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The Phillies Get the Big TV, the Eagles Get the Tablet, and the Flyers Get Whatever the Third Screen is
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The Flyers are getting a bit of the Union treatment with posts like these all over social media:
What about the hockey team? It’s the season opener tonight! Rick Tocchet’s debut! Trevor Zegras in a real game! It’s the Fly Guys vs. the defending champion Florida Panthers, who are on the second night of a home/home back-to-back after beating the Blackhawks 3-2 on Wednesday night.
The proper setup here has to be Phillies on the big TV at 6:08 p.m., and they stay there. Then it’s Flyers on the tablet at 7 p.m. When the Eagles begin, the Flyers shift to the laptop or the cellphone or whatever screen #3 is in your house. Then the Eagles go on screen #2 and eventually take over the big TV when the Phillies are done.
That’s the casual four for four fan approach. Of course, you adjust based on your preference. Maybe you hate baseball and you bleed orange and black, so the Flyers get the big screen. To each their own.
But the bottom line is that the Flyers are out of the conversation for now. Nobody is really thinking about this team for obvious reasons, because they haven’t been to the postseason in five years and they’re in the middle of a full rebuild. We’re keeping them on the periphery with cautious optimism, until they give us a reason to demand more of our attention. That’s pretty much it. Nobody can be surprised at their omission from tweets like the ones above. If they continue this rebuild and begin to show some promise, they find themselves back in the Philadelphia sporting conversation in the same way the Sixers did upon their exit from the Process era. Even the Phillies were out of favor until Bryce Harper signed, putting an end to the dark ages of Pete Mackanin, Gabe Kapler, and the late Ryne Sandberg (RIP).
This is all cyclical, and while the Flyers will never be as popular as the Eagles, they’ll get their due consideration once they’ve earned it on the ice.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com