October 25th Column

We start this week by looking at the biggest headline over the past 5 minutes: The firing of Ken Hitchcock and resignation (i.e. nicely firing) Bobby Clarke.

In the end, Clarke probably would've been fired long ago had he not had the name Bobby Clarke and been the GM in Philadelphia. The Flyers have been so disappointing over the 12-year span Clarke and the three-and-change that Hitch has run the show. They are the Ottawa Senators, with more attention on them in the states and slightly less offensive talent. The Flyers need to change their philosophy, and Paul Holmgren is not the answer for it. Seriously, the guy who put Keith Tkachuk on the U.S. Olympic Team is ready to GM a New NHL era franchise? (And yes, you will get as many Tkachuk fat jokes as you do with Wyshynski. Great minds think alike. And he's also very fat.)

The Ottawa Senators had their first Pizza Pizza game of the 06-07 season last night, beating the Devils 8-1. Pizza Pizza, a Canadian based (Guess what?) pizza chain, offers a free slice to every game the Senators score six or more in a home victory. Frankly, at that point, the Senators would be happy with a victory.

The non-story so far of the NHL season has been attendance. Remember, for every time LA and Colorado miss a sellout by a few hundred seats, or every friends and family only game (Reminder: Less than 10,000) in Chicago or St. Louis, there's a Tampa Bay, who's oversold the St. Pete Times Forum 56 games in a row, and a Columbus or Nashville, who both get over 16,000 a game. Besides, St. Louis has better things to worry about than their struggling hockey team.

An interesting story to follow over the next couple months will be the NHL All-Star voting. For those of you who forgot or never cared in the first place, the first NHL All-Star Exhibition will be January 24 in Dallas. It'll be interesting to me to see who gets in the lineup, whether people go towards the old guard of regulars (Brodeur, Jagr, Forsberg in the East, Sakic, Modano and Hasek in the West) or the new talent (i.e. the chance to see Crosby, Ovechkin and Malkin, on the same line, as well as Phaneuf on D and Lundqvist in goal) that has plunged into the NHL.

Great job by VERSUS on Tuesday night during the 9-1 victory by the Sabres over the Flyers: 10 Goals, and only one (Jiri Novotny's third period tally with the game well out of reach) was talked over by an analyst or reporter's interview.

How impressive has Anze Kopitar been in Los Angeles? For every overrated rookie, there's one of him just being impressive.

Finally, let's point out the absurdity of the Rangers selling t-shirts celebrating Brendan Shanahan's 600th goal. When two were scored with the Rangers.

-SFM-