Normally you’d be excited for a Flyers and Penguins home-and-home at the end of February. The battle for the Keystone State, with a Tuesday game in Philadelphia and a Thursday game in Pittsburgh. Let’s get some jam in the building.

The issue this year is that both teams are terrible. The Flyers are 7th in the Metro with 57 points in 58 games and the Penguins are dead last with 55 points in 59 games. They have a -44 goal differential, which is better than only the Blackhawks and Sharks, who completely stink. The Yinzers have given up 214 goals, which is second-worst in the league.

So neither squad is lifting the Cup this year, but at least one has a plan, or at least one that’s clearly identifiable. That’s the Flyers, who canned Chuck Fletcher, hired Danny Briere, Keith Jones, and Dan Hilferty, accepted the rebuild, and embarked upon a “New Era of Orange.” They brought in Matvei Michkov, moved guys like Kevin Hayes and Cam Atkinson, and have a young team with some decent pieces. We can grumble about the goaltending, which was hampered by the Carter Hart situation, but the general consensus is that they’re moving in the right direction, albeit maybe slower than some had hoped. It’s the closest thing to a full tear down and rebuild that the Flyers have ever done, and something Ed Snider would have never accepted.

The Penguins, meantime, are somewhere between a rebuild and retool:

Let’s work off the second tweet. The Penguins were hoping to do what the Caps did, and retool around some vets. Yet they’re not winning games and saddled with these guys in their mid-to-late 30s on multi-year contracts and limiting no-trade clauses. Sidney Crosby is 37 years old and under contract for two more years after this one at $8.7 million per. Evgeni Malkin is 39 and has one more year at $6.1 million. Erik Karlsson is 34 and has two more years at $10 million. Kris Letang is 37 and has three more years at $6.1 million. These aren’t the worst contracts in the world, but add it all up and you’ve got four guys nearing the end and taking up valuable space. And while the Penguins aren’t saddled with a lot of buyout or dead money after this season, if you aren’t engaging in a fire sale, then you’re not really “rebuilding,” you’re retooling, and obviously it’s worked out for them the same way it worked out for Fletcher. Their veterans are still getting a lot of ice time, and the Pens haven’t exactly opened up much of an opportunity for the few young players they actually have. If it wasn’t for the Oilers, they’d be the oldest team in the league.


Difference is, one is a Stanley Cup contender and other is last in the Metro.

So you can argue about whether or not the Penguinos are in a “rebuild,” and point out that they’re largely in the same position as the Flyers. There’s no guarantee that a full teardown works better than a retool anyway. But Letang is still getting 23 minutes a night, Crosby 20 minutes and Malkin 18, so it feels a little bit like they’re clinging to nostalgia, at least from an outsider’s perspective. Maybe we’d feel the same way if these guys won us multiple Cups. In the meantime, at least we get to see young guys on the ice, and a glimpse of the hopefully-not-too-distant future.

Neither one of these games matters, not on Tuesday or Thursday. But as you’re watching the shared ineptitude, take solace in the fact that at least the Flyers seem to moving in some sort of an identifiable direction.