Penalty Kill-ed

The date changes, the place changes, some of the faces change, we may be scorching hot and they may be struggling, but the results stay the same. The Flyers still can't beat the Devils.

Tonight, the Devils continued their mastery over the Flyers with a 7-3 win. The only things different about tonight's game was that the Devils uncorked 5 friggin power play goals on the Flyers and Martin Brodeur, for the first time in his career against the Flyers, let in a soft goal. Other than that, things didn't change a whole lot. The Devils seemed to win every important battle for the puck and as always seem to have the puck bounce to them when they are wide open in the slot for easy goals.

Since the Flyers mailed in their effort on the penalty kill, I'm mailing in the rest of this post. Here's what I wrote after the last Flyers/Devils game in early January. You'll find it still applies:

At this point, it is reasonable to wonder if the Flyers will ever beat this team. The Devils keep jettisoning players, but the results remain the same. Guys like Scott Gomez, Brian Rafalski, Scott Stevens, etc. leave, but they get replaced by players you've never heard of that are just as effective. (Editor's Note: Johnny Oduya, anyone?)

Of course, the easy answer is that Martin Brodeur is the link throughout the years of success, but I think it goes deeper than that. It just seems like the Devils organization has some mystical hold over the Orange & Black. I think we need a feng shui expert or maybe a voodoo doctor to try and find a way to break the spell. Ok, maybe that's a little over the top, but this team needs to try something drastic because I simply can't stand losing to this weakly supported franchise from Newark of all places.

Plus, the more I think of it, I can't recall any team in any sport that has been so dominant over any of our Philly teams over such a long period of time. The Devils have pretty much owned the Flyers since Lindros and Brodeur came on the scene back in the mid 90's. We're coming up on almost fifteen years of dominance. I can't think of a team that routinely beat the Phils or Sixers in a similar fashion. I am aware that the Cowboys pretty much dominated the Birds through the late 60's up to the Dick Vermeil era, but many of those Eagles teams were brutal. The Flyers have missed the playoffs once during the Devils' dominance, so they have toyed with some pretty decent Flyers teams over the years.

I challenge you guys....can you come up with any other team that kept a Philly team under their thumb as long as the Devils have held the upper hand over the Flyers? I sure can't think of one.

In any event, I'm sick of all the losing to the Devils. Paul Holmgren and Co. have to think of something.

The best thing about this evening is that we don't have to see the Devils again until March 21. Thank God.