The woes of being a Philadelphia Flyers fan

If you’ve never been a hockey fan, you’ve never experienced true pain like I have in the past couple of weeks. See also, being a Philadelphia Flyers fan. Or a Philadelphia sports fan in general.

It’s been a rough start for the Flyers this season, and it did look like they were starting to turn it around, especially with Scott Hartnell being closer to returning to the ice. But they continue to drop games.

The Flyers went 1-3 last week to add to their poor record (6-9-1), which really doesn’t bode well for them this season. If this was a regular 82 game season, I wouldn’t be as concerned with their performance, because I know they always make it into the playoffs. However, due to the 48 game shortened season if the Flyers don’t change something drastically now, then they probably won’t make it to the playoffs this year.

With their poor performance so far this season they are in dead last of the Atlantic division and are 11^th in the Eastern Conference. Those are not good numbers to be looking at.

Their game against the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday was a horrendous and heart-breaking 4-1 loss for Flyers fans. Habs’ star goalie Carey Price wasn’t even in the net at all for that game.

It was Brian Boucher’s first time in net for the Flyers, but he took a significant amount of more shots on net than the Habs’ goalie Peter Budaj. That’s where the Flyers dropped the game. They were slow on the rush and just couldn’t get the puck to their opponents’ net quick enough, and while this was happening the defense continued to lack.

To be fair we have been seeing some improvements from Jakub Voracek, and Brayden Schenn who bounced off Danny Briere well by assisting him in the only Flyers goal of the game. Right now, these minor improvements may not be enough. The Flyers keep on changing the rookie lines by recalling AHL players from the Adirondack Phantoms, but do not be surprised if GM Paul Holmgren tries to pull out another big trade.

It’s hard to be a Flyers fans right now.

Although hockey fans are not like other fans, they are diehard fans, and Flyers fans like myself are no different. We live and breathe for our team with black and orange coursing through our veins, and we’ll stick by our team win or lose, no matter how much it hurts.

Deanna Vasso is a Flyers contributor for www.rantsports.com. You can follow her on Twitter @Dmvasso.