Wow..That Sucked...

I know I am a day late, but I am still reeling from that horrendous finale the Flyers gave this city on Tuesday night.

What a total egg. 7-1 on your home ice, in an elimination game. With all the promise and hope that was generated in this offseason, this is a terrible and completely unacceptable way for the season to end.

Once the NHL got a deal done and we knew that there would be a 2005-2006 season, I was excited. Then we got Peter Forsberg, the best player in the world, and I was doing back-flips. Then we added Rathje and Hatcher. I was looking at this team and thinking they could rack up 120 points during the regular season. Forsberg, Gagne, Primeau, Handzus, Knuble, Johnsson, Rathje, Hatcher, Desjardins, Pitkanen and Kapenan - plus Esche and Niittymaki in goal. Then you figure in the rookies that we would have that were coming off of a dominating Calder Cup Championship run. The sky was the limit. I was convinced that we were going to win the Stanley Cup in a walk.

The one thing that I was worried about? That this is Philadelphia and that something would happen to fuck it all up.

Well, it didn't take long. Primeau goes down with a season ending concussion, Johnsson follows. Kapenan and Desjardins get injured, Forsberg's groin keeps him out of 21 games. Before long, our entire second line is made up of rookies, good rookies, but still rookies. We stumble home and lose out on the division by one point, because we lost to shitty teams like the Maple Leafs, Canadians and Islanders during the home stretch. Instead of getting to play the reeling Rangers in Philly, we get to go on the road and play the fastest team in the league - Buffalo. And well, we know how that turned out. After Forsberg, single-handedly tied the series, we were outscored 10-1 and outplayed in every single period of the last two games.

Rathje, Hatcher and Desjardins are too slow, as our most of our defensemen not named Johnsson and Pitkanen. That was obvious during the Buffalo series. In addition, someone on the team other than the Forsberg, Gagne and Knuble line needs to be able to score. Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Handzus, and Dimitrakos were invisible. Nedved and Umberger weren't much better, although Umberger did provide us with the best hit of the game - unfortunately he was on the receiving end.

Truth be told, I am not mad at anyone in particular. A lot of fans are killing Desjardins and Hatcher for their crappy defense, but they can't help being slow. Bob Clarke thought we needed some tough guys to keep people out of our zone and stand up the other teams forwards at the blue line. He guessed wrong. It happens. If Clarke had been right, and the new NHL played out like he thought it would, the Flyers could still be Stanley Cup contenders instead of first round casualties. Also, injuries played a huge part, more so than for other teams when you think about the players we lost.

What's important here is that Clarke and Snider learn from what happened to this team. In the NHL speed is important, most important. Most of our forwards have it, most of our defensemen do not. The Flyers don't need a new coach, they don't need a new goalie and they don't need aging veterans with name reckognition; they need speed on defense. A healthy Keith Primeau wouldn't hurt either.