Omae wa mo kubininaru [You are already fired]

It has been a frustrating season for the Flyers. The players know it, fans know it, the coach knows it. Everybody knows it. The team was always a step behind and didn't put things together as they are capable of. It sucks but there is no way to change it anymore. The season is already over and they're just waiting for it to end, way too far behind to have any realistic chance at making the playoffs.

The only thing that's left is to show some character and play as best as you can (particularly in two upcoming contests against the Penguins). Nobody appears to know this better than Steve Mason. He has received very little goal support over the last couple of weeks, but has kept the team in games by his lonesome for most of this recent period. He allowed 3 or more goals only four times in his last 18 performances as the goalie on record. He may in fact be the best player on this team, and his detractors and the people who laughed at the Flyers for acquiring him are finally seeing that this guy is actually a talented goaltender who perhaps was overused and ridden into the ground early in his career.

So why the hell does coach Craig Berube deem it necessary to chew the guy out? During last night's loss in Calgary, Mason got the hook more than 37 minutes into the contest after giving up the second goal on 16 shots. Those aren't particularly atrocious numbers and he was screened on the goal that got him pulled. Berube doesn't appear to believe that is a sufficient, telling the press "Well, you know, there are going to be screens. That's the way it is. You gotta find pucks."

Berube is on his way out. Some of his coaching decisions are just baffling, the system doesn't work properly and the way the Flyers completely fell down the well in terms of penalty kill during the season is not a good thing for him either. Berube was mostly hired as a stopgap after a dreadful start last season. A guy the players were already familiar with since Berube was an assistant coach with the Flyers for a long time, but even his time has come now.

To me last nights reaction appears to be a form of lashing out. Berube knows he is done, that he is already fired. Like the fans and the players, he is frustrated. That is understandable to a degree, but at least it could be done with grace and without basically throwing one of the best players, and the best goalie the team has seen in ages, under the bus.

Berube is toast and Hextall is going to put a new guy behind the bench next season, one of his own choice. I have no doubt that the Flyers are going to try and lure Babcock, though my personal favorite is still Tippett though it is doubtful he could be available. Paul MacLean's name has also been thrown around. In any case, it won't be Berube.

Red Army

The NHL is the best league in the world, no doubt about that. When you follow the league, even if you are not really interested, you will become at least passingly familiar with its history and the heroes of the past. And even if you ignore that, it's hard to escape the fact that the NHL pauses mid-season every four years so players can play international competition during the Olympics (though whether this will also happen in 2018 is doubtful at best).

When you hear these tales of yore there is always a certain threat named Soviet Hockey involved. Being exposed to them almost exclusively from a western perspective it is easy to assume that the Soviets were simply the evil team as political motivations are projected onto them. It isn't even entirely wrong, as the Soviet government used them as a propaganda tool, particularly when sending them across the globe to play NHL teams, either clubs or selections of all-stars.

North American and german theatrical poster for Red Army.

The documentary film "Red Army", currently in cinemas, doesn't contradict this either, but it showcases a perspective on it that will be almost completely unfamiliar to most western audiences. The film follows the career of Hall of Fame defenseman Viacheslav "Slava" Fetisov who became a member of CSKA at the age of 10 and made his professional debut at 16.

The first turning point of the film is the replacement of head coach Anatoli Tarasov with Viktor Tikhanov, both for the CSKA club as well as the soviet national team. Tarasov, a mentor to Fetisov and "the father of russian hockey", is portrayed as a passionate but fair man who considers sports a form of art and attempts to find information useful to hockey even in things like chess and ballet. This is put into direct contrast with Tikhanov's dictatorial persona and relentless practices earning him the spite, but also the desired fear, from his players. As Fetisov later explains, he was respected as a coach but not as a human being because Tikhanov himself did not respect his players as human beings. Tikhanov's popularity is not helped by the fact that he was installed mostly for political reasons.

The film then proceeds to the Miracle on Ice, the first great disappointment in Fetisov's career. The loss sent ripples throughout the Soviet hockey system, leading to the replacement of several players and coaching staff on the national team. However, this also led to the formation of the CSKA hockey club's "first block" consisting of Fetisov, his defense partner and best friend Alexei Kasatonov, and a forward line including Igor Larionov, Vladimir Krutov and Sergei Makarov. Legendary goaltender Vladislav Tretiak is also featured.

Kasatonov and Fetisov in the back, Makarov, Larionov and Krutov in the front.

The documentary shows some truly artistic plays performed by this group of players. Immaculate passing showing up the opposition, whose heads spinning of their necks can nearly be observed. This is also the point where even dyed-in-the-wool fans of western hockey have to admit that for the "evil team", the soviets played a very beautiful style. Rapidly they earn gold in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.

But with the Soviet Union faltering, players are trickling into the NHL. The defection Alexander Mogilny is put into focus. The politburo of the USSR sees the necessity of allowing the Federations star players to leave for the west, though most have to surrender half their salary to the Soviet authorities. This is welcome to Fetisov, who had a falling out with Tikhanov which had rendered him almost a political prisoner in his own country.

In the end all the members of the first block would end up playing in the NHL, but they were in for a Rude Awakening. The NHL was much more rough and tumble than the soviet league, and the contrast to the russian style of beautiful passes and full team play is staggering. The skills of the russian players could not really be properly applied in an NHL system, and the fact that the members of the first block were entering the twilight of their careers didn't help much either.

That is to say until Scotty Bowman, who had observed the russians in an international capacity often enough, managed to get five Russians on the Red Wings. Fetisov was the final piece added to his former CSKA teammate Larionov as well as Sergei Fedorov, Vyacheslav Kozlov, and Vladimir Konstantinov. The group clicked immediately and helped the Red Wings win the 1997 Stanley Cup (despite me hating every second of it). The Stanley Cup makes an appearance on the Red Square.

The movie continues in showing several more Russian imports impacting the NHL, including first overall picks Ilya Kovalchuk, Alexander Ovechkin and Nail Yakupov. This is contrasted with Fetisov explaining his feelings that what his country lacks nowadays is patriotism. The point his hammered home, quite literally, with cuts from a video of Alexander Ovechkin taking shots at Matryoshka dolls to demonstrate his accuracy. Meanwhile Fetisov himself has become Russia's Minister of Sport, while Kasatonov has become Vice President of CSKA and Tretiak the president of the russian hockey federation.

In the end the viewer is left wondering. The totalitarian circumstances in communist Russia were despicable, but it is also undeniable that it brought forward some of the greatest hockey players in the world and one of the greatest teams that ever existed. Could they have become what they were anywhere else? At the very least the film shows a human perspective of these factors and life as a hockey player in the USSR, which is too often neglected when observing from the west as the avatars of the political system.

When I sat in the cinema my first point of criticism was that the movie essentially starts in 1978. As a Flyers fan the love-hate relationship between the Fred Shero's Bullies and the Soviet Union would have been something I would have liked to see featured. Shero, himself the son of russian immigrants, was after all friends with Anatoli Tarasov, studied russian hockey, and imprinted a part of this on his team even before the infamous clash in 1976. However looking back it is understandable that this was left out as it would have somewhat put the horse before the cart. Since Fetisov wasn't a member of CSKA's professional team yet, it was also a bit out of scope.

Nevertheless, "Red Army" is quite a remarkable documentary that can only be highly recommend to any hockey fan. It should also expand some horizons for some fans who have had the western perspective of hockey during the Cold War imprinted on them, and that is a genuinely good thing.

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.