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Flyers Alumni Fantasy Camp 2024 |
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The 10th edition of the annual Flyers Alumni Fantasy gets underway today and runs until the Fantasy Cup championship game is played on Monday. Each of the four participating teams will hold one practice apiece and then play a round-robin against the other three teams over two days. The top two teams will play for the championship the next day. The other two will play a consolation game.
There are 12 Flyers Alumni participating as the coaches of the four teams, as follows:
Team Results Guaranteed: Danny Briere, Brad Marsh, Dave Poulin
Team Toyota: Andre Dupont, John LeClair, Patrick Sharp
Team Neumann: Ian Laperriere, Keith Jones, Joe Watson
Team River Rock: Mark Howe, Mark Recchi, Paul Holmgren
Yesterday, I got together for lunch in South Philly with my friend, Brian George, who has played in each and every Fantasy Camp tourney since its creation. Through sheer coincidence, legendary Flyers PR and media manager Joe Kadlec sat at the next table with members of his family. While waiting for their food, they leafed through the 2023-24 Flyers Alumni Game program (50th Anniversary of the 1974 Stanley Cup on one side, Mark Recchi Flyers Hall of Fame induction on the other) that I wrote last year.
Interesting way to kick off Alumni Camp weekend. It's always nice to see Joe and Brian, regardless of the occasion. Brian is a native of the Philly area and grew up a Flyers and Phillies diehard like me and has maintained it despite having relocated to Illinois years ago.
For the next four days, I will be immersed in covering Fantasy Camp activities on and off the ice on a similar basis to how I would cover Rookie and NHL camp and preseason games in September. If you are interested, you can check out the annual camp journal/ running blog that I write for FlyersAlumni.net (the Alumni's official website) and for Alumni social media on Facebook and Twitter/X. Early next week, I'll have a feature article on camp for the Flyers' official site (Philadelphiaflyers.com).
It's a lot of work but it never feels like work. It's mostly just a lot of fun disguised as work. Real work is why my wife does. She's a third grade teacher, and yesterday was the official first day of the 2024-25 school year including our daughter's first day of sixth grade. Yesterday, per the weekday school routine, my wife had to get the kids up, make sure our son (who just got his driver's license) was getting himself ready, drive our daughter to school (same campus), go to her classroom and teach all day, come home and figure out dinner for the kids.
Leigh is the "rock star" of the family. Throughout the hockey season up here, she's does everything while I'm 1,300 miles away from our house in Texas. Yet she's always supportive, always my best friend and the one I turn to. Me, I wrote in the morning yesterday, had lunch at Popi's, came back from South Philly to write a bit more, then settled in during the evening to watch most of the Phillies game. Not exactly the same thing.
Anyway, as time permits this weekend before or after I go to the Class of 1923 rink, I will write the daily Flyers blog on this site. Please forgive any sparsity or brevity. On Sunday night, as always, I'll record the "Mondays with Meltzer" edition of the Flyers Daily podcast with host Jason Myrtetus.
On PhiladelphiaFlyers.com in the next few days, look for the Jamey Drysdale edition of the Offseason Spotlight series. After that, the Spotlight features will, in order, look at Morgan Frost, Egor Zamula, and Ryan Poehling.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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