Lost Phils Weekend; Flyers Draft Redux

The Phils

Wow, that didn't go well. Six games against the elite in the AL on your home field and you could only manage 1 lousy win. I hope Pat Gillick was watching closely. It was a good wakeup call for this team.

The Phils' lead in NL East is down to 1 game. Now, they go on the road against Oakland and Texas, and if they don't win 4 of 6 games on this trip, I think some personnel will need shaking up.

Look for JRoll to have a good trip in his hometown of Oakland.

The Flyers

The NHL draft was held last Friday and the Flyers were busy with shifting their roster around. They traded RJ Umberger to Columbus for two draft picks; one of which was the 19th pick overall. What they were trying to do, according to the Courier-Posts Chuck Gormley, was to trade up to get a goaltender. When the goaltender was taken, Holmgren took 18 year old defenseman Luca Sbisa. I had no problem with the selection of a defenseman....that is definitely an area of need for the Flyers in their system right now.

There was definitely a logjam at forward and someone was going to have to go. I've never been a huge RJ Umberger fan. Because of how he did in the playoffs against Montreal, Umberger's value was never going to be higher. Umberger has the air of a guy who considers his skills to be vastly more superior than they really are. I would have much rather seen Umberger go than a guy like Scottie Upshall or Joffrey Lupul, both of whom are younger than Umberger and much more skilled.

Where I thought Holmgren went a little off of the reservation was when he traded the Flyers' own 1st round pick (27th overall) to the Caps for D Steve Eminger and another draft pick. Isn't that a little bit of a high price to pay for a guy who has never finished an entire season in the NHL? This past year, he was little more than a spare part for Washington going into the playoffs, but with all of the injuries to the Caps blueline, the Caps were forced to play Eminger, who looked pretty good. It'll be interesting to see if a fresh start can help Eminger, who was the 12th overall pick in the 2002 draft. For Holmgren's sake, I hope it does, because the price was very high. If Eminger tanks, it could be Homer's first real mistake as GM.

Culture

- Saw Pearl Jam Friday night at the Susquehanna Bank Centre. Great show and a great time in the parking lot beforehand. Highlight of the night was either "Better Man" or "Alive", but I also enjoyed the "Baba O'Reilly" cover that Pearl Jam does.

- Saw an interesting documentary on HBO about Roman Polanski, but I'm not sure of the point of the documentary. Was it to maintain Polanski's "innocence"? Or to point out judicial misconduct? Because, while judicial misconduct almost definitely occurred, let's not obscure the undisputed fact that this guy drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. And the documentarians do imply that not only should the 13-year old girl have known better (???) but that we shouldn't have expected better of a known poon hound like Roman Polanski. While I believe the documentary was wrongly sympathetic towards a convicted rapist, I still found the documentary interesting......