“Melted Ice”

The Flyers got eliminated to the leafs tonight 4 games to 2 tonight. The same old problems that plagued the team last year made them bow out tonight. Horrible special teams and shaky goaltending. They again lost an inspired blowout of game to be eliminated. I didn’t even watch most of the game past the 2nd goal. If you scoll back in my blog you will read how I pointed out that they aren’t much of a better team than they were last year. Granted it was before they picked up some players, but most of them faded into nothing since.

The players wanted the fans to forget what happened last year when they won in an exciting 1st round they did for awhile. However, after tonight’s lopsided score round 1 of this year is the series that will be forgotten not last seasons round 1. Getting past the first round isn’t and improvement its expected with this huge salary.

The empty seats are likely to multiply and believe it or not there is a rumor of a ticket price hike for next season. My father and I are seriously considering discontinuing ours. It isn’t like we would have trouble getting tickets to a game since most of the games won’t sell out just like a number of them didn’t last year.

As the ice melts tomorrow, it will be the last ice many of the Flyers play on as Flyers. I can only hope that many of them won’t return. Id hope any of the older players they can dump they do. Although it will be hard to deal duds like Leclair, Amonte, and Rico. Maybe they can use some of the players to get a competent goalie.

The best thing to do at this point, and I wanted them to do it last year. Is basically stop fooling themselves, and dump all the old heads for young prospects and younger players. It might result in not making the playoffs for a few years but if they draft the right players it will pay off in a few years. This year was just waste of time and money if you think about it.

Its going to be difficult to dump some of the older players because no one will want most of the washed up players. I don’t expect anyone to retire really. Although maybe Leclair should. This might slow the process down but if the NHL gets a salary cap for 2004 they don’t have much choice but to dump some of these players. It would be easier to make a list of Flyers I would keep next year so here it is.

Gagne (young)
Williams (young)
Weinrich
Murray (quick and small price take)
Ragnerson (over the increaingly awful Johnson)
Esche (eh he is just a back up)
Chouirnard (prospect)
Lapointe ( good pick up)
Brasher (Affirmative Action)
Handzus (Quick and hasn't had his best season yet)



Everyone else is expendable I would think. Even JR, let him go win a cup somewhere. You could easily get something for him despite his decrease in skills. He is a good PR man for any team, and I would imagine we could get some high draft picks for him. Let every free agent walk and try to find young talent or throw away players. Treat the team as a expansion team so expectations will be low for years, but the talent pool will be growing.

Oh well I expect my annual flood of emails, phone calls and etc to either offer condolences or rub it in. There are still about 12 minutes left in the game so it should start any minute. They can give him Tony "washed up" Amonte too.