But before we move on...

Dear 2010-11 Flyers,

Put down the golf clubs for a second and pay attention.

We started off this season with high hopes. I mean, wet-behind-the-ears rookie goaltender beating the Penguins at the opening of the Consol? Could it get better than that? No, apparently, because when Game 4 against the Bruins came around Bob looked like the most experienced player on our team. When the best forward in any given game is James van Riemsdyk, you know you’ve got problems.

It wasn’t all bad. Claude Giroux came out of his shell and proved to the league that he was the Second Coming of AWESOME, a fact I had known for some time. JVR notched a Gordie Howe against the Tampa Bay Lightning, demonstrating that we live in some form of alternate dimension. Jody Shelley was useless except occasionally when he pounded someone’s face in, which was highly entertaining.

We should have, however, seen the collapse coming. Losing Chris Pronger was a sign from above that things were probably not going to work out, as the Flyers require a certain blindside-elbow-per-capita ratio to be maintained in order for them to do well (it’s an indicator, like plus-minus or the Corsi score). Our goaltending decided to dissolve right at the worst possible time, our forwards suddenly couldn’t score even if someone had obeyed my commands and hogtied Tim Thomas in the trapezoid, and our defense seemingly decided that it would be rude to not allow the other team the opportunity to shoot, crash the net, and then poke the rebound home.

But hey. Maybe you all just got tired. Maybe you got bored with this whole “winning” thing and felt like seeing what failure was like. Maybe you decided that it would be unfair to keep taking so much airtime away from the Phillies. We’ll never really know. Holmgren and Co. will do a hack job (probably) on this team during the offseason, and then in October we’ll all re-gather, ready for another go-round.

And this time, maybe you’ll make it to the finals before folding like a card table.

Love,

Skippy

p.s. Now I have to root for the Bruins, you motherfuckers.