Posts for flyers

The Top 25 Philly Athletes, Ranked In Definitive, Undebatable Order

Kevin Kinkead - July 23, 2018

Photo Credit: Greg Cooper, Derek Hamilton, Steven Bisig, Steve Mitchell - USA Today Sports

The rules are this: there are no rules.

Well, the only real rule is that you have to currently be playing for a Philly team, so Millville’s Mike Trout and Delran’s Carli Lloyd are ineligible for the list. Same with Eddie Alvarez, since he’s one of ours and trains in the area but doesn’t play for a Philly team. Also, no rookies or people that just signed, so James Van Riemsdyk or Landry Shamet aren’t in the mix.

That’s pretty much it.

As far as how we came up with the list, I basically just made it myself, then we argued about it in Slack chat for a few days. I leaned on Bob and Anthony and Russ for Phillies and Flyers placement, since they handle most of our baseball and hockey stuff for the site. Phil was also very helpful with his bitching and complaining. The hardest thing was comparing and contrasting athletes who play two completely different sports, since you can’t compare the statistics of an ace pitcher vs. an NBA shooting guard, for example.

So this is ultimately defeatist and pointless, since people will just disagree with the selections and complain about it and call me an idiot. Sixers fans will think the Sixers players are ranked too low. Flyers fans will think the Flyers players are ranked too low and yadda yadda yadda.

As Charlie Manuel once said, “what it is, is what it is.”

Behold, the top 25 athletes in Philadelphia sports:

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

Flyers vs. Penguins at Lincoln Financial Field

Kevin Kinkead - July 23, 2018

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

It’s on:

Cool logo. I dig the two-color keystone.

Personally, I’m cheering for someone to hit Sidney Crosby so hard that he ends up in Lot N, where I paid $60 to park for the Guns and Roses show two years ago.

Time’s yours.

The Flyers Are Signing James van Riemsdyk

Kyle Scott - July 1, 2018

WELCOME BACK! A truly throwback Tweet this is– Frank Seravalli reporting on JVR. It will be a five-year deal:

This is not the first time the Flyers have signed JVR to a long-term deal. In 2011, they signed him to a six-year, $25.5 million deal… and then promptly traded him away the next offseason for Luke Schenn, who was relatively useless. JVR, naturally, went on to have four near-30 goal seasons for the Maple Leafs and will now return to the Flyers, still in his prime, and add some much-needed scoring depth just any scoring at all.

It looks like the Flyers are trying again.

Just One Philly Player on Forbes’ Highest Paid Athletes List

Kevin Kinkead - June 5, 2018

It’s two-time Arena Bowl champion Dan Raudabaugh.

Just kidding.

It’s JJ Redick, who checks in at #86 on the list with $23.5 million in combined salary and endorsements from June of last year to June of this year.

That’s it, just one Philly player, though Joel Embiid and Jake Arrieta will enter the top-100 next year with their beefy deals. Carson Wentz will be there when/if he gets a long-term deal.

Otherwise, the list is pretty interesting, with a top five of Floyd Mayweather Jr., Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Conor McGregor (who hasn’t fought in almost a year), and Neymar Jr. All five made more than 90 million dollars, with Ronaldo pulling in $47 million in endorsements alone.

The ridiculous purse of the Mayweather/McGregor superfight was strong enough to put both fighters in the top five. Mayweather got a $275 million payday in his only boxing match dating back to September of 2015.

The rest of the top ten is LeBron James, Roger Federer, Steph Curry, Matt Ryan, and Matthew Stafford. There are some head-scratchers on the list, with Alex Smith clocking in at #20 overall ($41.4m), Jimmy Garoppolo at #28 ($36.2m) and Ryan Tannehill at #32 ($35.2m). Gotta find that franchise quarterback, no matter what the cost.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

How in the World is Vegas’ Success “Bad” for the NHL?

Kevin Kinkead - May 21, 2018

Photo Credit: Terrence Lee-USA TODAY Sports

I was browsing Twitter dot com this morning when I came across Anthony Gargano’s opinion on the Las Vegas Golden Knights:

“It’s about real fandom.”

Hmm, alright, I disagree, but I’ll play along.

Sure, it’s not like Las Vegas hockey fans are desperate for the Stanley Cup. They haven’t been waiting since 1967, like Toronto fans. They aren’t St. Louis, Vancouver, Buffalo, or Washington, who have never won a title. They aren’t any of the eight other teams that joined the NHL after 1979 and still haven’t won a cup.

By the same token, I’d assume Flyers fans, who have been waiting since 1975, would at least be annoyed to see an expansion team cruising through the playoffs while enduring a slow rebuild under Ron Hextall and Dave Hakstol.

So if you wanna roll your eyes at Vegas’ success or say it’s “corny,” I get that. It’s corny that a brand new team comes into the league and rips off a bunch of wins while diehard fans of traditional hockey teams get to enjoy another first-round playoff exit.

But I’m not sure what fandom really has to do with anything. Is there some rule in place that you have to suffer through 20 years of losing before you’re allowed to win? Do you have to “pay your dues?” Do you have to endure a Joe Jurevicius or Rodney Harrison situation before Nick Foles comes along? It’s such a Philadelphia way of thinking, that a “low” must predate a “high,” and if it doesn’t, it’s somehow not authentic.

People have somehow twisted the Vegas story into a narrative that “this is bad for the NHL,” and I don’t know why that’s being tossed around. I find the story compelling. I’m watching the playoffs with more interest than ever before.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading

You’re Never Going To Get Who Had Horrible Claude Giroux Takes

Kyle Scott - April 26, 2018

Ah yes, it’s a traditional unlike any other in Philly. No, I’m not talking about Philly TV personalities tweeting about their glam night at [insert local charity dinner] where they, and other celebutants, can get their rocks off under the guise of philanthropy. I’m talking about the annual blame the captain calls on the heels of yet another Flyers playoff defeat.

Today, we have two entrants, one of whom has a pile of poop for a head, and another who just likes to hate things.

First up, Marcus Hayes.

I’ve been waiting to do this for a while now, and so it is with great pleasure that I bring you this dramatic reading of portions of Hayes’ piece taking Claude Giroux’s comments about fans booing substantially out of context: Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The Real Reason the Flyers’ TV Ratings Dropped 25%

Anthony SanFilippo - April 26, 2018

Photo credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

Many believe Flyers fans are expressing their distaste with the team’s seeming perpetual mediocrity both at the box office and with their remote control.

In short, the arguments have been that clusters of empty seats at the Wells Fargo Center for playoff games coupled with declining TV ratings mean that apathy has set in among the Orange and Black faithful, who not so many years ago were dubbed “stepford fans” for being robotically conformist to whatever the organ-eye-zation did and said.

Maybe the fan base is changing. Maybe Millennial fans are not like their Gen-X predecessors or the original Baby Boomers who made Philadelphia akin to a Canadian city when it came to hockey fandom.

Maybe they are getting tired of mediocrity. Maybe they are more discerning about how they are going to spend their entertainment dollars than those fans that came before them.

And then I saw this series of Tweets traipse down my Twitter timeline the other day – the first from a Canadian reporter who does some work for the New York Times (quoting Sports Business Journal), and then the rest from the site manager of Broad Street Hockey, the SB Nation fan site, and her cohorts: Continue Reading

Continue Reading

The “Philly Fan” Myth Will Never Die, Will It?

Tim Reilly - April 26, 2018

Photo Credit: Eric Hartline-USA TODAY Sports

Toward the end of the Flyers’ dispiriting Game 6 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins, a number of fans saw the looming specter of another premature playoff exit and decided they had enough – to drink. As Penguins winger Bryan Rust slid the puck into the Flyers’ empty net to put his team up by a score of 8-5, beer cans rained down on the Wells Fargo Center Ice.

“There’s heavy artillery flying all over down here,” analyst Pierre McGuire reported. A lengthy delay ensued as the Flyers ice crew worked quickly to clear the playing surface.

It didn’t take long for the criticisms to roll in from the social media universe. “Flyers fans throwing things on the ice: a playoff tradition like no other,” Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Mike Sielski tweeted. Even Pittsburgh radio host and columnist Mark Madden, who is a big fan of Crossing Broad, took a shot at the Flyers’ fan base:

Madden’s assessment was more or less in line with other Twitter reactions to the scene. And then there were the media takes, like this offering from Pittsburgh 97.3 The Fan’s Colin Dunlap. “Flyers fans are trash. Philadelphia fans, by and large, are trash,” Dunlap declared in a piece that could have used an editor. The Washington Post‘s Cindy Boren called the display “one of the most Philly fan things ever.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Jason Mackey reported that Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford was incensed by the antics of the crowd.

Continue Reading

Continue Reading