January 17, 2017
Once you play as a professional athlete or coach in the city of Philadelphia, it is much like checking into the legendary Hotel California – you can check out, but you can never leave.
If you want some proof, just open your eyes ... and especially your ears and check out the local reaction to the loss suffered by the Kansas City Chiefs. The Chiefs would never be much of a story here – except that former Eagles coach Andy Reid is the head coach.
For fans of the Eagles, it was just too delicious to watch Reid battle with time management. It was the same issue Reid dealt with during his time in Philadelphia – and even last year when the Chiefs played the Patriots.
All the while, fans of the Eagles finally could laugh instead of cry at the problems – and they could not take their eyes off the TV screen.
It’s the same reason fans of the Phillies continue to watch Jayson Werth with the Nationals or Cole Hamels with Texas. Mind you, one of those players you might root for mightily to lose while the other you might want to win.
It is a dynamic that goes back to the days of Rich Kotite, the coach who left the Eagles a mess, but fans in New York were convinced the football fans in Philadelphia were all wrong about him – and then he destroyed the Jets.
The hypersensitivity to players and coaches who played here and then left is just another example of why Philadelphia stands apart from other sports cities across the country.
It just matters more in Philadelphia.
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While the nation’s top-ranked Villanova basketball team is putting forth a tremendous defense of its national championship, the other college team in the state sitting atop the nation’s rankings is a more remarkable story.
That story is unfolding at Penn State, where Happy Valley has been turned into Hockey Valley. Penn State is now ranked No. 1 in the nation – above the powers from Minnesota, Michigan and Boston.
In a matter of only five years, Penn State has put together a team competing faceoff to faceoff with the best of the NCAA and packing the spectacular house of hockey on campus.
The success of that program is why the dope who is typing these words continues to implore Villanova, Penn or Temple to develop a Div. 1 program. There is still space left on the lower level floors as UNLV is about to enter the college hockey universe, while Arizona State has just come onboard.
Local hockey fans can get an up-close look at Penn State next Saturday (Jan 28) at the Wells Fargo center when the Nittany Lions play Princeton. It will be a party for Penn State fans and all hockey fans can get a look at some top-quality hockey. For fans of the Flyers, it will be interesting to look at Penn State's Denis Smirnov and Nikita Pavlychev, each of whom played with fellow Russian Ivan Provorov with the Wilkes-Barre Under 16 team.
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In the meantime, the local NHL team in orange and black has come apart AT the seams. The Flyers are in the middle of an absurd five-day mandated “bye week,” and their season hit a low spot when they last played in Washington on Sunday where the team was taken apart by the Capitals, 5-0.
The Flyers are in real danger of falling out of the wild-card slot, and that will almost certainly be the result if captain Claude Giroux does not improve his game, especially five-on-five. Giroux is a guy the Flyers still need to lean on when things get tough – and a guy coach Dave Hakstol needs to count on to stabilize a situation.
The Flyers will now be in a wrestling match with several teams to earn a spot in the playoffs, a situation that most fans expected at the start of the season. The Flyers could certainly use a steady forward to join the top six, but it seems more and more unlikely general manager Ron Hextall will be willing to swap one of his top prospects to get that player – and also do some manipulating to stay under the salary cap.
Certainly, the Flyers need better goaltending and a roster upgrade. However, there has to be some sense of urgency in getting a message through to the locker room that the team can not shut down when the going gets tough late in games.
Losing is one thing, and you can certainly appreciate a larger picture in terms of the organization. However, losing the way the Flyers did on Sunday afternoon in Washington is a scenario that should never be accepted with a shrug that things will get better in the future.
Things have to get better than that right away.
