The Philly Sports Blog

I was offered free tickets to the Hershey Bears hockey game on Saturday night, and oh boy am I glad that I took them. On Saturday night, in the Giant Center in Hershey, I saw a wonderfully played game by the Washington Capitals AHL team, the Hershey Bears, and they played a wonderful game! I go to my in-laws house to pick up my kids after, and am notified by my father-in-law that the Flyers lost 8-2. 8-2! After I my wife and I get home and put the kids to bed, I rush to my computer to look at the Box Score of the game. I didn’t look pretty.

Thankfully, or maybe unthankfully in this case, my parents have Comcast with On Demand, and I was able to relax at their house and scan through the game Sunday afternoon. I did watch the 1^st period and they looked great! Besides a few bad bounces, they played a strong first period. After that, I watched for about 15 minutes and then decided to scan through the rest of the game.

Pathetic!

That’s all that came to my mind while watching the rest of the game. How could a team that played so well against the #2 team in the East two days earlier and then look so good in the first period of this game just deflate in the second and third? Is it lack of leadership from the Captain and Alternate Captains? Are the Veterans not stepping up like they should? Interim GM Holmgren has a lot on his plate. He’s already made some calls and has his finger on the trigger for a trade or two, but he’s going to wait, and wisely I might add, to see if this team will pick itself up or if not, he will need to make trades.

I’ll stock pile some trade rumors, who doesn’t love reading those, and post some over the next few days. Hopefully tonight the Flyers will play a bang up game against the banged up Blackhawks and we can deflect the trade talk for a few more games.

# posted by Bill Lutz @ 8:57 AM