Orange And Black And Blue

(Taking a break from politics for a minute – it just gets to be too much at times…)

At this moment, the Philadelphia Flyers have the fewest points of any team in the National Hockey League (and I should point out that there are so many teams in the NHL that this is quite a feat).

In seven games, the team has one win.

One.

This could be a very long year. And it’s not like there was no warning sign that this could happen also.

Now I will grant you that the retirement of Keith Primeau is a huge loss. However, no one put a gun to the head of Flyers GM Bob Clarke and told him to trade Michal Handzus, the team’s insurance at center, for another big, slow forward (Kyle Calder, this year’s Chris Gratton, for anyone out there who can remember back that far).

(By the way, the team Handzus was traded to was the Chicago Blackhawks, and they are currently in first place in their division.)

Also (as Philadelphia Inquirer hockey writer Tim Pannaccio noted after the end of last season) the Flyers could have signed two free agent players who would have helped them immeasurably: defenseman Ruslan Salei and forward Mike Grier. Last spring, the Flyers had just finished watching Grier and his former team, the Buffalo Sabres, dismantle them, so they knew he was a good player. Also, Salei played on the Anaheim team that made it to the Stanley Cup Finals three years ago (hell, they could have had Janne Niinimaa again for a bag of pucks and a skate sharpener – that would have given them at least SOME more mobility on defense, where they currently have just about none).

But instead, Clarke signed a bunch of spare parts for other teams including defenseman Nolan Baumgartner, who I guess was supposed to add mobility and experience. However, he will provide neither now, since Clarke released him from the team this week and demoted forwards Petr Nedved and Niko Dimitrakos to the Phantoms, the Flyers minor league affiliate, in the same move.

There are many questions I have about this team, such as wondering why it has taken last spring’s playoff beating and this year’s awful start, highlighted by the recent 9-1 train wreck at the hands of Buffalo again, to emphasize once more the need for this team to improve its defensive mobility and second-and-third-line scoring. I also don’t understand why they continue to rely on Peter Forsberg the way they do when he clearly is on the down slope in his career (though, when healthy, Forsberg is still one of the finest players in the world); you can write off a minimum of 10 games a year that he’ll miss due to injury, partly because he will be continually fouled by players on other teams in a sport that allows this barbaric behavior with virtual impunity (and by the way, he's out again with a wrist sprain).

Also, if you have an opportunity (not sure why you’d want to, I admit), take a look at the Flyers team roster. Though they recently promoted young forward Stefan Ruzicka from Slovakia, this is a team which perennially does an awful job of drafting and developing players from that area of the world as well as Russia and the Czech Republic. The one notable exception was defenseman Dmitri Tertyshny in the ‘90s (his loss due to a horrific boating accident was tragic of course for his family and friends, but for the team, he brought exactly the skill set that they needed and really haven’t replaced since – the Flyers have also endured monumental bad luck in their history, which I realize is no one’s fault).

Another notable exception is Ruslan Fedotenko, who they traded to Tampa Bay for Joni Pitkanen (and when will HE ever put it together, by the way?).

I’m also starting to wonder if Ken Hitchcock is the right coach for this team. As great as he is, Hitchcock is the type of guy you bring in when you have a team that’s really ready to take off and compete for the Stanley Cup (and once again, that phrase and the words “Philadelphia Flyers” should not be used in the same sentence for the foreseeable future). I just don’t know where you go with this bunch right now.

At a minimum, one of the goalies has to go, since that’s the only position of strength. However, it doesn’t make sense to rush into anything, especially since it looks like the team isn’t going anywhere as it is.

To be fair, I should point out that I don’t see them finishing last; the New York Islanders are really going to have to show me something to make me think they won’t be there instead (though that’s possible). However, the Flyers will be in the same leaky boat with them.

And if it isn’t time to clean house now, it never will be. This organization still doesn’t understand the fact that the NHL is an international league at this point and the teams should be composed accordingly (to say nothing of Clarke and company’s alleged ability to scout, draft and develop talent, though they get lucky every now and then as they did with Jeff Carter and Mike Richards). Sure, the team has some Swedish (Forsberg) and Finnish (Sami Kapanen) players, but in terms of representation versus Canadian and U.S. players, they’re statistical tokens.

It’s going to be a long, hard slog to catch up to the rest of the league, but that’s what they’re faced with. And if this organization truly respected its fans, it would be honest with them and admit that, and then take all necessary steps to put things right.

Update 10/22: Clarke, yes; Hitchcock, no.

And gee, Bob, I'm sorry you were burned out, but how many bad trades and/or drafts are you responsible for because you apparently listened to other people?

Paul Holmgren and John Stevens represent the status quo, by the way. This organization is terminally inbred, and it needs a total transfusion - starting with a new owner also (forget about the stories of the Sixers up for sale...concentrate on these guys instead).