DO WE HAVE AN ENCORE?

We all recall the booming start to the season the HABS had last year. Essentially we were challenging the top seed spot with Buffalo all the way to mid November. Last year, just like the current season, the experts who had predicted us to rank in the 10-55 range were eating their hats and back-tracking on their opinions from pre-season and talking about what a cohesive team we have and how far we could go. This was an entertaining feat to watch while most analysts couldn’t help but look like a total mushrooms with mikes. The rare few who happened to have a level of language suitable for television broadcast were able alliterate their way around the sad fact that they were simply wrong, had to re-back track on their opinions following our post-holiday melt-down and claim they “knew it all along”. All this to say, despite the adversity we’ve faced last year, at least we were able to make the self proclaimed hockey experts look as smart as the guy who bought the patent for plastic dog droppings for $1.5M (who says the financial post is not an entertaining read!).

This year a similar pattern ensues. We were said to be the second coming of the 06/07 Flyers, but here we are…5/6. We have a more capable, consistent and overall consistent team. The question is however, how much longer will we look this way? Will we go through our perennial post-holiday blues? Hard to answer these questions, but one thing is for sure. This team is a playoff team, and once in could have a Cinderella story given the characters we currently have. Furthermore, we would be more than able to keep this team fairly intact for a year or two more, and that’s important to consider for our centennial celebrations.

Bob Gainey and his team have put together a well balanced team (IMHO) and it has lots of depth in nets, defence and offence. Now I am not a self proclaimed hockey expert or analyst, but I believe this team deserves a lot more credit than it has been getting. Tonight will be yet another stepping stone in showing the hockey world exactly who we are…who are we you ask? A capable hockey team that will be in the upper quartile in the NHL this season, and few more to come.