On the Flyers

Scott Burnside has a pretty good piece on the Flyers, and their...enthusiasm...for hitting people in the head.

The NHL season is not yet a month old, and three times the Flyers have had to answer for how one of their own has gone AWOL and committed an indefensible act against another team's player.

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Rest assured: If a Flyer, let's say, Daniel Briere, had been on the other end of any one of these three assaults, the team would be screaming blue murder.

Good point Scotty. Can you imagine the shrieks that would be coming from Paul Holmgren's office if Briere had been hit like that?

The bigger issue for me is one of respect -- as Marc Savard astutely points out. Every time the Flyers lay a reckless hit on another NHL'er, a hit that was bad enough to cause a Stage 3 concussion, a hit that causes people to lose their memory, or pass out for nearly a minute, they are disrespecting the game, and their comrades who play it with them. While Jones' hit might not have been as bad as Boulerice or Downie, it came from a team with a history of this type of behavior, and a GM who turns a blind eye. And thats just disrespectful.