Remember when everyone used to talk about Scott Hartnell? Yeah, that was just a couple months ago. And now amidst questions among our bottom 6 forwards, the addition of Chris Pronger and Ray Emery, wondering whether Claude Giroux or Danny Briere will be moved to wing, or both, taking a guess at whether or not Jeff Carter can reproduce or even improve upon last season's stats, feeling out Simon Gagne's groin injuries, monitoring the progress of Matt Carle, asking Mike Richards what it means to add such a veteran presence to the team, predicting that Randy Jones is going to be placed on waivers and Ole-Kristian Tollefsen is going to be our 6th defenseman, and speculating on whether or not Kimmo's going to lose his "A" we seem to have totally forgotten about our fourth leading scorer from last year. What did Hartnell do to deserve this lack of attention? Well, had a career year last season and stayed healthy is all.

The Philadelphia MSM and their single type writer really seem to decide what's on the menu at this place, which makes sense I suppose. You'd think a 27 year old who's point production hit an all-time high last year would be a big story coming into the 2009-10 season, but not a word has been mentioned about the poor (rich) guy. It's true he's had a quiet pre-season in the few games he's played, but I for one am expecting even bigger things from Hartnell this campaign.

Among the 60 players who had 100 penalty minutes or more last season only 2 had more points than Hartnell - Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry. I'd say that's pretty good company. I'd also say that's good enough company to compare Hartnell to a Cam Neely, Kevin Stevens, or Keith Tkachuk in any of their primes. Sure Hartnell didn't score 50 goals and add another 60 assists like those guys were doing but this is a different NHL. Benchmark those stats and Hartnell is one of the elite power forwards in the game.

Hartnell was also only one of three Flyers who played all 82 games last year. With advances in medicine and training I feel like fans really only expect about 76 games out of each player each year and Hartnell was as reliable as you get.

But yep, no story there. Let's focus on the possibility of bad news and looking into our crystal ball and imagining what might happen in the next couple weeks over and over and over and over.

......

I wish I had a transcript of the Flyers live show during the first day of training camp when Tim Panaccio said about 14 times that Rabbit was going to need some seasoning in the AHL and would probably come up mid year like Claude Giroux did last year. Because when I read his stuff lately he seems like he's coming off as the sports writer who moved up to UNH last year to do Rabbit's homework for him when he didn't have time so that he could get in more practice and be ready for the NHL this October. He knew all along....