespectful and often violent. In hockey ugly goals count as well as the nice ones, and in punk rock you can put some nice touches, but the loud, fast, and slightly-off songs just count as much.

Some punk rock bands very explicitly state their fondness of hockey. Whether it's the Misfits' Jerry Only singing how he wants to be a New York Ranger, or The Hextalls stating how they specifically don't want to be that. How the Dropkick Murphys sing songs specifically for and about the Boston Bruins, or The Boils do the same for the Philadelphia Flyers. D.O.A. playing some yuppies in a music video for a cover of "Takin' care of business"? All about that.

So this brings me to the one point where in an NHL game, music and hockey most overtly intersect: The Goal Song. Whenever a team scores a goal in its home arena, the PA system starts playing a specific song in celebration. Many teams even use songs specifically written for that purpose, and a lot of debate is given about merits of each team's goal song in comparison to each other.

For a long time, the Flyers used Bro Hymn Tribute by Pennywise, and as a fan of punk rock that just made me happy. It's not the most sophisticated song in the world, but is it ever fun to song the "whoaaaaaaa-whoaaaa-a-aaaaaa" parts after a goal is scored. The Legend, as told by Andrew Ference, is that Todd Fedoruk was the guy who popularized the song around the league. The Ducks still use the song today.

Unfortunately, the Flyers have chose to abandon the Bro Hymn and have been hopping around different songs ever since. Whether it's DOOP, lighting mups, or the abomination of a song they are currently using and are rightfully admonished for, nothing seems to stick.

However, there is one really good answer for what the quest for a new goal song for the Flyers, and you can find it once again in punk rock: Rise Above by Black Flag.

Not only is it an ingenious little pun ("Flyers" need to "rise above", get it?) but the lyrics in and off themselves are perfect for the team. A song about nonconformity, about "us vs. them" mentality, about overcoming adversity and about simply showing people up. It is the Flyers hockey mentality of the team and their fans all in one package.

The song is just too perfect for the team, and it's a shame that it isn't already in use.


It's also not like Philadelphia crowds are unfamiliar with the tune. As recently as last year the song has been used in commercials for Philadelphia Union games, and the song has also been covered by Philadelphia based hardcore punk band Kid Dynamite (though I'd prefer the original because I like it better).


Lastly I want to acknowledge the Punk Rock and Hockey podcast Up The Pucks. I really, really want you guys to go back and start recording new episodes again.

Someone explain to me why the Flyers get no respect

And we're back. It was offseason and I had some work committments, but I will attempt to get some more things up here over the course of the season. But enough about that.

The 2014-15 NHL season starts tonight. Sleepless nights, excitement, debates, anger, frustration, and joy all lie straight ahead. However, this also means that it is "preview time", with several larger news outlets and websites attempting to find the definitive answer which teams will make the playoffs, win divisions, and ultimately the Stanley Cup.

And it seems that a number of those outlets have pegged the Flyers to miss the playoffs, the Hockey News being one example. A couple of people such as Jeff Marek even see the Flyers as potentially crashing and burning and getting in on "Dishonor for Connor". And I can't quite get my head around why this is.

Now, I can see some scenarios in which this could be the case. Any team can completely and utterly fail. It isn't exactly some great achievement or requires a special talent to do so. And to be frank, the offseason was middling to slightly negative. Losing Kimmo Timonen obviously sucks ass, and Michael Del Zotto isn't exactly going to replace him. R.J. Umberger is closer to doing so for Scott Hartnell, but not quite.

However, there are also some positives to expect here. Some of the younger talent will be a year older and a bit more comfortable in their roles, hopefully Vincent Lecavalier will finally find his place (or be traded soon, which is still my recommended course of action), and at the very least the Flyers should not sleep through the first month of the season like they did last year.

Overall I would say nothing earth-shattering has really happened with the Flyers and they should be pretty much on par with how they were last year. That team put up 94 Points, after going 4-10-1 during the first 15 games no less and with pretty much the worst possible schedule to end the season. I don't think the Flyers are going to be Cup Contenders this year, but I see no definitive reason that they should miss the playoffs.

The only reasonable explanation I can come up is process of elimination. People think other teams in the Division and conference will be better and supersede the Flyers. The Islanders made waves by acquiring Leddy and Boychuck, people think the Devils won't be as awful in the shootout and Schneider will have a good year, and the Capitals impressed people by bolstering their blue line with Niskanen and Orpik. Plus people figure Columbus is a team still on the rise. But I don't think any of these teams are clearly better than the Flyers. On par with them perhaps, but that predicts a dog fight in which the Flyers have more experience and have at least proven that they can beat others out. History is filled with teams that had "showy" offseasons that amounted to little actual improvement.

So why aren't the Flyers getting any respect? I for my part have no idea.

Thank you, Scott Hartnell

After playing some video games for a couple of hours yesterday, I got back to my PC to look up what's new and the world shocked me once again. Scott Hartnell was traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets in return for R.J. Umberger and a 4th round pick. My regular forums, Twitter and Reddit were abuzz and nobody really knew why this trade went down.

Scott Hartnell is simply a favorite among the Flyers fans. He is an upstanding guy who writes childrens books, is always up for any charitable event (including donating his own hair) and a class act all the way through. He took anything in stride, whether it was little rubs from his fans, counting up how often he would fall down during a game, or his enemies throwing juvenile insults at him and him just going along with it.

I checked both his Twitter and Facebook pages immediately, and he had already made posts saying thanks to the Flyers, their fans and the city of Philadelphia and had already created a 50% discount for his personal merchandise.

But Hartnell was more than just a great person to the Flyers fans, he was also a great player during his time in Philadelphia. He scored 326 points with 157 goals in his 517 games as a Flyer in the Regular season, plus another 32 points with 12 goals in 52 playoff games. But even beyond simple stats, Hartnell was great as an all-round power forward. He worked well with virtually every line he was put on, whether as a winger for Jeff Carter, Danny Briere, Claude Giroux, or whomever. He was always there and he always put in effort. And from all accounts he was also always a locker room guy here, true glue and always fun to be around.

In a way, Hartnell was what you think of when you think of a Flyers player. A rough guy with a heart of gold, who will go into the dirty areas, fight if he has to, with questioned but nevertheless present hockey skill, beloved by the Flyers faithful and vilified by their rivals.

Hartnell loved the Flyers, and the Flyers loved him back.

And thus it is even more puzzling why and how this trade happened. Hartnell had a No Movement Clause on his contract, which means that any and all movements of him as a player, whether trade or assignment to the minor leagues, must be approved by him. From the press conferences it appears that it was Ron Hextall who put the trade forward, wanting to speed up the team, and Hartnell agreed after learning of it and believing he was no longer wanted by the organization.

This is Ron Hextall's first major move as the Flyers GM, and it is a shocker for the fans, and even some of the players. Very disappointing and somewhat puts Hextall himself into question about understanding the fans.

At least the Flyers got an acceptable return. R. J. Umberger is a good player, and somewhat comparable to Hartnell in production, age, contract etc. but not in play style. Justin Bourne immediately called the trade for the Blue Jackets, and the numbers seem to agree with him. I myself believe Hartnell to be the better player, but I also think Umberger is severely underrated, and a good playoff performer who unfortunately never really got the opportunity to show it on a weak Columbus team hardly ever making the playoffs.

My thinking is that Umberger will slot in as a left wing on the second line alongside Brayden Schenn, while Wayne Simmonds will take over Hartnell's spot on the first line with Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek. Simmonds is basically a carbon copy of Hartnell in terms of physical presence and play style, making this look a likely scenario.

In any case it will be hard for Umberger to replace Hartnell's presence among the fan community, making it big shoes to fill. Umberger does have a headstart here though, as he was a fan favorite with the Flyers before, but unfortunately was the odd man out when a great playoff performance in 07-08 and a new contract meant he would be too expensive for the Flyers to retain and was traded to Columbus.


But to finally wrap this up, I believe I speak for all Flyers fans when I say "Thank you, Scott Hartnell, for the joy and the memories you gave us. Best of luck to you. We will miss you."

The Hockey Hall of Fame and Eric Lindros

It's the end of June. The Stanley Cup Final is over and congratulations to the Los Angeles Kings for winning the best trophy in sports. Individual Awards will be handed out soon. The NHL Entry Draft will happen at the end of the week and that will surely be exciting. Free Agency is just around the corner.

But there is one more thing that will happen today, and as with every year it will be surrounded with a bit of controversy: The Hockey Hall of Fame will announce its 2014 class of inductees.

As a Flyers fan, this is always a strange time. At least up until recently. We were settled with just accepting that the Hall of Fame committee is an old boys club where old grudges are still being held onto. Fred Shero would never get in because he is the bad guy that allowed the Broad Street Bullies to run rampant. Mark Howe wouldn't get in because he played in the WHA, and people can't be rewarded if they ran counter to the establishment.

However, something appears to have changed, and these old injustices have been rectified as both of those candidates have been inducted. Howe was inducted in 2012, and Shero in 2013, and their accomplishments have been properly honored. It was fantastic and joyous events both times.

It doesn't end there though, as the Flyers have a 3rd candidate who has been passed over a couple of times already, and his name is Eric Lindros. Lindros is a controversial figure. He often butted heads with owners and managers, his career was cut short due to concussion problems and other health issues, and some less than savory rumors were told about him as well.

But it is pretty much undeniable that Lindros was a very important player to the sport. He was a dominant force and he has both the stats and hardware to show for it. He was also the center-piece of what I call the most significant trade in the sport after the Gretzky trade. Lindros's career may not be a story of great triumphs and accomplishment, but I think it is a great story nonetheless. And last but not least, he definitely had the thing the hall is named after: Fame.

Lindros has been passed over twice already though. There are other very comparable players that made it in at the same time, such as Pavel Bure, Mats Sundin or Adam Oates, who like Lindros do not have the defining team victory to them, so Lindros's lack of a Stanley Cup can't be a root cause here. There have also been three veritable star players in Chris Chelios, Scott Niedermayer and Joe Sakic inducted in those two years, and adding in Brendan Shanahan we are now at seven candidates for eight spots. I am not sure why Lindros hasn't been the 8th player.

The Hockey Hall of Fame has the arbitrary rule to not induct more than four male and two female players per year. From an outside perspective this makes at least a little bit of sense, establishing an air of exclusivity and importance to it. It also makes it a bit easier on the organizers and participants of the Induction ceremony, a great spectacle and one of the few high-class events during the season. But it is arbitrary nonetheless.

Yet the Hockey Hall of Fame often opts to not use the full number of slots it made available to itself. Last year it only inducted three male players and one female. While I can see the utility of the limitation from a logistics point, in the overall design and purpose of the Hall of Fame it seems counter-productive. If there are seven similarly great players with a worthy resume to their name, all of them should be inducted at the same time. Should it happen that on occasion there are none, so be it.

But as it is now, there are two sure-fire candidates this year in Dominik Hasek and Peter Forsberg, leaving another two slots for male players. Besides Lindros, some other players are throwing their hats into the ring for it, such as Mike Modano, Rob Blake, Jeremy Roenick and Mark Recchi. Linros's odds here aren't bad at all, but if the committee fills up its slots this year and Lindros is not among the inductees, I can do nothing but chalk it up to the arbitrary four player limit.

But for now I remain hopeful. Let's see of Lindros can make it three-for-three for the Flyers this year.

Adam Hall and the importance of bottom six players

And we're back. Work and other things have kept me from writing a bit, but now I want to get back and at least put some thoughts to the virtual paper while hockey is still on.

The Flyers season ended a couple of weeks ago, and while I would have liked to do a full analysis of the season, I think other sources have done so better than I could and now it's a bit too late to do that anyway. However, yeah, it sucked ass, but the future is looking not all that bad. The Flyers are an up and coming team with a lot of young talent that will develop given enough time.

However, just as every time a season ends for any team, the discussion turns to what will change, and what will have to change. Besides the biggest and most obvious desire/need for a true #1 defenseman, shared with about half the league, a lot of discussion on the Flyers end was about the 4th line. Fans in general are sick of having fighters like Riley Cote, Jody Shelley, or Jay Rosehill, and agitators like Dan Carcillo or Zac Rinaldo taking up space and contributing very little to a team.

I can't help but agree here. Don't get me wrong, fights are fun, and I don't really think badly of these players as people. Some are even quite entertaining. But their contributions aren't really all that helpful in winning hockey games. Penalty minutes are detrimental, and as much as I like a big hit, a hit always means that your team does not have the puck. To be helpful to a team, some these players have to bring something else to the team as well.

To illustrate this, let's take a look at my favorite 4th line in the history of the Flyers consisting of Darroll Powe, Blair Betts and Ian Laperrière. Now Lappy is a notorious fighter with more broken noses than I want to count, but he was also a great contributor by being a great presence on the penalty kill, plus a genuine heart and soul kind of player every team should want as a leader by example. Darroll Powe also was a tough customer, a pure energy guy putting pressure and bruises on players through his quick skating, but not all that bad defensively (and he has a fantastic hockey name). Blair Betts was also a great PK player and a fantastic face-off man.

All of these players brought something to the table and helped the Flyers go to the Final in 2010. They contributed in multiple ways and added depth to the Flyers while filling roles other players were not cut out for. I just find it unfortunate that Lappy's career got cut short by this season through post-concussion syndrome, and Blair Betts' injury riddle career also ended a season later.

What's good for the Flyers is that while they should get rid of players like Rosehill who can only punch people in the face, they have players that can contribute in a similar manner like the 2009-10 season. The biggest example here is Adam Hall.

Hall is a genuine journeyman who is now on his 7th NHL team, and that illustrates where so many teams go wrong, because any team should love to have Hall on their roster. Hall is the quintessential 4th line center. He is an absolute fiend in the face-off circle, winning 59.6% of the 527 faceoffs he took this season. There are only four players in the league with similar numbers and a better winning percentage: Joe Vitale, Vladimir Sobotka, Zenon Konopka, and Rich Peverley. Manny Malhotra with a 59.4% win rate on a ridiculous 952 faceoffs also deserves a special mention.

Hall is also a great penalty killer, helping the Flyers to become one of the best PK teams in the league, though I guess we can't understate the impact of Sean Couturier and Matt Read on that front.

Adam Hall is not a scoring threat, and he doesn't need to be. He adds value to the team in other ways. He carved out his niche and fills it out entirely in a role that every team needs and every team should look to have. And he basically only costs you a league minimum wage.

The bad thing is that it looks like the Flyers might not bring him back. Now they have a decent excuse with the glut of centers they have. Claude Giroux, Luke Schenn, Sean Couturier, Vincent Lecavalier, plus Scott Laughton on the horizon is stiff competition for Hall. Personally the first guy I would get rid off from these six players is Lecavalier as elaborated on previously and the playoffs did little to change that opinion. However, Hall's expiring contract would be the easiest and the front office of an NHL team rarely passes on an easy out. However, while Hall is not a priority player I think it would be good for the team if they retained him.

A team needs players like Hall which bring different things to the table and fill roles in this kind of manner. Just look at the Pittsburgh Penguins as they were just eliminated by the Rangers exposing one of the biggest flaws in their team: An awfully weak bottom six forward group. They have very little forward depth and while they have a similar player like Hall in Joe Vitale, the rest of their bottom six is a burning wreck.

I like to compare them to a spinning top. They can move fast and overcome obstacles through velocity, but if they are upset enough they lack the solid foundation to remain upright. They topple over for that reason.

Compare that to recent cup-winning teams like Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles to find a good mixture between star-quality forwards in the top two lines, and solid role players in the bottom six. Even look at the 2009 Penguins and their bottom six compared to today (though I would also like to mention another thing that squad had that's missing from the Penguins today: veteran leadership).

For the Flyers this should be a guiding line. A team can't just be a number of scoring players. They need some solid backup and have multiple dimensions filled, rather than stacking up in one direction and neglecting another. Unlike Dungeons & Dragons, min-maxing doesn't really work in hockey. Sometimes that means that players like Adam Hall are more valuable to a team than Vincent Lecavalier. Let's just hope that the Flyers manage to see the same thing, rather than have to find out the hard way.

Hockey is a vulgar, violent, classless and offensive sport. Deal with it.

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A couple of weeks ago, a trio of Philadelphia Flyers fans went to a game of their team in Pittsburgh where the Flyers once again beat the Penguins as they have done so ever since their new arena opened. The story made the news because the three fans wore Flyers jerseys reading "Malkin Blows", "Crosby Sucks" and "Neal Swallows" on the name plates paired with the jersey number of the respective player. They were asked by the arena staff to take those jerseys off or wear them inside out and they complied.

I am a big defender of free speech. Those jerseys were definitely tacky, dumb, and a jersey foul. Not sure why people would deem it worth the ridiculous price that NHL jerseys cost for such a dumb and unfunny display, but if they want to, they should be able to wear it. However, free speech only protects you from government censorship. When visiting a private business you can still be asked to straighten up your conduct and it should be common courtesy to behave like a regular human being and not like an absolute moron, the arbiter of which is the host.

What surprised me however was the reaction around the internet. People were declaring that something like this has no place in the game, and that the censorship was necessary to protect children from being exposed to sexual concepts, putting them and their parents into an embarrassing situation.

Excuse me, but have those people ever been to a hockey game? Or at least seen one on TV?

Hockey is a vulgar sport. It is modern day gladiatorial combat where people ram into each other at high velocities and throw any conceivable body part in front of pucks traveling at more than 100km/h. It's a sport played by people with clubs in their hands and knives on their feet. And you are watching a league that allows bare-knuckle boxing during its games and the only punishment is that both combatants can not be on the ice for the first 5 minutes after the fight.

And with this amount of violence, comes contempt for the opponent. They are not only taking money out of each others pockets by denying them bonuses for Stanley Cup victories or individual performances, they are also trying to make each other suffer, both physically and mentally, and if there is an actual injury so be it.

And with this contempt comes the expected language. It's not hard to curse out an opponent or express your general disgust with a person that just seconds ago tried to break the knee-caps of a teammate. Chirps can also be humorous, as trying to make fun of an opponent also establishes a form of dominance, but they are rarely meant to be less than degrading to the opposition. This contempt is not only felt by the players on the ice, but also the audience in the stands and in front of the TV screens.

Of course there are certain lines to be drawn. For example the NHL and the organization You Can Play has recently started a campaign to eradicate homophobic slurs within the League, and I say more power to them. Homophobia is an issue in the same vain as racism, and while people may earn your disgust for attempting to give another player a concussion, they definitely aren't liable for how they look or who they are attracted to. Or as Fat Mike sings in Don't call me White: "I can except responsibility for what I've done, but not for who I am".

This ties into a concept that I will for now label "real-life entertainment" and into which hockey falls. You see, unlike other forms of entertainment, hockey is not fiction. There is no absolute separation in which the actions portrayed have no direct influence on the real world. When Frank Miller draws a person gruesomely shot to death in a comic book, nobody actually died. And while art & entertainment can teach people what is correct and what behavior can lead to what consequences, there is always the thought in the back of the mind that this is not real and not necessarily a guide to follow, but an exploration of what could happen.

Hockey on the other hand takes place within the real world. Hockey players are real people and if they break a leg or suffer a concussion, it's not just an interesting storyline to explore, but a real event with real consequences that affect real people. And therein lies the worry of the parents I mentioned earlier, in which naive children emulate their skating idols because they don't know any better and the separation between the world of hockey and real society doesn't really exist to them.

However, while this separation is not as strong as for example with books or movies, there is still a separation of context. Hockey is not actual society. While in hockey people can punch each other silly, get smashed in the face with pucks and sticks, and suffer all sorts of injures, there are hardly any real consequences like we would see in the "real world" for similar behavior. Unless there are some extreme circumstances, nobody will be charged with assault or battery.

On a less violent side of things, a coach grabbing his balls or a player making fun of an opponent who just suffered a concussion is the tip of the iceberg really, and a lot of other things are being said and gestured between the players on the ice that the cameras and microphones do not pick up or the press often deliberately ignores. How often have you heard the commentators on a hockey game excuse themselves for shutting down a microphone because it's too close to a verbal joust between two players?

And the same goes for the audience. Within the context of the game, certain things are to be expected. Whether it's the three numbskulls I mentioned earlier, someone making a T-Shirt of the "Wakey Wakey Backes" incident, or the crowd in New Jersey chanting "Rangers suck, Flyers swallow!" on a regular basis, the level of the audience only matches what is already seen and heard on the ice.

What's strange is that these instances make the headlines when the violence and vulgarity of the sport is regularly on full display? I for my part find flying elbows and knee-on-knee collisions much more offensive than a word or a gesture. Yet some of that violence is exactly what draws people to the sport. Not just the big, but hopefully legal hits, but there is a real culture and fanbase for hockey fights which is by definition a penalty, something that is not allowed within regular play.

If I had to draw a parallel, I would call going to a hockey game like going to see an R-Rated movie. Maybe your children are old enough, and you had a good talking to them putting it into context that the behavior of the people you are watching is under special circumstances and not something they should emulate in every day life. However, going into either and then being appalled by what you see and are having a hard time explaining it to your children, nieces, nephews or what have you is your own fault.

Hockey is a violent, vulgar, and in certain ways offensive sport. You know what it is, and it simply is hockey. It is on you whether you want to watch it and who of your immediate family you want to expose to it.

Flyers vs. Rangers - A long time coming

The Playoffs start tonight and while I am still not entirely happy with the new restructured NHL, it is kind of undeniable that it resulted in some compelling first round matchups. Chicago vs. St. Louis should make for some quality hockey with one Stanley Cup hopeful gone after seven games or less. San Jose vs. Los Angeles should make a new great rivalry. Boston and Detroit also looks to be very interesting.

For my favorite team it means that they meet one of their more traditional rivals in the New York Rangers. Personally I would have rather had the Penguins, simply because it is a better matchup. Against the Rangers is kind of 50-50, and home ice advantage could be a deciding factor as the Flyers have failed to beat the Rangers in Madison Square Garden in their last eight tries. The matchup is however not hopeless and Giroux and Co. would be loathe to do anything but beat the Rangers.

The two teams have had a longstanding animosity, mostly fueled by the rivalry between the two cities. As an outside observer it seems to me that the dichotomy between Philadelphia and New York is rooted in how each view the other. New York is seen as a high society town, but is also called out for arrogance and entitlement, while Philadelphia is more associated with a working-class mentality, but also regarded as violent and low-brow. This rivalry is also noted in other sports, particularly football as the Philadelphia Eagles an the New York Giants have been division rivals for ages. In Baseball, the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies also don't exactly like each other.

The Flyers and Rangers have also shared a division for a long time, in fact since 1974 when the NHL dissolved the "East" and "West" Divisions created by the 1967 expansion and formed the Divisions called "Norris", "Adams", "Patrick" and "Smythe". However, considering that the teams have played 276 regular season games against one another (the Flyers most common opponent in the history of the franchise), it is kind of surprising that the teams haven't met in the Playoffs recently. In fact, the last time this happened was in 1997, 17 years ago (let that sink in for a moment).

The Flyers and Rangers met a total of 10 times in the playoffs so far, with the Flyers winning six of those. The first two of those series are of particular interest because of Hall of Fame Coach Fred Shero. Shero actually played for the Rangers for 145 games in three season between 1947 and 1950. He was sent down after that and continued in the minors. After his playing career was over he remained with the Rangers on the coaching staff in their minor league development system.

However, the Rangers seemed unappreciative of his talent as a coach and his long commitment to the club, and appeared unlikely to give him a promotion to head coach any time soon. Without the chance of proving his true worth with the Rangers, he was successfully poached by Flyers General Manager Keith Allen in 1971, one of the kind of moves that gave Allen the nickname "The Thief". The Rangers would soon rue that day when in 1974 the Flyers defeated the Rangers in a playoff series going the full seven games on their way to their first Stanley Cup victory. It was the first time an expansion team beat an Original Arbitrary Six team in a playoff matchup.

The Flyers would make two more appearances in the Stanley Cup Final with Shero, winning again in 1975, but losing against the Canadiens in 1976. However, even the greatest coaches have shelf lives, and Shero himself knew that, submitting a letter of resignation in the '78 offseason and then signed a five year contract to coach the Rangers. However, he was still under contract with the Flyers who had refused to accept the letter. The end result was that the Rangers sent their first round pick for the 1978 NHL Amateur Draft alongside some monetary compensation to the Flyers to avoid tampering charges. The Flyers selected Ken Linseman with that pick.

However, Shero had not lost his coaching mojo and lead the Rangers to a 40 win season the following year. As fate would have it, the Flyers and Rangers would meet in the playoffs and this time the Rangers prevailed 4 games to 1. Shero would manage a fourth appearance in the Final in six years, but would again be vanquished by the dynastic Canadiens.

The next season the two teams would meet again, this time the Flyers would return the favor against their former head coach as this time they took a four games from the Ranges while surrendering only one, but they also could not reach the chalice as they were defeated by the other New York team, the Islanders.

Several more playoff bouts between Broad Street and Broadway followed. A total of five meetings in the 80s seesawed. The Rangers won in 1982 and '83, but were defeated by their upstart little brother both times. The Flyers fired back in '85 and made it to the Final, but lost to the Edmonton Oilers featuring Wayne Gretzky. The Rangers won again in '86 and ended a tormented season by the Flyers who were still shocked by the death of their goalie Pelle Lindbergh. The Rangers for their part lost to the Canadiens. The Flyers took one back in '87, but again fell to the Oilers in the Final. Then the two teams avoided each other until '95, when the Flyers beat the Rangers, reigning Stanley Cup champion at the time, and pulled ahead in playoff series victors, 5-4. The Flyers would lose to the Devils the next round.

When the two teams last met in the actual playoffs, it was seen as a passing of the torch. The Rangers had signed "The Great One", Wayne Gretzky during free agency the previous offseason, while the Flyers had "The Next One" on their roster as Eric Lindros had established himself as a true force in the NHL.

Lindros was acquired by the Flyers during the 1992 draft in a blockbuster trade with the Quebec Nordiques. The Rangers were also in the running for Lindros and the Nordiques actually preferred the offer by the Rangers, but an arbitrator ruled that the Nordiques had already entered into a verbal agreement with the Flyers when their General Manager solicited another offer from the Rangers.

In any case, the Series was hard fought, but Lindros and the Flyers prevailed in five games and moved on to the Stanley Cup Final against the Detroit Red Wings, which was unfortunately lost.

This year is the first time the two teams meet in the postseason since 1997. However, that doesn't mean there haven't been any significant or important games between the two teams since. For example in 2010 the final game of the season was between the two clubs and a playoff berth was on the line. The Rangers had kept themselves alive by defeating the Flyers the previous game at Madison Square Garden and were in a tie with the Flyers. The winner of this game in Philadelphia would jump ahead of the Montreal Canadians for 7th place in the conference. The loser would have nothing to do but book a tee time.

The Rangers 4th line fighter Jody Shelley scored an early game, but the Broadway Blueshirts had little to show elsewhere as the Flyers threw everything they could the other way, outshooting them by a final tally of 47-25. However, their goaltender Henrik Lundqvist held steady and kept everything out, until in the 3rd period Matt Carle finally tied it. The Flyers continued their onslaught but the Rangers could no longer stay back and needed to put out some offense as well. No decision could be made though and the game was pushed into a shootout. Daniel Briere and Claude Giroux scored, while Brian Boucher stopped Olli Jokinen who had to score to keep the game going. This started the Flyers on a nearly miraculous run which ended only in overtime of Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final that year.

This first round matchup is definitely compelling. Two teams that do not like each other, and who have a long and storied history with each other. As it turns out this matchup usually also has a lot of implication for the rest of the NHL. If you take note with the Exception of 1974 when the Flyers won, every year the Flyers and Rangers met in the playoffs, the team that would defeat the victor of that battle would go on to win the Stanley Cup. It should be interesting to observe whether this pattern holds up, breaks, or perhaps one of the two combatants actually manage to lift Lord Stanley's Chalice this year for themselves.

The Greatest Franchises in the History of the League (and why the Flyers are among them)

With each passing season new history is made. Some franchises improve, find success, write new stories which will later be passed along by fans and media alike. They add to their legacy. Other franchises don't do so well, and while tragedies also make for great stories and add a certain kind of mysticism and intrigue, it requires perseverance to suffer through them and find new glory rather than fail and sink into a swamp of misery.

As a fan of the Flyers I find it interesting how this year went. From the miserable start to a remarkable turnaround which saw them return to the playoffs after last year's absence. It is already a season to remember for it, and it bodes well for the future too. Captain Claude Giroux solidified his role on the team and his position as one of the premier forwards in the league, while a lot of the young talent that surrounds him is also improving and finding their place in the league. Throughout the season the Flyers have shown the resiliency that is required to be successful and the team has with it done their heritage proud.

The Flyers put together another winning season, and the franchise thus remains as the team with the 2nd best yield of points in the history of the league. This will also be the 38th time they will make the playoffs in 47 years of team history, or more than 80% of the time. And while they haven't won the Cup in a while, they are known to make a run with 8 appearances in the Stanley Cup Final, which is the 3rd most of all franchises since they entered the league (and until last year it was tied for 2nd most). The Flyers also have 16 division titles to their name.

They may not have as many Championships as I might like and some other teams do, but they are always a threat to look out for. And the longest lull in their history was a period of 5 years in the early 90s in which they missed the playoffs, but only once were they out of it by more than 4 points.

They are, to put it simple, the picture of constant high level play and continuous success. And even outside just being successful the Flyers have influenced the league, the Broad Street Bullies and the Lindros trade (probably the 2nd most significant trade in NHL history, after the Gretzky trade) just to name a couple of examples.

Still, some people seem to look at me incredulously whenever I exclaim how proud I to be rooting for one of the best franchises within the sport. In their mind, only teams from the Original Arbitrary Six have a claim at such a legacy, which I find strange considering that the expansion of the league began almost 50 years ago.

It appears to me that they are thinking solely in absolutes. Team X has more Cups/Playoff Appearances/Division Titles/1st place finishes etc. than Team Y so it is automatically better, and seem to simply neglect the fact that Team X has been around twice, sometimes three times as long. They also conveniently overlook the fact that it was easier for a franchise to win something back then than it is today. Now a team has to beat 29 other teams. Back then it was only five others.

Simply in the interest of fairness we have to handicap the Arbitrary Six to a certain extend, and if it's only dividing a teams success by the number of years of their existence.

But even taking such things into account I will easily admit that the Montreal Canadiens are the cream of the crop. They have won the Cup 24 times (as any Habs fan will pretty quickly remind you) and even after expansion they were a force to be reckoned with. They have the best points yield of any franchise throughout history and a slew of division titles and other accolades. However, their grasp on the power has been waning since their last Cup victory in 1993, with 7 missed playoffs and 7 first round exits since.

On the other hand, Canada's other A6 franchise should be excluded from the "great franchise" debate outright in my opinion. Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs are no longer a great franchise, and haven't been for a while. They have won the Cup 13 times, but all these victories came when there were seven or fewer teams in the league On one occasion it was only four. It doesn't take a lot of math to figure out that even a base probability of a Cup win is much lower now that 30 teams are in the league.

What nails down the Leafs however is their lack of success ever since the 1967 expansion. They have not only failed to win a Stanley Cup, they have failed to even make it to the Final. In 47 seasons they have only won their division once and missed the playoffs 19 times. And since the lockout that ate the 2004-05 season they have only made the playoffs once, failing in spectacular and soul-crushing fashion in Game 7 to the Boston Bruins. Add in their horrifying collapse this year that rivals that of the New York Mets in 2007, I have a hard time believing that anybody still thinks of them as a great franchise.

This brings me to the Chicago Blackhawks, who are kind of the reverse Leafs. They were absolutely atrocious during the A6 era, qualifying only twice for the playoffs in 14 attempts between from 1944 to 1958. After that they made 28 consecutive playoff appearances from 1969 to 1997, but never managed to win a Cup losing in the Final three times. After another decade of losing and consistent bottom rung finishes they amassed talent through the draft and won the Cup for the 2nd time in four seasons last year.

A similar story is told by looking at the Red Wings, though with a higher peak. They were a force in the Original 6 era, and were a veritable Dynasty in the last two decades, managing to make the Final six times between 1994 and 2009. This year they qualified for the playoffs again, making it their 23rd consecutive year doing so.

However, separating those two runs was the "Dead Wings" era. In between 1966 and 1986, the Red Wings were perennial bottom dwellers, missing the playoffs 16 times and getting past the first round only once. They were the absolute laughingstock of the league and a shame to everything that came before.

For both the Hawks and Wings recent success is fine and dandy, but it can not overshadow their long bouts of futility entirely. A franchise has to live with its history. If I had to make a choice between the two, I would take the Red Wings. The Hawks could prove me wrong in the immediate future though.

The Boston Bruins also have a similar history, though their only true futile years were 8 seasons in the 60s in which they failed to qualify for the post-season. They also had kind of a lull through the 90s and 00s. However, 18 Division Championships and 9 appearances in the Final since the league expanded are a strong language, particularly if added to their recent Cup victory and last years appearance in the Final.

This leaves the New York Rangers, who are definitely a step below all teams named so far. The Original Arbitrary Six era was not kind to them, as they missed the playoffs 18 times in the seasons between 1942 and 1966. In the 6 years they managed to qualify, they made it out of the first round only once, and were then dispatched. There's also the infamous 54 year Cup drought from 1940 to 1994, with little to write about between those years or since that Victory twenty years ago. Even with the advantage of having played within a league that consists of only six teams they were incapable of amassing the accolades like their colleagues from the same era did. The Rangers are an old franchise. Successful is a different matter.

So with the Original Arbitrary Six covered, let's look at some more recent additions to the league.

The  New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers are a curious case of symmetry. Both teams entered the league in the 70s, wear Orange and Blue, quickly established themselves as veritable dynasties, but have fallen flat ever since and are currently trying to rebuild through the draft. The Oilers have a little bit of a better claim, with one more Cup victory in their history, plus a somewhat miraculous Final appearance in the deviant post-lockout 05-06 season.

However, whatever capital both teams amassed through their dynastic years in the 80s is long gone, fallen by the wayside through years of losing and both teams have become the laughingstock of the league at one time or another through bad management. How the mighty have fallen.

From the 80s we jump to the 90s and 2000s, in which for the most part the Colorado Avalanche and New Jersey Devils split whatever the Red Wings left over.

While Wikipedia is trying to fool people by separating the seasons in Quebec and Colorado, the Avalanche are still the same franchise as the Quebec Nordiques and the Nordiques' years must be taken into account when looking at their franchise history. Make no mistake, the Avs won the Cup in their first season in Colorado because of the players amassed in drafts and trades made in Quebec so it is only fair to count the losing years of the Nordiques against the Avs franchise history. And lose they did often, collecting four consecutive 1st overall draft picks in the late 80s and early 90s.

The Avalanche made good use of those picks, and the rewards for trading away one of those draft choices named Eric Lindros and won two Cups, but the Avalanche never made another appearance in the Final since their last victory in 2001. Since then they have fallen off, but thanks to talented amassed in the drafts they seem to have returned to form. This hasn't delivered anything too outstanding yet, though it seems to be developing that way.

The Devils also once played in Denver, and Kansas before that, but all those years were miserable and hardly worth mentioning. Even after moving to New Jersey little happened, to the point where they were infamously declared to be a "Mickey Mouse franchise" by the best player to ever play the game. However, thanks to four appearances and three victories in the Stanley Cup Final over nine years they managed to get rid of that moniker. But those seemingly dynastic years are now in the rearview mirror and the franchise is running on the fumes of old glory. They had another appearance in the Final only two season ago, but the leading player in it, Ilya Kovalchuk has since "retired" from the league as well, leaving the Devils somewhat stranded, with Martin Brodeur, the last vestige of their glory days appearing to leave the franchise in the immediate future.

Finally, let's take a look at the nouveau riche of the NHL, the Pittsburgh Penguins. Since their incarnation the Penguins were a doormat up to them drafting Mario Lemieux, which was pretty much a race to the bottom with the Devils. The interesting thing though is that even with Lemieux in their lineup, there was little immediate impact. When they drafted Lemieux in 84, they had already missed the playoffs twice. They would miss it another 5 times in the next 6 years before winning two Cups, conveniently falling in between the end of the Oilers Dynasty, and the start of the triumvirate of the Red Wings, Avalanche and Devils. They also only managed to do that after luckily picking up another all-time great forward in Jaromir Jagr.

While continuous playoff appearances followed, the unfortunate illness of Mario Lemieux would put a dent into their hopes of regaining another Cup to the point were they traded an unhappy Jagr for players that never panned out. Mismanagement on both the financial and athletic side followed with the team becoming a bottom dweller just at the right time to pick up a couple more generational talents in Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby, a player they literally won in a lottery. Talk about lucky.

The little secret here is that even after putting up two more Stanley Cup Final appearances and another victory in it, and while retaining those two generational talents, the Penguins are far from threatening now. They have been routinely exposed by a variety of opponents in the playoffs as unfocused and easy to manipulate, and are thus less thought of as the team to beat than other recent Cup winners like Boston, Chicago or Los Angeles.


The NHL has a number of great franchises. I'm lucky to be a fan of one of the best of them as they can very much hang with any other franchise in terms of team success, pride, community and history. If you ask me, while the Canadiens are the clearcut all-time leader, they are slowly fading, and teams like the Flyers, Red Wings and Bruins are gaining on them. Of that pack I think the Flyers are a nose ahead, though that may be bias on my part speaking. The Bruins are improving though and may soon be in position to make a claim for it. However, saying that it isn't close is a mistake I don't think any fan should allow themselves.

Which franchise is truly the best ever can never be truly answered while the league is still running of course, which I hope it will for a long time. This leaves us with continuously adjusting a franchises reputation and whether their recent play solidified their legacy or brought shame on itself and took away from their history. However, this also keeps things interesting as a franchise can not simply rest on its laurels.

The Flyers are a raging success, and Claude Giroux is their captain

The Philadelphia Flyers had a terrible start to the season. This is no secret. The reasons are many. They had tuned out the coach. The training camp was an absolute disaster. Claude Giroux suffered a freak golf injury during the offseason and missed training camp entirely. They had a terrible time to find the net, etc. These things aren't as much excuses as they are observations.

Then the Flyers were at a 1-7-0 record and seemingly at the end of their wits, team captain Claude Giroux had the following to say:

"We're not far off at all. How many points are we out, six? To think of the start that we had and we're that close. We never thought about not making the playoffs. We've got to go game by game and we will make the playoffs."

Reading over it now, the statement seems a little bit innocuous, but nevertheless a lot of media outlets picked it up as a sort of Mark Messier-esque guarantee. And so did fans, eager to have a laugh at the expense of a downed opponent. Just take a look at the commentary sections of this article on Yahoo, or this article on ESPN.

Commentators such as Ryan Lambert, the Bill O'Reilly of hockey, also had their field day dancing on what seemed to be a grave already. Particularly after the Flyers hit rock bottom in their lousy and embarrassing game against the Capitals. The cake probably takes the column entitled "Philadelphia Flyers are a screaming disaster and Claude Giroux is its captain".

Now we are here, 5 months later, and the Flyers clinched a playoff berth with a 5-2 win over the Florida Panthers yesterday night.

While it would be a delight to go back and pick out some choice comments from the naysayers, but I think looking at the above mentioned comment sections speaks for itself. Rather, let's take a look at some of the factors why the Flyers made that remarkable turnaround.

First must be Claude Giroux. After the statement he made he kept his end of the bargain, placing first on the team in points and goals, and is as of this writing 4th in the NHL in points. After a brutal start that took him 6 games for the first assist and 15 games to score his first goal, that is quite something to behold. It even places him into the Hart Trophy race. I've made my feelings about this known, though unfortunately the Professional Hockey Writers' Association treats it as a general, league-wide MVP award so it is a foregone conclusion that Sidney Crosby is going to win it.

Claude Giroux also had several late-game heroic scenes, such as overtime winners against Chicago and Columbus in rather spectacular fashion, which showcases the Flyers resiliency. They have a ton of games in which they trailed at some point in the third only to tie it back up and get at least one point, or even win outright.

Special teams play has also been a constant factor. The Flyers are ranked 10th in Power play percentage and 6th in the penalty kill. The guys over at Broad Street Hockey have an excellent article on the Flyers PK unit and how they make their opponents lives tough through shot suppression.

The Flyers also were horribly snakebitten in the early part of the season. They only scored 11 goals in the first 8 games of their season. Since then everybody has stepped up, as the Flyers can now boast that they have 7 different players that have scored at least 20 goals. They are the only team sporting that number.

All of this is nice and fine, but the season is not over yet. They still have to vie for positioning. They are most likely playing the Rangers in the first round of the playoffs, and home-ice advantage will be paramount. They have a game in hand, but since the Rangers hold the tiebreaker the Flyers need them to screw up at some point, though their schedule is rather easy.

In defense of Zac Rinaldo (kind of)

Zac Rinaldo is a sword with two edges and this weekend very much illustrated this. On Saturday the Flyers played the Bruins, who have been a thorn in the side of the Flyers ever since the Flyers beat them in that miraculous 4-3 comeback in 2010. Rinaldo leveled Milan Lucic on a clean hit in the opening minutes, mirroring a scene from the previous game just a week earlier in which Rinaldo smashed Jarome Iginla, then had to fight him as Iggy was kind of pissed about it. This time Rinaldo kept his gloves on while Lucic did not, and Lucic ended up taking the only penalty on the incident.

Unfortunately the Flyers and their lately frigid power play failed to take advantage of that advantage. The game then became somewhat stale-matey as the Flyers hung with the Bruins for the first 40 minutes. However, they got absolutely destroyed in the 3rd period and lost 5-2. Not a good showing and Lucic got the last laugh with two goals in the game.

The very next day the Flyers played the Sabres at home. Rinaldo for his part took advantage of his recently increased ice time, skating with Matt Read and Sean Couturier on the 3rd line, by scoring a goal. With Jay Rosehill scoring against the Bruins and The Undertaker losing at Wrestlemania some people see it as a sign of the apocalypse. Other people were just happy he found some success, particularly his little brother, who is just adorable.

However, then Zac had to go ahead and lose all the trust and respect he recently earned by hitting Sabres rookie defenseman Chad Ruhwedel in the head.

This was not a good hit. It was a direct contact with the head and no body contact at all. Rinaldo also appears to leap into the hit. He is also a repeat offender from an incident in 2012, in which the suspension was also rather warranted. Also, Ruhwedel suffered a concussion from the hit. Combine all these facts together and Rinaldo is staring at a lengthy suspension at the hands of the Department of Player Safety in the immediate future.

So let me get this out of the way first, I am not going to defend the hit because there is nothing to defend. To bring out the cliche, it is the kind of hit the NHL is attempting to legislate out of the game, and I am pretty okay with that. Players make mistakes and will have to suffer the consequences for them.

What I will try to defend is Zac Rinaldo, the player.

Immediately following the hit and the reporting on it, the crow calls came. The peanut gallery on various hockey sites were condemning the hit (which is correct) and questioning why Rinaldo is even in the NHL (which is not).

That Rinaldo has a reputation problem is almost an understatement, tracing way back to his days in the OHL and before that. He has pretty much always been a mucker and a hitter, just as he is now. He was never a scoring threat or anything like that. He is a pest who makes his living by putting the fear into people and giving them bruises from big hits. It is a fine line he plays on, a fact that he is aware of, and for 99% of the time he stays on the right side of that line. But with playing on that line also comes stepping over it on occasion, either by mistake or intent, and suffering the consequences. A price he is willing to pay. However, that hardly warrants the label of "dirty" being placed on him.

From what I can tell out of interviews and how he presents himself in documentary scenes like on 24/7 Road to the Winter Classic, he is also an earnest person who accepts his role on the team and does what he can to advance it. He also has something child-like in him, like a kid in a candy store, casting him in a bit of a locker-room-guy role as his enthusiasm appears to be quite infectious.

What I do not get is how other people can not see or appreciate this fact. For the most part it just has to be the desire of vengeance. Rinaldo is the type of player who goes under the skin of his opponents, both those on the ice and the fans thereof. Nobody likes to be hit, and Rinaldo hits hard and often. To roll on another cliche: He's the kind of player you like to have on your team, but hate when he's on the opposing one.

And therein lies the core of the problem, familiarity. Even his biggest detractors must have had a similar player on their team at one time or another if they don't do now. Teams need these kinds of players as they bring some raw energy to the table, and the fans of the teams often love those little balls of enthusiasm. It is of course on the team to make use of this energy, to form it into something useful and valuable, rather than leaving it dormant or having it explode in their face.

Perhaps another current Flyer is a poster boy for this, Steve Downie. Downie is somewhat of a more talented version of Rinaldo, a mucker and a hitter but with a bit more of a scoring touch. He too was troubled by a bad reputation coming out of juniors, and his energy exploded into senseless destruction when he hit Dean McArmond in preseason all those years ago. However, after he was traded to Tampa and under the guidance of figures like Rick Tocchet (who would be another player in a similar vein) formed a very nice NHL career for himself.

Watching Rinaldo has given me a bit more of appreciating for other players of his type on other teams, even if I despise them for the moment. As Jeff Marek like to say, even the worst player in the NHL is miles ahead of any average Joe from the street in terms of hockey skill, even the streets in Canada. Players like Zac Rinaldo are contributing something to their team and are far more skilled than people give them credit for, so even if they cross a line and make a mistake, I think it's just entirely unfair to immediately call for their dismissal from the league. It would also be hypocritical to condemn players to it when the same kind of player with the same types of plays would rouse excitement if he was on your own team.

What my worry is though is that other people can't see through this, including Brendan Shanahan and the Department of Player Safety. They seem to go a lot harsher on low-level players like Rinaldo than on players with a larger profile on the score sheet. That being said the hit does definitely warrant a suspension, though I hope it isn't primarily based on Rinaldo's embellished reputation but rather on the action itself.

Yes, the shootout is still important

With the playoffs drawing closer and teams clinching, I basically stare at the standings at least once a day, usually more often than that, at the NHL.com standings. One of the most interesting numbers in the standings is the Shootout wins and losses. I use it as a barometer on the strength of teams, particularly those on the bubble. Good teams win and are able to deny their opponents points by outscoring them in regulation, or at least punch through in overtime. The number of shootouts they are involved in will generally be low. Other teams have to rely on the shootout scrap points together. However, this also means that they gift points to their opponents, making it overall tougher for themselves.

Personally I don't really mind the shootout as much as the fact that it shouldn't be worth the same as a regulation win (as explained in a previous blog post). Even the NHL kind of admits to that by making win totals excluding the shootout the first tie-breaker in the standings (provided equal number of games played). However, it is definitely a crutch some teams exploit and I call teams whose success is based in it paper tigers, fakes which look stronger than they actually are.

It is undeniable that some teams make the playoffs based on the shootout. As a Flyers fan people are quick to bring up the season-ending shootout in the last game of the regular season against the Rangers in 2010. It came down to a shootout, with the winner of it making the playoffs and the loser being on the outside looking in. The Flyers luckily made it, starting them on their run that ended in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup Final.

The funny thing though is that it's not the Flyers who profited from the existence of the shootout that year: It was the Boston Bruins. The Bruins finished 3 points ahead of the Flyers and 4 points ahead of the Rangers. However, this lead was based in the fact that the Bruins participated in 19 shootouts that year, winning 10 of them. They were 14-13 in games going over regulation time that year. In comparison the Flyers had a 4-3 record in shootouts that year, with a 6-6 record in games decided in OT or the Shootout. The Rangers were 4-11 in games decided past regulation time. In most other point systems, such as the three point system I would like to have in the NHL, the Flyers and Rangers would have already been qualified before the final game of the season, and the Bruins would have been eliminated.

A similar example to the 09-10 Bruins can also be seen this year in the Washington Capitals. They too have participated in 19 shootouts, winning 9 of them. They are for now on the bubble, though two points behind the Blue Jackets who have a game in hand on the Capitals, making me think the Caps won't make it. The Capitals saw 25 of their 76 games played so far this season go into overtime, often by their own inability to hold a lead. It may very well be the reason they are on the outside looking in, as they have bled extra points to their opponents. However, without the extra points they earned in OT they wouldn't even have the chance to make the playoffs either.

On the flipside we have the New Jersey Devils who had to 11 shootouts this year, losing all of them. Yesterday night they lost to Buffalo in a 9-round shootout despite scoring two goals themselves, tripling the season total on successful shootout attempts for the year. They are now 3-for-39 in shootout attempts on the year, which is not surprising considering that their head coach Pete DeBoer does not practice the shootout.

Seriously, how does this happen in a league that has the shootout? If the Devils went as much as 5-6 in their 11 shootouts this year, they would now have 85 points, pushing them into a playoff position ahead of the Red Wings and Blue Jackets. If they had been able to flip their shootout record around, going 11-0, they'd be 2nd in the division and on the brink of clinching a playoff spot. By choosing not to practice this part of the game the Devils are essentially surrendering points to their opponents from the outset, and the importance of these points becomes more and more evident with every passing day this time of year.

Yes, the shootout does not exist in the playoffs. And yes, a team should not be reliant on the shootout to win a hockey game. But as much as I think that the shootout win should not be as valuable as a regulation win, matter of fact is that the shootout is still important and an opportunity to improve point totals and positions in the standings. Not even practicing the shootout should be immediate grounds of termination for any head coach.

However, this also makes me wonder about the Flyers. The last two games were decided in a shootout, losing both of them to the Bruins and Blues. It is good that they got the equivalent points as a win from two games against the two best teams in the league and giving them the extra points does not hurt the Flyers too much, but they are now again at a 3-7 record in the shootout this year. These are similar numbers to the last couple of seasons. In overall, the Flyers are 11-23 in shootouts since 2010, and Berube appears to not have put any more emphasis on the shootout than Laviolette did before him.

While it is always a delight to watch players like Claude Giroux show off their skillset in the shootout, it would be nice to actually win a couple of them. Particularly now as the Flyers are struggling to gain home-ice advantage. The Flyers are pretty much set to face-off with the Rangers in the first round, and they have a terrible record at MSG for the last couple of seasons. Leaving these points on the table could very well cost them dearly.

Hockey Science

Here's a confession: I'm a YouTube addict. I watch a lot of content from that video streaming site, and in particular I like educational and science videos. Channels like SciShow, CrashCourse, MinutePhysics, Veritasium, VSauce, ASAPScience, Sixty Symbols and The Periodic Table of Videos are always fun, entertaining and informative. Science is what makes humanity understand the world, and these guys do a lot to help humanity understand science.

Now since I am a big fan of hockey, I find it even more entertaining when these channels actually take a look at that sport, which is what Destin, the host of Smarter Every Day recently did. In particular he took a look at the physics involved in skating on ice, and those involved in firing off a slapshot in hockey. Some of the things he found out were surprising to me. Hope you enjoy them as well.

Leaffire

Last night the Philadelphia Flyers played the Toronto Maple Leafs in what I deemed the most important game of the year for both teams. The Flyers were losers of two straight (to the Rangers and Kings) and only 3 points ahead of the Leafs who were entangled in a 4-way tie for the last two wild card spots. The Leafs should be desperate, since the only reason they are in that position was because they had dropped their last six games, all in regulation, and that is no good in March. If the Leafs win they are right back in a good position. Other teams still have games in hand but they made points and they could drag the Flyers into this mud-fight as well and perhaps open another opportunity to make the playoffs. If the Flyers win they close the gap on the Rangers and they put additional distance between them and the free-for-all for the wild card spots.

Thankfully the Flyers won. It wasn't super-pretty, but the result counts giving them some important points this late in the season. However, through most of the game neither team looked terribly interested in actually winning the thing. For the Flyers this is worrisome. For the Leafs it is an embarrassment, and it has reduced some of the more prominent supporters to drinking and talking about basketball. *shudder*

As the Leafs are dropping in the standings like an anvil from orbit, a lot of pundits have been arguing why exactly that is. A popular answer is "pressure". I don't buy it. A lot of teams from all sports face pressure from the media and fans all the time. As a Flyers fan I can tell you enough about. I will also tell you that yeah, sometimes reporters should just back off. However, if the Leafs can't deal with that they are doomed from the start.

A lot of blame has also been placed on Dion Phaneuf for showing poor leadership because he refused to talk to the media that one time. I call BS on that too. In fact, that is one thing Phaneuf has done right this year and showed his teammates to just ignore the media for once, because they are not as important as they occasionally appear to be. Claude Giroux pulled the same stunt in November and the Flyers were better for it.

However, Phaneuf is part of the problem in Toronto. He is not one if the causes though. Rather, he is a symptom. As of this writing Phaneuf is 16th from the bottom in Corsi On among all players that played at least 20 games this year. His defense partner Carl Gunnarsson is 8th from the bottom. That play is not conducive to a team's success, and it isn't exactly leadership material either. For Phaneuf means he needs to improve. For Toronto this means they shouldn't be getting and employing players like him.

The core problem with the Leafs is that they are terribly inept in evaluating talent and building a team. Their management is an absolute catastrophe as exemplified by the contracts for Phaneuf and David Clarkson, which are built around marketing, name-recognition and nebulous concepts like "truculence", rather than actual quality of play and the reasons behind it. They pay supporting cast talent like star players, and then send people like Clarke MacArthur and Mikhail Grabovski, players who can actually form a sound and decent supporting cast and who can be paid the appropriate price, away.

Personally I'm just glad Phaneuf signed this ridiculous contract extension, paying him $7 million a year for the next 7 years, with the Leafs. It means that other teams aren't tempted to make the same mistake. The Flyers in their desperate search for a true #1 defenseman would have been a prime candidate to do so, and I'm very glad they do not have the opportunity for it.

About this time last year there was some speculation going around what would have happened if the season had been the regular 82 games, rather than the 48 games season shortened by the lockout. A popular theory was that the Leafs would have faltered and entered their inevitable late-season collapse that has become pretty much routine. The question is who would have risen in their stead, with the Flyers a candidate as they were never able to put things together last year, but looked to play better just in time for it to no longer matter, and finished 8 points behind the Leafs last year and just above .500 in points percentage.

I think the result of last night actually gives some credence to that scenario.

James Neal should not be made of teflon

Here we see Neal inflicting grievous harm before swiftly exiting the ice for the bench.

It should be no secret that I do not like the Pittsburgh Penguins. Besides being a pain in the ass and currently involved in a heated rivalry with the Flyers, I consider them to be an aberration in sports. They are a franchise that has been sustained not by hard work, but almost entirely by luck. They had the good fortune to suck at the right time, unlike Panthers, Blue Jackets or Coyotes for example. First in the 80s they win the Mario Lemieux sweepstakes, and more recently in the mid 2000s they drafted first or second overall in four consecutive years yielding them Marc-Andre Fleury, Jordan Staal, and the generational talents of Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby. Crosby is of course the biggest example of the Penguins good fortune, his draft choice being awarded through an actual lottery involving every NHL team.

What is worse however is how the Flyers and the Penguins are being viewed by outsiders and more casual hockey fans. The Flyers have earned a reputation in the 70s as the Broad Street Bullies, a mean and physical team. They have suffered from this reputation ever since, never being awarded the benefit of doubt whenever something less than wholesome has happened.

On the other hand the Penguins are the darlings of the NHL and presented through its marketing, which routinely focuses on them due the presence of Sidney Crosby, as the dynasty-to-be and the clean-cut shining example of how a franchise should conduct itself.

However, anybody with more than a passing familiarity with the NHL knows that nothing is further from the truth. The Penguins are just as rotten as the rest of the NHL. They commit cheapshots and penalties just like everybody else. However, considering that they have employed the consensus dirtiest player in the league Matt Cooke for a long time they may have been even worse than the rest while masquerading as sheep.

Matt Cooke's history of dirty play has been chronicled pretty well. But to give credit where it is due, he has actually managed to turn his career around in the wake of a 10 game suspension and make his living as a defensively responsible player and penalty killer, as opposed to a cheapshot artist. He is still a pest, but at least he is a clean one. Cooke is however tainted which is why the Penguins opted to not bring him back during the 2013 offseason.

In his wake the Penguins quickly found a successor for the mantle of local cheapshot artist, and his name is James Neal. Neal is a very skilled player, has a great shot and is a genuine power forward impressing with size. He is also dirtier than a sewer rat, routinely getting his elbow and stick out against opposing players for little to no reason, often just because there is an opportunity.

What is odd however is how Neal appears to have somehow snuck into the blind spot of the Department of Player Safety, either being punished with a slap on the wrist or not at all.

Take for example his hit on Sean Couturier from the 2012 playoffs. It was a leaping headshot at an unsuspecting player who was not in control of the puck and hadn't been for several seconds. Neal was not called on a penalty, giving him the opportunity to deliver another cheapshot only seconds later on Claude Giroux. Neal was finally kicked out of the game for that one and was assessed a 1 game suspension for his hit on Giroux, but got no discipline at all for his hit on Couturier. How the NHL at all bites on Neal's excuse that he tried to brace himself for the hit on Couturier and it was incidental is beyond me, considering how deliberately he goes after Giroux only moments later. Seems to me like he was on the warpath from the get go.

What makes this decision truly bizarre is the fact that only a couple of days later, a similar incident between Raffi Torres of the Phoenix Coyotes and Marian Hossa of the Chicago Blackhawks occurred. The hit was in my opinion essentially identical to the one between Neal and Couturier. An unsuspecting player who has lost the puck gets drilled by a predatory, leaping hit. The only real difference is that there was a stretcher involved as Hossa had to be transported off the ice, unable to skate by himself. Torres was suspended initially for 25 games, which would later be reduced to 21.

While there is much to be said about Torres established history as opposed to Neal's only burgeoning reputation at the time, as well as the fact that Torres caused a severe injury while Neal thankfully did not, I can not understand for the life of me how the difference between the two incidents is 25 games.


Fast foward to this week. James Neal has now earned himself quite the rap sheet, over the last couple of years, including a 5 game suspension this season after planting a knee in the head of a downed Brad Marchand from the Bruins. This in and off itself should already be a travesty considering how obvious and deliberate he undertook that penalty.

However, to make things worse, this week Neal crosschecked Red Wings forward Luke Glendening in the head. Very deliberate and opportunistic. Considering how much the NHL is attempting to limit contact with heads in order to prevent injuries, and given Neal's status as a repeat offender, this should be another lengthy suspension, right?

Wrong. The NHL chose to only fine Neal for $5,000. What. The. ****. Compare this to the crosscheck Jesse Boulerice delivered to Ryan Kesler in 2007, which earned Boulerice a 25 game suspension. And this was before the NHL declared war on concussions. Do I think Boulerice's hit was worse? Most definitely. The puck was long gone and Boulerice made a bee-line for Kesler for no damn reason in a game which was decided for a while. Is there 25 games worth of difference between the two incidents? Most definitely not.

Or as a different example, here is Washington's Nicklas Backstrom cross-checking Bruin's forward Rich Peverley in the head. That at least got him a 1 game suspension in the playoffs.

The Department of Player Safety has a reputation problem as it is, with many of its decisions appearing to be completely arbitrary and not rooted in precedent or any formal logic whatsoever. There also seem to be different sets of rules applied to high scoring star players and bottom six plugs. And in the playoffs the entire system seems to go straight out of the window anyway. Stuff like the above is definitely not helping.

Something also needs to be said for the lack of initiative at the hands of the Penguins. Yes, Matt Cooke improved himself after a stern talking to by the Pens brass, but this was only after being severely punished by the NHL. For years they let things slide and let Cooke run amok before actually stepping in. And they seem to be content with letting Neal continue down the same path.

It also doesn't appear that Neal is at all remorseful or has any understanding of the consequences of his conduct. From Shanahan's videos we get relays of his cheap excuses. When asked by reporters he never admits fault or shows regret, and even on the plays themselves he is quick to exit for the bench rather than face the music.

Somebody has to step in and make Neal actually feel the some punishment for his transgressions, which appear to have become routine for him. I just hope that it is either the Department of Player Safety finally wising up, or the Penguins leadership doing what is necessary. Otherwise we might see things come down the way they did in 2011 when the Islanders chose to goon it up against the Penguins as they did not believe the NHL had served them in correcting previous wrongs inflicted at the hands of the Penguins. This prompted Mario Lemieux to write an angry letter to the NHL calling for stronger discipline and sharper suspensions, despite his own team being mostly the beneficiary of this lax situation and the root cause in how it got that far.

The situation is also becoming increasingly more dangerous. It is already borderline miraculous as it is that Neal hasn't severely injured a player already, but every cheapshot is a new opportunity for this to happen. I hope for all parties involved Neal corrects his path before then.

Somebody has to step in, as the lack of initiative to punish a "star" player like Neal is slowly but surely becoming an untenable embarrassment to the league.