NHL: The Philadelphia Flyers need to shake things up

The Buffalo Sabres are 6-0 after beating the Flyers on Tuesday 9-1.  You would think after getting embarrassed by Buffalo last year in the playoffs the Flyers would have made massive changes over the summer just to compete.

I was surprised to see over the summer that they didn’t do anything.  They kept their coach, even extending his contract by three years, Ken Hitchcock, who arguably is stuck in the old NHL of the pound and grind your way to victory.  They are still relying heavily on Peter Forsberg who had to have ankle surgery over the summer.  Thank god for the Flyers that he only needed surgery on one ankle cause if he needed it on both they were saying he’d be out till January.

Then there is their pitiful goal-tending.  Here’s a team that could use a new starting goal tender. As much as I love Marty Biron of the Buffalo Sabres, he could possibly save this team some face this year if the teams could work out a deal.  But the clincher is the feud that Hitchcock is having Robert Esche.  Esche apparently said his coach has an empty head.  Well guess who didn’t pull their goalie during the 9-1 route?  Guess it was a lesson in humility Hitchcock was teaching Esche.

Well as if the GM’s in Philly finally woke up and they started making some changes yesterday.  They put Petr Nedved, Niko Dimitrakos and Nolan Baumgartner on waivers and called up a couple of rookies with some passion from their farm team.  It’s a good first start clearing some of their dead weight from the first six games.  I still think they need to fire Hitchcock and get someone in there that the players respect cause right now they have no respect of their coach and once the respect is gone there is no fire in the team.

I guess you could say that the Flyers are the last team to figure out that this is the new NHL and they need to adapt to be able to compete.

Related News:
Sabres stay perfect with rout of Flyers (CNNSI)
Philly puts three players on waivers (CNNSI)
Flyers agree to three-year contract with Hitchcock (CNNSI)

*Disclaimer: I am a hardcore Buffalo Sabres fan but I watched intently over the summer expecting massive changes in Philly and now I think they need to really wake up and understand they are going to fail unless something is done.