PHILADELPHIA _ It has been more than 18 years since the moment that it became fair and natural to ask: How many ways can the Flyers not win the Stanley Cup? When exactly was that moment? Probably sometime after the goaltender started screaming at his teammates and those teammates started firing pucks at his head in retaliation.
This was the spring of 2002, and the Flyers were 27 years into what is now a 45-year run of championship-lessness, and though it felt like they had already exhausted every possible reason or excuse for falling short, Roman Cechmanek was happy to crank up the absurdity knob to 11. He had posted a .921 save percentage in the 2001-02 regular season as the Flyers won their division and earned the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference. But in the midst of a team-wide meltdown during a first-round playoff series, the notoriously squirrelly Cechmanek allowed a goal to the Ottawa Senators, skated toward the Flyers' bench, and yelled at the coaches and players there.
The catalyst for his hissy fit was never fully explained. Maybe, with the Flyers heading to a humiliating five-game loss, he wanted to be pulled. Maybe he was angry at the lack of offensive support; the Flyers scored just two goals in the entire series. Whatever the case, he was ducking rubber the following day, thanks to his teed-off teammates _ the incident just a prelude to a full-fledged locker-room mutiny that led to the firing of head coach Bill Barber.
Compared with Cechmanek and the multi-barreled embarrassment of '02, the prospect of the Flyers' missing out on a chance to win a Cup this year because of a pandemic seems only so strange.
