It’s playoff time folks! Well, I mean the Flyers are doing there thing but Sixers are ready to rumble too. While the season has had some ups and downs, Sixers were able to hang on and avoid the Miami Heat. At this point, wishing the Sixers didn’t make the playoffs or wishing for a roster change is just wasting your breath. Time to put on your fan hat and cheer your boys on. Me? Oh I’ll be enjoying myself.

Instead of sulking around wishing the Sixers didn’t collapse in the middle of the season, let’s look at what the Sixers have going for them.

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Peter Laviolette called his star player Claude Giroux “the best player in the world,” in a series where two players on the other side were widely believed as the best by far. Giroux posted six goals and eight assists for 14 points, including complete masterpieces in game two (six points) and game six (three points). Giroux’s explosive hit on Sidney Crosby and subsequent goal within 32 seconds of the game could be taken as the tone-setting events for game six, but those events also worked as a wonderful metaphor for a changing of the guard for hockey in Pennsylvania.

Under the Mike Richards-led Philadelphia Flyers, Crosby and Evgeni Malkin dominated the series both times they met. The Flyers were simply unable to shut them down. Both times the Flyers fell in defeat to the Pittsburgh Penguins in the playoffs since the lockout, they chugged along to the Stanley Cup Final, including a victory in 2009. Since then, though, the Penguins have only won one playoff series, and the Flyers have simply been better. Read more

Before yesterdays crucial game six, I viewed a picture of a Pens fan on Twitter, huddled in the trenches of Xfinity Live!, in a t-shirt that said “Jesus Loves The Pens.”

But as the Philadelphia sun snuck up from behind an April shower, it cast an orange haze that painted the Sunday morning sky as if to say the hockey Gods had placed their bet on the game already.

You can keep your Jesus, Pittsburgh.

Yesterdays 5-1 Flyers victory was the final nail into the coffin of the cross state nemesis. It was a cause for revelry in the bowl of the Wells Fargo Center, and in swollen bars across the Delaware Valley for good reason. A majority of NHL writers, and hockey personalities, fingered the Pens as the odds on favorite to raise the Stanley Cup for the second time in five seasons. After five games that displayed more lamps lit than a Lamps Plus showroom, the Flyers’ imperious game six victory ended an epic folklore of a series full of embarrassment, attitude, acerbity, and merriment.

But there’s one group of Flyers fans whose chests protrude a few inches further than the rest this morning.

It’s those Flyers fans transplanted in Pittsburgh.

Those of whom, like myself.

For the past six years I’ve called the Steel City home. I’ve bought a house, started a family, and managed an altruistic living for myself and loved ones. But like many Philly transplants out here, I have spent the preponderance of my time in the shadow of championship trophies I can’t call mine. Having awareness of how many Lombardi trophies the Steelers have kissed, or how many times the Pens have hoisted the Stanley Cup, is something you will never forget even in the most advanced stages of dementia.

Because you are reminded of it every day.

It’s on T-shirts. It’s tattooed on calf muscles. It’s on yellow towels that twirl in vivacious October winds. And if your team is lucky enough to leap their team in a regular season series, or a playoff bout, you’re rhetorically reminded of it again.

“How many yinz got?”

Sure, the Flyers haven’t held Lord Stanley’s covenant cup since 1975, but Sundays final blow to Pittsburgh’s inopportune chimera of comebacks and paybacks, was a moral victory for us transplanted Flyers fans in the ‘Burgh. That’s a taste all our own. It doesn’t come topped with coleslaw and French Fries.

There’s still three more rounds the Flyers must escape from before the tangible hoopla can begin. But for now, us transplants can hoist a thirty five inch, silver middle finger, high in the air. Because the 2011-2012 Pittsburgh Penguins are now the most star powered underachievers in Pittsburgh sports history.

Another trophy for you, Pittsburgh.

You’re welcome.

Pens fans were anticipating to come out in droves for a game seven white-out at the Consol Energy Center, tomorrow night. Instead, a mid-spring snow squall brewed, and dumped a couple inches of wet and heavy inconvenience on the northern Pittsburgh region.

Now, that’s the only white out Pittsburgh has to show.

And for Flyers fans in the Steel City dusting off their cars this morning, there’s one bit of truism we can all agree on.

Rather it was a snow storm to dig out of, and not a Fleury.

It’s hard to be from the Philadelphia suburbs and not have heard about Jamie Moyer. He was the local guy who made it to the bigs. At least that’s how you heard it growing up. There’s really two stories though. The first is the guy who bounced around baseball being sent to the minors, traded, released, etc… and never really having anything that scared big league hitters. Then something changed. He got older.

He wound up with the Seattle Mariners in 1996 and proceeded to win 145 games for them over the next ten seasons becoming the franchise leader in wins. This is the height of the steroid era here and he was getting some of the game’s most feared hitters out with a fastball that barely hits 80 mph and that magic change up. After being traded to the Phillies it was fun to watch him handle young teams likes the Marlins that he’d keep off balance.

Last night, over 7 frames, Moyer held the Padres down and he recorded his first win since undergoing Tommy John Surgery (what 48 year old gets Tommy John?) and he became the oldest pitcher to ever win a baseball game in MLB. It should be a proud moment for anyone who is a fan of the game.

It’s a proud moment for me. He grew up ten minutes from where I live. He pitched a game in a World Series I saw my home team win. Those are just cherries though on top of my sundae. I just like it that in an era where if a superstar like Tim Lincecum is throwing 90 mph, he gets whiplash, a day later Moyer is winning with 75-80 mph slop. Is it because he’s better? No. It’s because he’s smarter. He’s fooled scouts, sabermetricians, beat writers, and most importantly batters.

In the inevitable showdown between Jamie Moyer and the 2012 Phillies, I’d be scared to bet the home team.

The Philadelphia Flyers have been playing tremendously well down the stretch, and they have done it without the services of key contributors like Chris Pronger. For the last little stretch though, we seem to have forgotten about a certain forward on this team—one James van Riemsdyk.

Oh, van Riemsdyk, the heralded second overall pick of the 2007 draft. The man taken after Patrick Kane. The guy who had a coming out party in the 2011 playoffs. Perhaps the most criticized Flyer next to defenseman Matt Carle. JVR always had a unique skillset that included a tall, lanky exterior with a blistering wrist shot and a power forward type mold to fulfill. Too bad he continued to play soft, and his development has been progressing like molasses coming out of a jar.

That development speed has turned into an important decision for the Flyers to make regarding his future in Philly.

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