Flyers: Back To The Drawing Board?

So last week I was talking to my friend Kurt on the phone as I had just begun checking out my usual online haunts. My browser's home page is Yahoo.com, and it was there I saw a headline. "The Flyers traded Jeff Carter," I said to Kurt rather nonchalantly. I was sort of expecting it. Carter has scored a lot of goals but isn't quite as strong defensively as he could or should be, and seems to disappear at times, particularly in the playoffs. With the Flyers needing to clear salary in order to sign goalie Ilya Bryzgalov, having acquired his rights in a trade in order to have exclusive negotiating rights before free agency (which begins at noon today), Carter was the most obvious candidate. His salary is high but he's got enough talent that teams would want him, and Columbus was the team that ended up getting him.

Kurt and I kept talking, and I moved on from the Yahoo article, and clicked on Philly.com. There, I saw something that made me yell into the phone.

"OH MY GOD!"
"What is it?"
"THEY TRADED MIKE RICHARDS TOO!!!"

MixBlog 1-23-11

Lately I have really been kind of in a rut, even more than usual. The weather is not helping. I hate the cold to begin with, but this winter has been borderline ridiculous. My house is drafty, which makes it worse. I've always thought I'd never really consider moving away from Philadelphia but right now I'd love to just ditch this place and move somewhere warm. I don't know how I could possibly make that happen, with my finances being what they are. Tonight's forecast is for the coldest overnight low yet...

  

...and Wednesday may bring us more snow (or possibly rain). But hey, check out the bottom of that screen cap -- at least people with migraines will feel better today.

Just finished watching the end of the Flyers game. In their first meeting since last year's Stanley Cup finals the Flyers beat the Chicago Blackhawks 4-1. They are so much more consistent this year (despite a loss yesterday to New Jersey, a team that's having the same type of disastrous year that the Flyers did in 2006-07). The win puts the Flyers' record at 32-12-5, and their 69 points leads the entire league. That, of course, means little when it comes to the postseason, but the consistency combined with their depth is a very good sign. Hiring Peter Laviolette as coach was a genius move on the part of GM Paul Holmgren.

Meanwhile, in the strange recesses of my mind, I got to thinking about Taylor Swift earlier. Really.

Post-Thanksgiving coach curse hits Flyers' Stevens

An interesting trend has developed in recent years involving the Flyers' annual day-after-Thanksgiving matinee home games: one of the teams playing the game has fired their head coach for 4 years in a row.

In 2006 the Columbus Blue Jackets fired coach Gerard Gallant and eventually replaced him with former Flyers coach Ken Hitchcock, who made his Columbus debut at the Wachovia Center the day after Thanksgiving. The next year the Washington Capitals fired their head coach, Glen Hanlon, and Bruce Boudreau took over -- against the Flyers, the day after Thanksgiving.

Slightly going against the tide, last year the Carolina Hurricanes faced the Flyers in the Black Friday afternoon game, but they actually waited until December to fire coach Peter Laviolette.

This year's post-Thanksgiving game featured the Flyers and Buffalo Sabres, but in a twist, it wasn't the Sabres firing their coach. Instead, it was the Flyers, who fired John Stevens today -- and in another twist, Laviolette has taken his place.

Stevens seemed to be a promising choice at first. He coached the AHL Phantoms to a championship in 2004-05, and a number of players from that team have been Flyers since then. However, despite one strong run to the Eastern Conference finals, the team has been maddeningly inconsistent, as I mentioned last night. This year, with the additions of Chris Pronger and Ray Emery to a team that already had players like Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, expectations for a Stanley Cup run were very high. But the hot and cold streaks have kept this team from living up to their hype.

Last night, after their dismal 3-0 loss to Vancouver, I wrote the following about the Flyers' recent stretch: "This is the type of thing that should get a coach fired. The sooner it happens, the better off the Flyers will be." It should be noted that another highly-touted team, Pittsburgh, struggled mightily for a good part of last year. The Penguins then made a coaching change and promptly won the Stanley Cup. And Laviolette won a Cup with Carolina in 2005-06. So, less than 24 hours after I wrote that, the Flyers are instantly better off. I wish I had such power over other matters.