“10 Things I Hate About Roman”


Okay, many of the 610 WIP people have been going to bat for the Flyers net minder all season long when the Flyers fans wanted his head his season. Philly isn’t exactly nice to goalies. You can’t blame them recent goalies such as Dominic Roussel and Tommy Soderstrom aren’t good enough to clean my toilet let alone win a cup for a team. Fans are like some one coming out of one bad relationship after another they keep looking for flaws in the current relationship. The relationship of the fans and CHECKO hasn’t been any thing to rival my long lasting friendship with my best friend in the world Jay.

Okay I am not going to say the goalie is the reason they Flyers got no where again this year, but it’s the reason that they won’t go any farther than they did. Of course their old legs, and horrible special teams would have doomed them anyway, but people should also realize that we never solved our goalie problems despite what the front office and the biased reports of the Flyers Comcast team might tell you.

1. I am sick of people comparing him to Hasek. Granted they are from the same part of the world, and they flip and flop a lot. However the recently retried Hasek had a better competitive edge, and his body was more flexible. He is lateral movements were incredible. He kept Buffalo alive for a few rounds each year despite their awful offense. His nickname is the Dominator and Cechmanek’s nickname is CHOKEMANEK.

2. People give him too much credit for his success this season. He has picked up an impressive amount of shot outs his time here. He tore up the Flyers all time shutout list in a mere two years. However a good deal of that has to do with the good defensive system (it fell apart in the post season) that the Flyers had in place. They did win the Jenny’s Throphy but that was because of the system it was more than goaltending. If you look at many of Roman’s shutouts they are when he faced very few shots and very savable ones at that. Times when the system only allowed a few shots from the blue line. The one victory this series that he had a shotout he earned, they other the Flyers defense did.

3. He is clearly here just for the money. That’s why he came here not to win a Stanley Cup, but to make a few million dollars. He didn’t come into the league until he was 31 if he wanted the Stanley Cup he would have came over here the first couple of times teams tried to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. He hates living here more than Drew hates Bush.

4. He is inconstant he will make a the occasional eye-popping save, but he will let a goal in from the blueline even on occasion innocent dump ins.

5. He is easily rattled. You screen him he is done. You bump him he falls over and lays there like a wounded animal for a minute, even if he has the chance to get back to his skates he will lay flat on the ice.

6. He goes down way to quick a player comes over the blueline and he falls to his tummy. He gives them more net to shoot at. Sometimes the players will launch a shot off too quick and it will manage to hit him. Than Jim Jackson hollers and we all think he is the next Roy.

7. When he does go on a good run its mostly with bizarre looking slaves. It almost appears that he is letting himself get hit by a puck not saving the puck. Despite shutting teams out many times he never appears “UNBEATABLE” . It never gets to the point that the other teams think that he is shutting them down big time. People think its just luck, and sometime it is. They know once you get two goals past him he is done. He never rebounds from a bad goal. He also manages to let the puck in the net just at the wrong time to kill any momentum the Flyers had. Usually ones where people can’t imagine how someone could score from that distance or angle. Do you think anyone in the NHL actually fears him? Please he is a laughing stock, ask any outside fan visit other teams newsgroups. It is not just a philly negative thing.

8. Look at the replays of some of the goals he lets up. Sometimes its not lack of talent its lack of heart and total apathy. I think he might have A.D.D. or something, because his stance will be that of a goalie not facing a shot or in warm ups. The puck will go in and the most surprised person is usually Checko because he wasn’t either paying attention to the play, or wasn’t going to bother getting a good standing position until the players got farther into the zone. He plays better when he sees more shots, which is horrible.

9. Most the players on the team hate him. He doesn’t socialize with most of them.

10. He is another Hextall…a descent goalie at times. He can shutout the Ilsanders during the regular season so we can all see his great stats and not want to fault him for failure. But when push comes to shove and they need him to come up big he falls short. Sometimes after he comes up big he lets up a goal that shouldn’t have gone in erasing his previous effort. When it comes to Cup time he doesn’t make the saves he should. If you goalie doesn’t your done in this day in age that’s the bottom line. Who gives a damn if he shuts out Atlanta in December. Oh yeah and he is past his prime.

Note to Snider: Next time you wonder why you don’t make front pages of news papers anymore or why there are more empty seats in the FU center than disregarded pizza boxes at Dukes apartment look at every elimination game over the past 4 years.