Philadelphia’s Hottest Club Is The Penalty Box

We should have known the box was The Spot from the start, when Sidney Crosby was sentenced for the first embellishment penalty of his long career. He took a legitimate high stick from Garnet Hathaway before a faceoff, but went down like he'd been shot. Sid doesn't embellish, insisted Penguins head coach Dan Muse, but Sid might admit otherwise, after he watched the replay on the jumbotron and he offered a sheepish little welp face. The game started and stayed chippy, and the Philadelphia crowd sounded especially bloodthirsty. They've waited a long time for this. The last time the Flyers won a playoff game at home, Barack Obama was president. Just one player on the entire roster was even here for that. That was the craziest building I've ever played in, said veteran defenseman Nick Seeler, whose first career playoff goal would prove to be a big one. The Flyers are a young team, still figuring out what they have and who they are, but showing all the signs of one of those too naive to know they shouldn't make a deep run teams that make a deep run. There's no particular reason these kids should play a game similar to the Broad Street Bullies of yore, or really every edition ever of the Flyers. But some bone-deep genetic memory, something about that logo or perhaps that city inevitably turns a man's thoughts to pugilism.