We Can Be Better, Philly
The Philadelphia Timonens win the Stanley Cup! Photo credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports
This post has the potential to make me look like an asshole, so let me just say this up front: It was awesome that Kimmo Timonen got to win a Cup. Any time a player who spends a life in the game, carries himself well, and overcomes scary (potentially life-threatening) injuries gets to go out on top is a great moment. Congratulations to Kimmo. Well deserved. I choke up during shit like that– watching someone’s dream come true.
Now, to be the contrarian.
I’m embarrassed for us. I’m embarrassed to be part of a fan base that celebrates mediocrity like this. A fan base that somehow, whether due to the heat of the moment or not, openly posits that the Flyers’ season was a success because a former solid, steady player got to go elsewhere and make himself a footnote in their dynasty. Embarrassed to be from a city where the collective mindset just accepts this sort of also-ran consolation prize. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for Kimmo. But I can’t take this shit. New year, same lukewarm story about a “local” guy doing his thing elsewhere. Hey, Bradley Cooper mentioned us in US! Did you hear Taylor Swift say she was from Reading on Saturday night?! Totes cool to see a Philly girl doing her thing on a national stage. She loves us so much. <3 Mike Trout– South Jersey, woot woot! We need to have higher standards. This is why New Yorkers, Bostonians, Chicagoans, San Franciscans, and Los Angelons (word?) laugh at us. Those cities have sports success. They have big, innovative business. They have celebrities (and presidents!). Meanwhile, we play the Kevin Bacon game of achievement, always two hops away from being in the movie ourselves. We celebrate this stuff like somehow it reflects positively on us, like we had something to do with it. Look at this– it’s gross:
NO NOT HASHTAG FLYERS. HASHTAG BLACKHAWKS!! THE BLACKHAWKS WON THE STANLEY CUP!!!! And are you kidding me, Dave, who covers the team in some capacity, with that #KimmoForever hashtag? Like, we being serious right now, bro?
Wait, what? Really? The playoff-less, rudder-less, more-of-the-same, stuck-in-neutral season can just be dismissed because yet another former Flyer had to get traded to win his Cup? Where are our standards? What happened to us?
Why, on Earth, would we want Kimmo to bring the Cup back to Philly? Bring it to Finland, Kimmo. Seriously. Go there. We don’t want it. Or maybe we do. Maybe thousands of people will line the beach to see it like they did for the lame duck former coach-turned-assistant, John Stevens.
Really? I hate to break it to everybody, but Kimmo Timonen is not Ray Bourque. Not even close, as evidenced by the fact that the guy or girl running the league’s Twitter account last night literally couldn’t even pick him out of a lineup of similarly-bearded hockey players:
But it’s cool– we’re a great fan base or something:
Yeah, the kind of fan base that is totally OK with this. You know what kind of fan base I want to be? The Blackhawks’ fan base. Or the Bruins’. Or even the Kings’. Those seem like better fan bases to be a part of it.
And then there’s the slobbering, pandering, embarrassing media (and other bloggers!), who’ve covered this the way they have because Kimmo was nice to them. Seriously, there’s covering the story… and then there’s getting some on your chin:
John Boruk is an idiot. They probably took 200 pictures with the Cup and he finds the one where Toews is looking to his right – perhaps at Kimmo, perhaps at one of the 50k other things going on in the building (maybe someone farted!) – and interprets it thusly. Great observation, John. You’re a valuable and respected voice in our city.
Flyers beat writer Dave Isaac did this to the promo section (whatever the F that means) of the Courier Post:
But all the fan Tweets and media favoritism in the world doesn’t compare to Philly’s former-Flyer and Bobby Ryan beat writer, Sam Carchidi, who was downright pornographic in his breathless, slurping coverage of Timonen. Look. At. This:
After his team’s electric 2-0 title-clinching win over Tampa Bay on Monday night, Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews could have handed the Stanley Cup to one of the many of his long-time teammates. Instead, in a moment that oozed of class, he gave the famous trophy to a player who had played for Chicago for all of four months.
A 40-year-old player who had waited his whole life for this moment.
Kimmo Timonen, the ex-Flyer whom Chicago acquired just before the trade deadline, raised the Cup triumphantly and skated around the ice while the red-clad Blackhawk fans let out a roar that lived up to the United Center’s nickname: Madhouse on Madison.
For fuck’s sake.
We can do so much better, Philly. Feel happy for Timonen. It was a cool moment. But let’s stop acting like an inferior class. I seriously can’t take this anymore. I’ve got to blog about this shit every day. It’s taking its toll. I can’t take our acceptance. I can’t. It’s pathetic. Demand excellence, not mediocrity. Don’t settle for small wins like this. It’s embarrassing. I’m embarrassed today. And you should be, too.
