Well At Least We Get To Witness The Greatness That Is Claude Giroux
Flyers 1, Canucks 4
The Flyers kicked off their tour of western Canada last night with their 4th straight loss. If you have any sense of self-respect or dignity at all, you just chose to call it an early night and go to bed instead of watching the game. But if you’re like me and are just already too miserable in life to care, well then you were treated to another horrific defensive effort by the Philadelphia Flyers last night. You also received a giant “fuck you” from the team after they let up a goal just 68 seconds into a 10 pm puck drop. You wait all night for the game to start only to see these idiots give up a goal while the opening credits are still rolling. But if there’s anything positive to take away from last night’s game, it’s that Claude Giroux is not fucking around anymore.
There have already been a bunch of filthy goals scored so far this season (a couple by Claude himself). There are going to be plenty more filthy goals scored this season. But this goal is and will be my favorite because it’s just such a Claude goal. Over the past week the team lost to Buffalo twice and to the Devils. They go down early this first game out west and continue looking hopeless on D and helpless with their chances on offense. So what does Claude do? He whips out that giant French Canadian sack of his and just goes to work. This is why Philadelphia loves Claude Giroux so much. It’s a blue collar goal finished off with a highlight reel forehand-backhand. Grit meets grace. And Claude has been playing on another level all season so far. It would just be nice to see his teammates, and more specifically his linemates, start to get pucks to drop for them as well.
Now let’s just talk about the glaring bad points to take away from last night real quick before I vomit again just thinking about them….
The fact that Radko Gudas and Brandon Manning were paired together on the blue line in an actual game in the National Hockey League last night was almost enough to make me stop watching hockey all together. A D pair of Gudas and Manning is the most disrespectful thing the Flyers could ever do to their fans and yet that’s exactly what they did. These two guys STINK. Gudas can bring the body and maybe Manning has potential later but I lost track of how many 2-on-1’s these guys let up last night and one of them led to Jake Virtanen getting his 1st career NHL goal.
I’m not a huge fan of Virtanen and personally thinks someone needs to lay that kid out so he doesn’t get an Era to himself. But yeah, Gudas/Manning should hardly be in the NHL let alone on a defensive pairing together. The fact that the Flyers are paying Andrew MacDonald $4 million to play in the AHL so that Brandon Manning can get danced every time he’s out on the ice just makes little to no sense to me.
Speaking of other guys on the blue line who I would much rather prefer them to stay in Canada after this road trip is finished…. Nick Schultz. Here’s the thing about Nick Schultz. He’s incredibly grey. He’s a total grey guy for the most part. One of those player that you just never really notice. Like you’re watching the game and all of a sudden in the 3rd period you’re like “wait, did Nick Schultz get scratched tonight?” and then a moment later you hear his name and you realize he’s actually been playing the whole night. But being a grey guy is totally fine for Nick Schultz because it means that even though he isn’t doing anything exceptionally well, he’s also not doing anything exceptionally poorly either. But last night he went from grey to black real quick and I’m just over it. Give Schultz and Manning some time away from the game so that they can take a good long look in the mirror and see if this is really the life that they want for themselves. Bring up MacDonald and get Medvedev back in the lineup. Let Claude do his thing and pray the rest of this snakebitten offense can get it together. And just try not to drink too much bleach this season watching this team.
Oh, and 10 pm puck drops can go suck a bag of dicks. If I ever become President, I’m absolishing time zones. Gonna make everyone get on Eastern Standard because nothing else matters.
The Flyers take on the Edmonton Oilers and will get their first glimpse of Connor McDavid tonight. Here’s to hoping CMcD nets himself a hatty so we at least have something exciting to blog about tomorrow.