Let’s Not Disgrace The Sweater

The Flyers pulled the plug on one of the longest running shows in Philadelphia this week: Bobby Clarke and Ken Hitchcock. I have diligently scribed on this blog for two years now- and have only called for one head- the hapless Ed Wade- to be delivered to me. Pretty good restraint from a Philadelphia partisan. But man, I was getting close to giving up on this Flyers’ brain trust. It was about time to start buying gold, paraffin and seed potatoes. Ed Snyder beat me to it by about one home loss to Atlanta this week.

Look, there is simply nothing- other than good feelings about Bobby Clarke- to justify this increasingly grotesque charade- particularly if Clarke no longer wanted to do this job. And Clarke’s confidence is the only reason Hitchcock was here in the first place. It isn’t like Hitch, like, won anything here.

A good measuring stick for whether things are amiss: is this hockey team playing on par with the Capitals? The Flyers are not passing that examination. And all the traditional metrics are present and accounted for: you cannot fire the players, change for change’s sake is not an altogether bad thing for a bad team, anything but the current 1-6-1 status quo almost has to be better.

I hate the NHL product. It is vapid- increasingly NBA regular season like- progressively more effeminate. I honestly haven’t watched but two periods since the Flyer’s elimination from the play-offs last spring. So I have no comments on the roster, or how they’re playing, other than the dismissal of Peter Nedved hasn’t ever hurt any hockey team I’m aware of, and his regulation to “checking line center” is proof positive that Hitchcock doesn’t have a clue how defensive play works in the new NHL.

But Clarke is probably not the man to lead the Flyers into this new game. Last season, a big part of his post-lockout retooling of the roster was to call the NHL’s bluff- that they would not dare turn a great game game into a Czech Beer League (editor's note: yes, but with less hitting!). Clarke was wrong- and if collecting faceless Euros and Russians and Simon Gagne types to skate, play devoid of passion, featuring penalties for touching people, and seen only by people with continuously more obscure premium pay sites on American cable (the “VS” channel?) is the new game… well, it is a small mercy to let Clarke opt out.

For generations, the NHL has been the world standard for professional hockey- all of sudden our product isn’t good enough- and instead the Swedish Elite League is imported. How did that happen? Did Clarke miss a meeting?

I just am glad that Fred Shero isn’t alive to see it.