Superstars

You're hardly ever going to get anything out of a hockey player by interviewing them. The professional hockey player is a well trained and practiced athlete who can take any question and spin it into an excuse to credit his teammates for their effort and attempt to refocus the interviewer on the trials or successes of the team, and not his own. Which is why when an NHL player veers at all from that well tred path you have to assume that the words spoken only hint at the frustration and disappointment that player is feeling.

The Flyers have has two such cases this week.

Earlier this week Joffrey Lupul came off more like a petulant 3rd grader trying to create and then catch his parents in a Catch 22:

"I'm confused because [Stevens] said he wants me to have the puck more, but right now I'm in the fourth-line role and I understand that,'' he said. "You go in, you chip the puck in, play in their end and any offense you get is a bonus.

And then after yesterday's game in Long Island Scott Hartnell hinted at the fact that higher profile players were possibly getting different treatment than he was:

"I think you have to hold guys accountable, you've got to make a stand with someone and it was me. I've got to respond and come out with a better effort and be more prepared," Hartnell said. "I saw it coming. A couple of times he yelled at me for not moving my feet and things like that. I just hope he holds everybody accountable and it doesn't matter what number they're wearing on their back. It's all for the team now."

Being upset at not playing or playing less is expected. And is actually what you would hope a player's reaction would be to that situation. But when did the way to get out of that hole become bitching to the press rather than working harder?

Some of us were sitting around the coffee cooler the other day discussing just this topic. Money obviously isn't everything, but it can sure cushion a fall. How bad do you actually feel when after a game you got benched in you can climb in your Charger and drive home at 90 mph to your luxurious apartment in Old City? Thirty years ago athletes had off-season jobs. Can you imagine it? Picture half of the Flyers going to their home towns and working on their parents' farms or in the local mill every off-season. If they weren't playing in the NHL they'd be doing that for 12 months every year instead of 4. That had to translate into a different kind of effort on the ice.

When the Flyers used to practice in Voorhees at the Coliseum my dad used to take me over to watch them sometimes. I played for a team in Pennsylvania growing up but was fairly familiar with the Coliseum, having grown up in Voorhees. I knew, even at 10 years old, that that place was a dump. I would always ask my dad when the Flyers were going to move to different rink to practice because that place was seriously dilapidated. He surely knew that at some point they'd pack up and move to a state of the art practice facility as time passed, and eventually they did move to the Skate Zone on the other side of town, but he always used to respond with a simple "never." After further prodding he'd tell me how the Flyers would never leave this rink that actually did look like it was in a cramped barn because they didn't want their players to forget that there were barns, rinks, and barn rinks waiting all over Canada for them should they care to go back to them. And also that there were tens of thousands of kids playing hockey in rinks just like the Coliseum all over Canada who prepared to sacrifice teeth, blood, and all else to get to this terrible rink in Voorhees, New Jersey.

When you're guaranteed millions of dollars for multiple years those Canadian towns and those Canadian kids must seem further than ever before.