Bad teams

I caught Flyers-Islanders last night. The Flyers are truly a bad team. The question is, how did they get so poor, so quickly? They were a playoff team last year.

But they are a walking example of what you can't be in the new NHL. Big, slow and especially slow around the net in front of their goalie. And their goalies aren't great.

With the NHL featuring a lot of speed and a lot less grabbing (or more power plays if you do grab), teams that are slower better have 2 things: strong defense in front of the goalie and a good goalie.

It's not hard to predict that the Flyers aren't going to be playing in May. I'm not sure the Islanders are, either. They looked OK, but their goalie, Rick DiPietro, even though he only gave up one goal, is shaky. You can just tell.