"We have to create urgency throughout the game; we didn’t have it,"

Giroux:

"I didn’t like the way I played, and wanted to change it up a bit and hopefully, we would start playing better," he said. "Sometimes, it’s fun to get messy a bit."

So both of these guys saw the same situation but it was the 21 year old who's in his first full season as an NHLer, with only had 8 fights in all of his hockey career, who decided to do something about it. That doesn't seem right.

In a post I wrote last year but can't find right now I went into great depth discussing the fact that after Mike Richards first fight against Brandon Dubinsky during his first night as captain of the Flyers he started to behave a bit differently when it came to shedding the mitts. During that fight against Dubinsky Richards really went after him. In his next five fights he landed 1 punch. One. And it was against Steve Downie in what could hardly be considered a fight.

Remember when this was Mike Richards?

Anyway, this all got me thinking about what it means to be a captain. And there are a lot of intangibles. But I do believe that a huge one is the occasional fight. And I'm not talking about just a fighting major. I'm talking about fighting with anger and fire. Maybe you're angry at the opponent, yourself, or your own team. A fighting with glowing red eyes.

I do think Mike Richards should be captain of this team, even though Pronger does pose a significant threat to that balance of power. But what I want and the Flyers need is Mike Richards as he was when he was only wearing the A, not this new Mike Richards who sacrifices passion for sportsmanship in too many situations. Who do I want Mike Richards to play and lead like? Jarome Iginla, plain and simple.

Iginla exemplifies all that a modern NHL captain should be - skilled and tough. The kind of guy that gets his team back into a game, sticks up for his teammates, and inspires. This got me thinking even more about where Richie, at this point in his career, would rank against all the other captains in the league in this loosely defined notion of "best captains." I actually had to remove the Western Conference because my East Coast bias is stronger than I anticipated, but here's how I see it in the East:

1. Lecavalier - Lightning
2. Chara - Bruins
3. Crosby - Penguins
4. Drury - Rangers
5. Langenbrunner - Devils
6. Brind'Amour - Hurricanes
7. Alfredsson - Senators
8. Richards - Flyers
9. Weight - Islanders
10. McCabe - Panthers
11. Kovalchuk - Thrashers
12. Clark - Capitals
13. Rivet - Sabres

This is not a ranking of what these captains legacies will be, but how they have been captaining since they got the C. Vinny lands in the number one spot purely because of his run over the past 6 or 7 years. He led that team to their Cup (He also dropped 'em with Iggy in the Cup Finals). He's been leading them ever since.

From the get go, Mike Richards has been too cerebral about what type of player he needs to be as the Flyers Captain. Truth be told I liked him better as an A. But I think he's still learning and will come around. And in the end I think his name will be right up there with Yzerman and Messier when all is said and done. Just right now, he needs to get back to playing hockey. And part of that means that every player on the opposition should know that if for some reason they cause him to fight the rest of the Flyers army is coming at them with all they have - both in regards to goals and fists.