Anybody else sick of player nicknames these days? The good old days had Flyers with colourful names like Battleship,Hound Dog,Big Bird,Moose and The Hammer. That is great stuff, the fans could relate and loved the players.

Now nicknames consist of adding a y to the end of everybodies name…..BORING. Who needs Jonesy or Richy or Marty? Not me forget it, lets have some fun folks. Last year I started calling Afanasankov…”The Shark” and it stuck and it even made it to the dressing room.

Let’s have some fun here and start to come up with some great ideas for nicknames. I’ll add a nickname to some players and lets see if you guys like them or can come up with better names, I’m betting you guys will have some great ideas.

Upshall…………………..The Buzzsaw

Coburn…………………..The Stork

Knuble…………………..Obi Won Knuble

Lupul……………………..Top Shelf

Carter……………………Snapper

Hartnell…………………Boots

Briere…………………….The Cookie Monster(stole it 100%)

Eager…………………….Beaver(obvious)

Umberger……………..Whopper

Timonen………………..The Lone Ranger

Anyway that’s a start, have some fun and hopefully you guys will become regular visitors to this blog, I will try to post twice a week and I have some fun ideas.

Let’s Go Flyers…..Let’s Go Flyers.

Summer is without a doubt my least favorite season of the year. I suspect that is the case for the vast majority of hockey fans, unless you live in Phoenix or Florida where it seemingly is summer all year. I sweat if I think too hard, so when it’s 90+ degrees outside with what feels like 125% humidity, I’m not a happy camper. It makes me think of Hell, and what it must feel like.

And that is what summer often becomes for me…Hell. A time of year when the only sports fix I can get is when I fall asleep watching baseball, and I thirst for even the most insignificant, inane bit of hockey or Flyers news. Forget about tuning in to SportsNite on Comcast Sportsnet and seeing a hockey story more than 30 seconds long in mid-August. It might happen once every two weeks.

But finally, the summer is drawing to a close. The temperatures are occasionally dropping into the 70′s, and preseason football is underway. While I am a football fan as well, I never really saw the NFL preseason as a sign that the Eagles were going to start their season soon, but rather as a sign that we are drawing ever closer to the opening of Flyers training camp. Call me strange for coming up with such a connection between two sports that have nothing in common, but that’s how I’ve always seen it.

And now, the clock is ticking as the Flyers and their fans are patiently going crazy waiting for the real news to begin pouring out of the Virtua Health Skate Zone in Voorhees, N.J. We recently heard a bit about Danny Briere taking the ice for the first time as a Flyer and working out with his new teammates. Big news? Not really. But we hockey-starved summer-haters will take whatever tasty morsel we can get. Throw a piece of bread at an emaciated man who hasnt eaten well in weeks, and he’ll think it’s the best bread he ever tasted. So goes our desire for Flyers news of substance.

Soon, we’ll begin hearing about rookie camp…the first real step toward the return of full blown hockey. A group of young hopefuls who are even more eager than the fans to see hockey return will do everything they can to impress the Flyers coaching staff and earn a second look as a regular on the Flyers roster. The intensity will pick up through the camp, especially with players like Steve Downie coming in, who is well-known for his sometimes over-the-top intense and physical style of play.

Shortly thereafter will come the opening of what so many Flyers fans have been waiting for…the actual training camp. The Skate Zone will be abuzz with the arrivals of Briere, Kimmo Timonen, Joffrey Lupul, Jason Smith, and the rest of the newest Flyers, all of whom come to the Flyers as the result of a massive roster overhaul by Flyers GM Paul Holmgren. Along with familiar faces Simon Gagne, Derian Hatcher, Jeff Carter, Mike Richards, Mike Knuble, and others, they will all be watched very closely and expected to help a storied franchise make a fast and profound turnaround from what was the worst season in team history in 2006-07.

Sprinkle a handful of preseason games into the training camp, and then finally comes what we all are waiting for…opening night.

The chatter of Flyer fans during the regular season is non-stop, especially during the last 10 years or so with the rise of the internet. And now, it is what we all long for…thirst for…starve for.

We can’t seem to get the new hockey year started soon enough. We can’t wait for the back and forth discussion, banter, and arguements that occompany the games night after night.

Autumn is right around the corner though. The wait is almost over. Hockey will return and thirsts will be quenched. The long, hard, boring summer is on its way out, and soon we will all be basking in all the hockey news we can stand.

Summer may seem like Hell right now, but Autumn sure sounds like Heaven to me.