As a hockey fan, the internet sucks from July 15 to September 10, or thereabouts. After the Free Agent Frenzy dies down and before players start trickling into town with new haircuts and 10 more pounds of muscle, writers have to dig deep into their bag of tricks to come up with content that all too often materializes in the form of a Top 10 list or Best Dick Goal of the Year slideshow.
It’s strange then that during the slowest news cycle is when I get most excited for the upcoming season.
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You know what August 8th smells like? Hope. In small towns and big cities across the world professional hockey players have completely done away with the notion of summer. The off-ice training has intensified and the on-ice stick practice has begun. No longer is Claude Giroux a local celebrity at the bar every Thursday, but a man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.
I hope we'll win the Cup this season. I hope I’ll snipe 30 goals. I hope I’ll hit 100 points. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.
There may not be much going on in terms of score sheets, injuries, line combinations and controversy. But even though I try to temper my excitement at this time of year visions of Vinny LeCavalier celebrating a goal with a 40 on his neon orange back keep popping into my head.
The standings and their 2013-14 are stats are as clean and pure as a freshly cut sheet of ice. Half of the guys haven’t played a competitive game of hockey in 4 months. The older guys verge on sentimental and the younger guys are nothing but hungry to prove themselves as they each begin really preparing in their similar but in the end drastically different ways.
News
Personally, I hope the Flyers win the Metro this season. I hope Claude Giroux leads the NHL in scoring. I hope Steve Hartnell nets 40 goals. I hope Ray Emery and Steve Mason draw comparisons to last year’s Blackhawks. I hope I look forward to watching games after the Olympics. I hope…
FGSB Mailbag
Me first. Here’s a question I’ve been asking myself internally for the past couple years instead of going to church on Sunday – would Jake The Snake Roberts' tactics have been allowed in the NHL of the ‘80’s? For those of you that don’t know, this wrestler (fake) used to come down to the ring with a brown canvas sack that had a snake (real) in it every freaking match! He would put it in his corner and you’d try to watch the wrestling but there was a SNAKE IN THE BAG (maybe that was inspiration for Snakes on a Plane, actually). Anyway, the imminent threat of this 6’6 dude putting this giant Python on anyone was enough to make me black out from fear before the match ever ended. My parents would come into the living room and find me splayed out on the floor in my Transformers (original) underoos and a Macho Man head band on the reg, which I think is why I started off going to school in a trailer. Anyway part deux, if you ever saw the NHL in the 80’s you know that it was an anything-goes type of league back then. There were guys with helmets, guys without helmets. There was no Instigator Rule so dudes would literally jump other dudes and just beat the piss out of them. There was Brian Propp doing the guffaw. There was fighting in warm ups… So, if during warm ups Dave Brown, or Jake Roberts himself had he learned how to skate, brought out a brown canvas bag and just dropped it at the red line, would anyone have done anything? Would guys have freaked? Would John Ziegler have come out of the stands and chopped its head off? Guess that’s the kind of thing you have to wait to find out in Heaven…
@Mager_Pls do you think Mac truck Schenn plays as well as he did last season?
Did he play well last season? Because from what I remember the Flyers are a team. And on a team, one part is only as good as the whole. And the whole sucked and missed the playoffs. So if you’re under the impression (I’m yelling now but not using caps) that anyone played “well” last season, then you are exactly what is wrong with this organization, this city, and America!
Jake Voracek had a pretty decent year, actually. He scored lotsa goals.
@CaseOfDanglitis why was prongs not wearing shoes?
Wow. Good eye. I actually didn’t notice that, probably because I don’t have a foot fetish. Some things I did notice are
1. Why blur out the names when you’re just going to talk about them all and point to them? Yes, we get that you LUV Samuel Morin and had him ranked very high, and you would consider him a steal based on where you got him. If you’re going to mention players 5-10 on your chart by name, and then point at them and say where you’re moving them, then just show them.
2. I know you get shot for mentioning Moneyball on a sports blog, but wasn’t that scene SO MUCH like Moneyball? “He’ll hit ya with his stick I tell ya!” “He knows what he’s going to be and he’s going to be it!” “I saw him drinking a coffee and he didn’t even blow on it to cool it down – kid’s MEEAAAANNNN.”
3. There were meetings prior to this one, as noted by Chris Pryor – who I’d be fine going through my life never meeting. But this final get together didn’t seem all that organized, did it? I mean, if they got a proper system in there and actually put in a process to rank the prospects based on weighted points-per-scout then they wouldn’t even need a final meeting where Chris Pryor had to yell at all the guys to tell him what he wanted to hear. Is this right? IS THIS RIGHT? I’m going to move this guy. Would that be right? WOULD. THAT. BE. RIGHT?
It’s a good start but it didn’t really show much. Or much of anything that anyone wanted to see, to be more specific. Except for one person who apparently was eager to see Chris Pronger’s dogs. And the simple answer to the question is that Chris Pronger does what he wants. If he wants a puck he takes it. If he wants to kick off his shoes, even if it was in the middle of a Congressional hearing, the shoes come off.
Rick: I’m headed to Maine for vacation to a place where there are no tvs. In 2013. Give me a hockey vacation book rec. Gimme.
You literally (ha) cannot go wrong with a Roy MacGregor book. He was once called Canada’s Poet Laureate of hockey (or something) for good reason. Dude is an excellent writer and captures the essence of the game perfectly. People will tell you to read The Game, which is for good reason the seminal work on sports to date, but they’re also telling you “I’m smarter than you.” That is a deep, rich book. If you’re on vacation Road Games is just plain awesome, Wayne Gretzky’s Ghost is capturing, and The Home Team is a book he also wrote.
The Last Season is about a fictitious Canadian kid who makes it big and wins two Cups as a member of your Broad Street Bullies. It’s actually more about his rise to and then fall from the NHL. It’s Shamalanian, but it’s a long route up a dirt road to get there.
Ourtweet Breakdown of the Week
The other day the only Flyers writer with a Flyers tattoo Anthony San Fillipo, asked for recommendations for upcoming episodes of the Flyers new web series Flight Plan. For those of you that have jobs, you missed out on some retro-awesome FGSB coffee-fueled fun. Here are, looking back, our Top 10 suggestions (TOP TEN!):
10. Matt Reading Rainbow
9. Flyers Wipeout
8. Nick Cage shows Flyers how to steal Declaration of Independence
7. Two words: Flyers. Karaoke.
6. Jake Voracek and Cloode Giroux recreate pot throwing scene from ghost. Grossmannnnn signs Unchained Melody.
5. Flyers surprise game against Team Comcast '99s
4. Take Flyers to random office. See who can sit in cubicle the longest.
3. Flyers play the Eagles in football, Phillies in baseball, and Royce White in basketball all in the same day #Champadelphia
2. Flyers Fantasy Football Draft coverage, hosted by Steve Coates
…….
1. Flyers SVU