(Dave Schultz's home town is a 34 hour drive from Philadelphia.)

Now this feels like a hockey season.

After only a day off the Flyers take on the red hot New Jersey Devils  as they wrap up a four game home stand tonight at the Wach. Maybe the bigger story, or at least the organization hopes it is, is that the Flyers are inducting Dave Schultz into the Flyers Hall of Fame before tonight's game. Schultz will become by far the shortest tenured Flyer player to enter The Hall, besides Barry Ashbee.

Let me ask you a question - why is it that every time an old goon is talked about these days you can't get two sentences into the conversation before someone points out that he wasn't just an enforcer out there, he was a good hockey player too? I can't really think of any pointed examples except Dale Hunter, Tie Domi, Bob Probert, Marty McSorley, Craig Berube, Tiger Williams, and Chris Simon off the top of my head, but people do it all the time. I read some article last week somewhere where Bobby Clarke kept going on and on about Schultz's hockey skills. And then during his interviews with Jim Jackson Schultz himself he goes to great lengths to point out that he had only gotten in one fight in juniors, playing down the type of goonery we can see all over the Youtubes.

Dave, you are not remembered nor are you getting inducted into the Flyers Hall of Fame for your 73 assists.

That's probably a difficult thing to reconcile as you get older. That you, the calm and genial guy that every likes, used to make your living breaking the bones in people's faces while wild Philadelphians howled and cheered like it was The Coliseum. Perspective is a strange thing. As yours shifts you change, as does how you occur to yourself. And when your most heinous acts were filmed and are still celebrated by an entire city, a place you probably never knew existed when you were a kid, you can never fully leave behind who you were.

I love the legend of Dave Schultz. But let's please not turn tonight's induction into a political statement on headshots, fighting, or sportsmanship like we seem to do with everything else. Every time someone mention's Dave Schultz's 20 goal season that's exactly what they're doing. Let's celebrate him for what he was, and might forever remain - the most brutal enforcer the game has ever seen. A guy who helped change the perspective of his teammates and the league, and helped bring two championships to Philadelphia through calculated terrorism, and packed the seats of the Spectrum with the promise of violence.

And I think he's very good with the Flyers Alumni and charity work, but all hockey players are great with that stuff. Except Kevin Stevens, who was great at smoking crack instead.