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Photo: HughE Dillon, who has more from this night here

Intrepid hockey scriptual Sam Donnellon penned a nice piece in Saturday’s SportsWeek – the Daily News-looking paper that is actually an edition of the Sunday Inquirer to help circulation numbers – about Scott Hartnell and his struggles during his time here in Philadelphia.

As many of you know, the Scott Hartnell wife-Jeff Carter rumors were not true, but they took their toll on Scott since they coincided with what sounded like a messy divorce. His butting heads with Peter Laviolette (in 2010) and some fans (in a bar earlier this season) didn’t help things. 

He hit the bar near his Old City crib for a few pops with some teammates. A couple of men, 20-somethings, eyed him up, stored up a sufficient quantity of liquid bravery, and started in on him. "Giving it to me pretty good," he says. "Stuff like, 'We wish we could trade you for a bag of pucks.' Something stupid, right? So I just said, 'Don't come to Broad Street this summer if we win.' I called them out a little maybe, too. And then I left.

"So we'll see what happens." 

 


… 

By the start of the 2009 season, life was not good. Rumors of Renneke's trysts, including one with Flyer Jeff Carter, hit the Internet, and it worked like kryptonite on the player and his team. Hartnell's goal total was still in single digits in December when he and Carter were forced to publicly deny the rumor. It was first reported in a blog post by a Temple University senior, who claimed he had gotten it from a Flyers employee. Hartnell did admit then that he was dealing with some "personal issues." Later, he confirmed that they were about his marriage.

"It was pretty tough," he says now. "Somebody you love absolutely turns the switch and calls you every bad name under the sun. Calls your family things, too. And making the money I do, I lost a lot of money in the mix as well. People can blame me, whatever. But it was a really tough year."

 

Good read from Donnellon right here.