PICTURED: The night of the 2009-10 Flyers' "Can't Lose" game of the Stanley Cup Finals against the Blackhawks. They lost.
You’ve probably noticed by now that the Phillies season has ended.
“PROMISES WERE MADE,” you’re explaining as Citizens Bank Park security drags you off the premises.
But I’ve put that behind me. With the Flyers home opener tonight, we have the perfect distraction: further delusion.Tonight, the Flyers come home for the first time in 2011, and if the Philly sportscape is any indication, they will have a ton of build-up, hit the peak of impossible momentum, create unbridled confidence, and then shatter our worlds one disapponting moment at a time.
Or they could be like the Eagles and use up all the disappointment in the first few games. It’s a far less time-consuming form of misery.
Isn’t it great how in Philadelphia, we don’t appreciate the fact that we have four professional sports franchises and we feel entitled enough to compare them to/play them against each other? Like terrible parents, comparing their kids?
Ha, ha! The majesty of sports fandom!
I guess you’ve probably been following the Flyers’ offseason movement. If you missed it, you should really check it out, it is positively greasy with intrigue. There’s a sexy island and franchise players getting their feelings hurt and then Twitter basically explodes. What happened was you looked away from the internet for a second, and in the time it took you to look back, the Flyers switched out their team for a different one. Its like having a bunch of new roommates move into your place without knowing who they are or that you were even getting a shitload of roommates.
The point is, that’ll be a bunch of strangers out there at the home opener, and it’ll be a slightly more familiar team that takes on Mike Richards and the Kings on the 15th. With Richie coming to town, we should finally reflect on all those feelings we have about his sudden ejection from Philadelphia. There are plenty of theories as to why he was shipped out with Jeff Carter, but we’re going to focus on the juiciest, most entertaining one, that in all likelihood lacks actual truthfulness.
If you thought that Chris Pronger being awarded Captain was the conclusion of a sinister Shakespearean plot, then you weren’t crazy this time. Pronger, according to some rumor, persuaded Flyers management somehow to trade Richards and Carter because so great was his jealousy over the captain’s spot I guess. Also, there was some kind of “dry island,” a metaphorical place where no one drinks alcohol, that shockingly nobody wanted to be a part of.
Any one or possibly all of these things brought Brayden Schenn, Wayne Simmonds, Ilya Bryzgalov, Jakub Voracek, and for some reason Jaramir Jagr to Philadelphia.
Its a new heroes’ gallery, but they made the mistake of performing somewhat admirably in the preseason, so naturally our expectations couldn’t be higher. Better latch on now, before it hurts too much to breathe.
