Philly writers throw elbows, too?

We're down here with ice only in our sangria, so, in your eyes, we don't know LeClair from eclair. Funny, though, that with your omniscience regarding hockey, we still find things such as . . .

``They'll win this series the way a windshield always wins against a bug.'' -- Bill Lyon, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist.

Nice imagery, but all
the acuity of a cat trying to program a VCR. Obviously, Bill's windshield should now be recalled or we're talking South Florida-sized palmetto bugs. Even I, who picked The Big, Ugly People in five, figured every game would be close and am not surprised it'll go at least six.

``In Florida, the biggest guy hits somebody and the sports writers, too many of whom have never chronicled anything more important than a split-squad exhibition between the Blue Jays and the Braves, go for the easy route, and the fans, who know no better, decide Eric Lindros is bad for the game.

``Hockey is paying a price for expanding into territories where the game is too complex for people to learn overnight and so they draw the simplest conclusions, no matter how stupid.'' -- Jack McCaffery, Delaware County Daily Times columnist.

I could note that the elementary school turgidness of Mr. McCaffery's prose makes it unsurprising he's a columnist at a paper with all the circulation of a supermarket flier. That, however, would be insulting to Rob Parent, a fine Flyers beat writer for the DelCo Daily Times.

But it's true that someone who thinks hockey is too complex to learn quickly probably should be kept local and parochial, spewing forth on nothing more substantial than the Penn Relays morning prelims. After all, if you can't understand hockey, you probably can't understand baseball, football, anything more Byzantine than Chutes and Ladders.

If hockey were that complicated, NHL teams would draft from Canadian and American universities, picking kids who look like the control-room extras in Apollo 13, with great SAT scores, instead of high school-aged kids with great size, speed and puck-handling ability.

``[The Flyers' bad-boy] image has been fueled by a lot of things, but mostly by Florida media people who've never seen what goes on in the NHL come playoff time.'' -- Rich Hofmann, Philadelphia Daily News columnist.

Considering Rich wrote Game 3 was the second-worst scene he has witnessed at an NHL game, I wonder how many playoff games he has seen, especially at The Spectrum. Flyers fans are like Eric Lindros himself: capable of brilliance, gorgeous brutality, but also cynical despicability.

Heck, I've already seen at least two worse displays of fan behavior: Games 3 and 4 of the first-round series in Boston, when FleetCenter fans dumped everything that wasn't tied down in the old Garden onto the ice and upon the heads of Panthers in the penalty box. Ed Jovanovski actually had to be removed for all the debris.

One Boston writer told me it was the worst night he had seen in 40 years of watching the Bruins.

Pick your writer/talk radio guy/fan who claimed the Flyers are faster than the Panthers.

Sure they are -- if they were all in a Greyhound with Terry Murray driving.

Taking both rosters, the first two under the checkered flag in a skateoff would be Rob Niedermayer and Radek Dvorak. Then, probably Bill Lindsay. Then maybe you get your first Flyer.

According to a Philadelphia beat writer, Eric Lindros is the fastest of the F-Troop. I think he might be the only Philly guy in the top five. One NHL management type who has seen a lot of both teams figured 15 of the top 20 would be Panthers.

I understand how one could become a curmudgeon living in Philthydelphia: cold, rude, tight streets, men resembling Joe Frazier or Sylvester Stallone gone to seed, women resembling Joe Frazier or Sylvester Stallone gone to seed.

But next time you want to harangue us South Floridians, though, don't talk about hockey. Try soft pretzels, something you know about.