Monday, October 23, 2006
Flyers, Eagles and Phillies Roundup
What a weekend...or more specifically, what a Sunday! Sunday starts off like any other day, but starting as early as 8am, there was chatter on the internet that the Flyers did the unthinkable. Bobby Clarke resigns and Ken Hitchcock is fired. Shocking, exciting and mind numbing all at the same time. Rumors have circulated since Snyder's tirade last week that Clarke and Hitchcock's jobs were in trouble, but most people thought it was just smoke, and no real fuel to it. Little did we all know that Clarke has been thinking about resigning for almost TWO WEEKS! If you look back at the past few months, you could tell Clarke wasn't full hearted into everything.
Unfortunately for Hitchcock, he was tied to Clarke and when he stepped down, Hitchcock was gone too. Hitchcock is not a bad coach...far from it. If you look at his all time record, 408-249-100 in the regular season and 66-51 in the playoffs, you can see he can coach and bring in the wins, but it's obvious that he lost this team, and with Clarke gone, there wasn't anyone to fight for him.
What's happening now? With Holmgren in as Interim GM and Stevens the new Head Coach, don't expect to many changes. Steven's will keep Hitch's systems, but the big difference being the players seem to respect him more, so hopefully he can motivate them and get them to play at an NHL level where Hitch couldn't. As for Holmgren, it will be interesting to see what he does between now and the end of the season.
Will Holmgren and Steven's be back next year? Snyder will look into that at the end of next year. There are two that are rumored to be the front runners already, one is Holmgren, and the other is King's Assistant GM and form Flyer Goalie Ron Hextall. We'll see after this season is over. As for Steven's, it depends on this team. If he can get this team playing at the level they should, he deserves to be back. But we'll have to wait and see.
Now onto the Eagles...
Can these guys please show up for the first half just once?! And if they do, please stay around for the entire 2nd half?! This team should easily be 7-0, but with their three loses, they decided not to show up in the 4th quarter, and the last two games, the didn't show up in the first half, came out in the second half to take over the game to fall asleep in the end of the fourth.
Also, the offence couldn't hang onto the ball. Three times McNabb was intercepted and two of those were returned for touchdowns. Take those two interceptions away, Eagles win at least 21 - 6. McNabb will bounce back from this, but the Eagles young receivers need to learn to protect the ball. Defenders in the NFL not only go for the tackle, but the ball at the same time. Need to step it up guys!
Andy Reid had a team meeting this morning to discuss this and other issues. Let's hope the show up next week...for the whole game.
A bit of Phillies news...
In a shock to me, the Phillies signed Jamie Moyer to a two year contract. I couldn't be more excited. I really thought that Jamie would either retire or leave to go back to
