will we ever win?

Anyone notice the Flyers have started?

There was a Philadelphia hate cheesesteak made in the last 4 days. The meat of course was Dallass with the Rangers making up the 2 halves of the Amoroso roll. (TO was the cheese.) On Saturday night vs. the Rangers the Flyers deserved to win but ended up losing in a record long OT shootout. The shootout started to get boring real quick by the way. During regulation strong doses of luck enabled the Rangers to score 4 goals - one goal courtesy of a weird carom off the boards on a dump in and another nicked off a Flyers glove in front on a shot that was going way wide.

Tonight the Rangers lacked lucky bounces and lost 4-2, like they should have lost on Saturday. The Rangers also lacked effort. In the third period down by 2 goals they let the Flyers skate out of the zone with relative ease and they barely fought for the puck on the boards. The Rangers are picked by many to get to the Finals, but from watching the last 2 games they are a soft team. I guess that style of play filters down to the team from their new captain, one of the softest players in the NHL. Jagr didn't do much in either game and he doesn't even have Therienable to fear any more. The next time he checks someone will be his first time.

Flyers that were unexpectedly impressive in the 2 games were Sanderson, Nedved, Gauthier, and Hatcher. Yeah, that's right, Nedved. I don't believe it either. He even crushed someone tonight with the best hit of the game. Flyers that were expectedly impressive were Forsberg, Gagne, Richards, and Niittymaki. Flyers that need to get better are Meyer and Pitkanen. Even though Pitkanen had 3 assists on Saturday his defensive play was pretty bad and to me it looks like he is playing that hesitant, sheepish style again. Esche sucked and he didn't even play. Everyone else was "eh".

It's really hard to predict what the Flyers will do this year. There's a bunch of new, unknown players, a bunch of players like Richards, Umberger, and Carter that you hope will progress as much as they did last year, there's players like Hatcher that you don't know whether or not he will make the promised adjustments that need to be made, and then there's key players like Forsberg and Niittymaki that need to stay healthy for the majority of the season. I don't have Stanley Cup hopes like I did last year but the Flyers should be in the upper tier of the conference. And then again everyone figures the year that a Philadelphia team finally wins a championship will be a year that no one expects them to, so why not this one?