The NHL has lost its evil empire. The Philadelphia Flyers are dead. There’s still a hockey team that wears Creamsicle uniforms and plays in the City of Brotherly Love, but they’re not the Flyers; our grandfathers’ Broad Street Bullies, our Bullies.
Every
one who doesn’t live in cheesesteak country hates the Flyers, except LA Kings fans who view them as a fantastic trading partner and glorified farm team.
Sport is entertainment. Entertainment is supposed to be fun. Nothing is more entertaining and fun than hating the villain. The Flyers were the greatest villains in sports. They used to beat you on the scoreboard most of the time and physically all the time. Now they barely win and aren’t very physical. The Flyers are now meh, with tickets at $150 meh doesn’t cut it; the NHL needs the bullies back.
Since their inception in 1967, the Flyers have historically made hockey more about violence and less about skill. They were the reason for the joke, I went to fight and a hockey game broke out.
In the 70’s, they battered their way to two Stanley Cups until Scotty Bowman‘s Montreal Canadians saved the soul of the hockey universe. Larry Robinson beat Dave Schultz, Darth Vader himself, and the Evil Empire has never been the same.
But they think they are. Flyers fans and their front office, until this summer, lived in the 1970’s. The game passed them by. NHL rules were changed. Everyone else in hockey knew you couldn’t brawl your way to the Stanley Cup but it was entertaining watching the Flyers try. The bully was walking around with his zipper down.
The Flyers turned hockey into pro wrestling. The Flyers were the delusional heel wrestler. Ask Vince McMahon, a great villain is everything. Like any good wrestling match the good guy may takes a beating but he always wins in the end. The Flyers drew heat as heels for the rest of the league of baby faces.
Flyers fans were happy enjoying all of the mayhem, until late spring when the fighting was over but there was still hockey to be played by teams with skill. They Flyers were so stuck in the grit, they actually acquired Craig Berube at a trade deadline thinking he would help them, do what? Break up a fight at the Championship parade that never happened.
The Flyers actually hired Berube to be their head coach. Every non-Flyers fan breathed a sigh of relief when that happened because they were a good team at the time, meaning they had skill. They also had a great coach in Peter Laviolette. All Lavy did was win on Long Island with Mike Milbury as his GM, bring offense and a division title to Nashville and win a Stanley Cup in North Carolina of all places. But Lavy didn’t know hockey. Or Flyers hockey. Berube did. Berube knew how to coach Rinaldo, Sestito and Shelly but not Lecavalier.
The Flyers ran the best player in franchise history, a man they gave the Denver, sorry Quebec, a dynasty for, Eric Lindros out of town because he wasn’t tough enough. Tough meaning he wouldn’t play through post-concussion syndrome. GM Bobby Clarke and Lindros fights in the press were like Drita and Carla fights on Mob Wives only funnier and more immature.
Now, the Flyers have turned down the violence, and the entertainment. The Flyers still may hurt you but it will be passive aggressive not just aggressive. Slew foots don’t make highlight reels, forearm shivers do. Claude Giroux will accidently trip you into the boards at the blue line (Chris Kunitz). They fill fall on top of you as you’re going down (Connor McDavid). They won’t elbow in the temple in front of God and country after the whistle at center ice. They’ll still rabbit punch you in the back of the head in a scrum but they won’t sucker punch you in pregame warm ups.
All the drama is now gone. They Flyers barely fight. Now the Flyers have a coach who went to college. They now draft guys with hands not of stone. The Flyers used to draft only guys who brought so much terror and violence to the rink you thought the Flyers had monkey bars Al Qaeda style in the dressing rooms to train them. Flyer defensemen used to resemble large orange traffic cones now they have a guy that moves so well, some fans don’t believe it so they call him the Ghost.
Who would have thought that GM former Flyer goalie Ron Hextall would be the progressive one. Hextall was one of the many Flyer goalies since Bernie Parent who could win any goalie fight but never a big game. Conventional Philly thought was the Flyers would win the Cup if not for their generational run of lousy goaltending. Sure goaltending was always a problem but so was taking too many penalties. The Flyers always played exciting games because one team was always on the power play; usually the Flyers because the retaliator gets caught. When the Flyers were penalized they’d score. The Flyers always scored shorthanded because they had so much practice being shorthanded.
Nothing brought more emotion to an arena than the Flyers scoring shorthanded. It was the hero getting hit with a folding chair when the ref wasn’t looking. 
The problem with the new look Flyers is they’re not scoring or winning or at least not winning enough to hate them; unless you’re from the Patrick Division where old hatreds run deep. Rivals want their rivals to be good, then beat them. NHL fans want the Flyers good enough to lose in dramatic fashion. Like the 2010 Stanley Cup Finals. The Flyers game crew were so angry the never turned their goal light on to let Chicago celebrate the Cup wining goal.
So, please Flyers, go back to your old bully ways because the new way isn’t working and it’s not fun beating you anymore.
Who am I kidding, it is still fun. I’m an old Patrick Division rival.
All file photos by Lewis.Bleiman@prohockeynews.com
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