Philadelphia, PA--In the postgame news conference last night after the Flyers eliminated the Montreal Canadiens and advanced to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time since 1997, Captain Mike Richards was asked by a local journalist if he was concerned about the number of "icy's" the team accumulated during the series.Richards, after trying desperately not to laugh, responded,"I'm sorry, did you say icy's? Did you mean icings?"
The journalist took a quick glance down at the folder in his lap and confirmed that, yes, in fact, he meant icings.
Later in the news conference, standout defenseman Chris Pronger was asked, citing his size, if face-offs would ever be replaced by jump pucks, similar to jump balls in basketball. The giant blueliner gave a big smile and said he would love to see that because of his often glaring height advantage over other players.
At the conclusion of games one and two against the Canadiens, each at the Wachovia Center, the Flyers reported that nearly four hundred fans demanded a partial ticket refund because, they claimed, "this game was only three periods long." The team did issue partial refunds, but said it will not exercise this policy during the Finals.
Last night, one of the greenest Flyer' fans attending the game celebrated what he thought was a Stanley Cup championship.
"I was going nuts in the stands," said an embarrassed Pete Tomwill, a Lower Merion Flyers fan, who was informed by a nearby season ticket holder that there is one more round of hockey before the cup. "The guy wearing the 'C' on his jersey picked up that big trophy that was very silver and cup-like. Why would they have such a nice trophy for the semi-finals?"
When teams make deep runs into the playoffs, such as the Flyers' current drive to the Finals, large numbers of new fans, often not nearly as savvy as the average season ticket holder, want to share in the teams' success and feel the same elation that fans around them are experiencing by cheering for a sport they may not even care for.
"This happens every year with every sport, believe it or not," explained Dr Reid Clossuer, a sports psychologist at Graduate Hospital in Center City Philadelphia. "But the stress this causes players is often magnified in hockey as media members, usually assigned to cover football or baseball, are asked to pull double duty and report on hockey. It's like asking an experienced airline pilot to all the sudden drive a car."
The good doctor also recognized that Flyers' players may not have it as bad as some that have come before them.
"Philadelphia is a fantastic hockey town," said Dr Reid Clossuer "The team has been very patient with the 'bandwagon' fans and new journalists, but, not to take away from their kindheartedness, the Hurricanes and Lightning may have faced the ultimate test several years ago."
Clossuer is referring to when the Tampa Bay Lightning and the Carolina Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup in 2004 and 2006 respectively. In these sunshine belt cities, not known as hockey hotbeds, the players' patience with new fans and journalists during their run to the Cup soon wore so thin that Clossuer was called in to council the athletes.
"In 2006, Rod Brind'Amour, captain of the Hurricanes at the time, was asked 26 times during the Finals about the apostrophe in his last name by the same Greensboro Sun reporter," said Clossuer. "[The journalist] kept insisting that Brind'Amour make the 'A' lowercase, remove the apostrophe and make the last name one word. I showed Rod some very useful breathing exercises."
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