Dick Tony's Albums of 2015, pt. 1

This blog is part one of a three part series regarding my favorite records of 2015, along with an accompanying Spotify playlist. 

Alex G

Beach Music (Domino)

Every review or article I've read about Alex G since the release of last year's excellent DSU features the same smattering of vague descriptors one might decipher as praise; prodigy, bedroom, Philly, Elliott Smith, eclectic, etc. Sure, these terms all apply to varying degrees, but they do little to describe the sonic pallet the 22 year old Havertown native utilizes on his Domino debut. Beach Music is, quite simply, its own animal. I could grab my copy of David Byrne's How Music Works and write a dissertation on this record, but it still wouldn't adequately depict anything. This is why we have ears, and this is an album that cannot be summed up by Pitchfork.

Highlights: Kicker, Mud, Brite Boy

Cloakroom

Further Out (Run For Cover)

Cloakroom's follow-up to their excellent debut Infinity is an absolutely mammoth mothefucker. This midwest trio borrows more from 90's era "slowcore" (think Bedhead or Codeine) than the now beaten-to-death shoegaze misnomer they've been tagged with. The bass tone on this record is absolutely flawless and, coupled with a percussionist dead set on putting his entire fist through his snare drum, drives Further Out's 10 tracks while Grown Up's alum Doyle Martin croons tales of witchcraft, the moon, and the power of the leaf in a tone that would likely have David Bazan confused and looking in the mirror to make sure it wasn't coming from his own mouth.

Highlights: Outta Spite, Moon Funeral, Paperweight

Title Fight

Hyperview (Anti-)

Anyone that has followed the trajectory of this Kingston quartet shouldn't be surprised by the so-called "drastic" sonic shift Title Fight displays on their third LP. This album is going to inspire a legion of bands to trade their flannel t-shirts and Dan Yemin records for a chorus pedal and Jesus and Mary Chain LP. Hyperview impresses on multiple fronts; at its best, tracks like Rose of Sharon exemplify the same urgency as any standout from Floral Green or Shed while managing to achieve a new level of audial dynamic and vulnerability. This is hardcore?

Highlights: Rose of Sharon, Chlorine, New Vision

Air Formation

Were We Ever Here (Club AC30)

2014 was the year of the shoegaze revival; Slowdive reunited, Nothing sold more merch than Wawa did hoagies, and I finally convinced my friends to play songs with me through a bunch of DD4 pedals. 2015, in contrast, was mostly a year of inevitable backlash. Whirr pissed off the entire internet (and, according to most, were never even good, bro) and most of the new bands that popped up in the wake of Guilty of Everything (including the band that made it) disowned the title and started writing Smashing Pumpkins b-sides. Lost in the shuffle, unfortunately, was the reformation and new EP from UK legends Air Formation, a group so criminally underrated that I don't believe they've ever even stepped foot on US soil. Were We Ever Here is as beautiful as it is brief and serves as a nice foot note to an excellent discography. Fans of Souvlaki-era Slowdive and Lush should be all over this.

Highlights: I Could Stay, The Wasted Days

Earl Sweatshirt

I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside (Tan Cressida/Columbia)

Simply put, Earl Sweatshirt has come a long way from the cringe-worthy shock rap of his teenage years as a member of the infamous Odd Future collective, while managing to capitalize and improve upon the potential shown within the group's first releases.  I Don't Like Shit is a sparse look into the mind of a 20-something, and it plays as depressing as it does enthralling. This record oozes with equal parts pun and mommy issues, yet the self-depreciation doesn't sound contrived. Earl is an interesting anomaly within the present day rap game; this kid is either going to become the next Nas, or in a worst case scenario, the next Kid Cudi.

Highlights: Faucet, Wool, Grief

Rivers of Nihil-Monarchy (Metal Blade)

Rivers of Nihil's sophomore release for Metal Blade, to put it bluntly, will fucking devastate you. As heavy and musically proficient as any of their peers, the Reading, PA based quintet have managed to up the ante in every conceivable way the second time around, crafting a truly progressive and captivating album in a genre that considers the mere discovery of a clean channel to be innovative. Guitarist Brody Utley isn't afraid to let his various virtuosic influences show here; the record's second half shows strong shades of Steven Wilson and David Gilmour while still remaining cohesive to the whole piece. Jake Dieffenbach's vocals sacrifice no intensity in their annunciation, and Adam Biggs gives credence to the concept of a lead bass guitarist. Monarchy features the heaviest and catchiest material the group has recorded to date.

Highlights: Monarchy, Perpetual Growth Machine, Terrestria II: Thrive

Pears

Letters to Memaw (Fat Wreck Chords)

It only took Pears 4 minutes and 7 inches of wax to outdo every other punk record of 2015.

Action Bronson

Mr. Wonderful (Atlantic)

Action Bronson's persona is, admittedly, perhaps the best explanation for his career's meteoric rise, but that isn't to say his musical output hasn't been commendable. Known for his flat out ridiculous subject matter, Bronson's first proper full length sees the Fuck, That's Delicious star shed his reputation as simply a mixtape rapper. Mr. Wonderful is one of the most cohesive records of the year, in any genre. Tracks like Falconry and Only in America are certified lyrical bangers, but it's the combination of interlude Thug Love Story 2017 and standout City Boy Blues that give the album its identity as the year's best soulful hip hop record. 

(Yes, I heard To Pimp a Butterfly. It's a wonderful album on every album of the year list, and I don't feel the need to write about it.)

Highlights: City Boy Blues, Baby Blue, Easy Rider

Drinking with an Asshole: an Evening with John Lindsay

John Lindsay is not the prototypical published author. By all accounts, he is not quite a prototypical human being.

Lindsay is a 27-year-old homeowner and an admitted (functioning) alcoholic.

His website dontevenreply.com, a crass collection of email threads in which he “fucks with gullible assholes for profit”, netted him a book deal with Sterling Publishing, a contract with an entertainment agency and meetings with the likes of Viacom to pitch a pilot produced by Joel McHale, all before his 26^th birthday.

The key to his success?

“Not giving a fuck, I guess. Or just being an unrepentant asshole.”

I am acquainted with Lindsay through a collection of mutual friends, but tracking him down for an interview has been daunting. Over the last few months, he has been in and out of the United States performing his “adult” job as a solutions consultant for a small collection of undisclosed insurance companies. Writing has always been a hobby of Lindsay’s, but only a series of fortuitous circumstances lead to it supplementing his income. Talking about his writing, subsequently, came across as the last thing he felt like doing.

After a few weeks of text messages back and forth, I finally track him down on a Friday night after agreeing to meet at the Sprout Music Collective in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I walk in to find Lindsay sitting at the bar sipping a double Jameson neat. “I just got back from Puerto Rico last night on a redeye,” he tells me, his voice sounding worn.

“I’m leaving for Ireland in two days. Don’t make this feel like work.”

I casually try and jump into conversation by asking him how he likes Puerto Rico. He tells me that he enjoys the weather, but he is in and out of taxis and meetings too frequently to enjoy the local culture.

“The beer is shitty, anyway,” he warns. “Seriously, it will make you shit your pants.”

“I work with computers,” he tells me when I ask about his day-to-day work. “I let rich people who run insurance companies look at their iPads to figure out they can jack up insurance costs on women who drive SUVs. “

John Lindsay’s sense of humor is rooted in vulgarity and shock tactics. He tells the type of jokes that don’t need punchlines, and he sells them with a stonewalled poker face that makes you wonder if he’s actually kidding or if he’s really that fucked in the head. Any semblance of political correctness is foreign to him.

There’s a funk band, complete with a horn section, half-assing their way through a Black Sabbath medley.

“This band is fucking AIDS,” he deadpans.

His expression reminds me of the last time we were in a room together. We played Texas Hold Em’, and the man took everything but my underwear.

I ask him if he’s played any cards lately.

“Yeah, I flew out to Vegas for a weekend a month ago. I got comped rooms and the flights were cheap enough. I lost 500 bucks, but fuck it. The booze was free, too.”

Lindsay tells me he is a “spontaneous kind of cat” when I press him on the spur of the moment vacation. This type of spontaneity is what sparked his entire writing “career”.

The entire thing was an accident.

“I didn’t have a car. I was on craigslist trying to find a cheap vehicle and every time I thought I found a deal, I kept getting dicked around by people. I was getting pissed off and then I saw this stupid bitch’s ad. It was just…it was just so entitled.”

“It read something like ‘I need a brand new Ford Explorer for me and my 3 beautiful children and it’s gotta be this and that and ‘blah blah blah’ and it’s gotta be 1500 bucks. I was like “fuck this”, and I just started messing with her. I tried selling her O.J’s Bronco, all torn to shit, stuff like that, and she got so upset that I just kept doing it because it was so funny. I got her 4 or 5 times and then I decided, “eh, that was pretty fun.”

“So I started trying to bait other people into shit like that, and it just became it’s own thing.”

That thing quickly morphed into an internet phenomenon. dontevenreply.com, equipped with Google’s advertising services, started generating John upwards of a  few hundred dollars a month. Reddit and similar website sharing communities ate it up, and soon enough copycat pages were attempting to recreate and, in some cases, flat out plagiarize his work.

Through it all, Lindsay kept pumping out new material.

He tried to convince a woman looking to find after-school transportation for her daughter that she needed an armed motorcade and military convoy, complete with a Deer Hunter-style testimonial from a colleague.

He tried to sell a fully automate Glock 18c handgun “disguised” by a plastic Solo cup to a man looking for stealthy weaponry. When the man declined, he offered a case of Sprite containing a “badass M16” as an alternative.

He offered an 18-year old college kid looking for summer employment a job cutting up dead horses with a chainsaw and disposing of them in his neighbor’s lake.

He even tried to barter his “whore of a wife” for a 1994 Jeep Wrangler.

“All I needed was an idea, and with the amount of dumb shit you see on craigslist on any given day, it wasn’t hard. Once I had someone on the hook, I just wanted to take it as far as I could. I was weaving it into my day to day. I could do it from work, or at home, or even at the bar.”

Entertainment agents flooded his inbox, and talks of a book deal materialized. Lindsay started to realize the potential for monetization was high.

“Maybe after a year, some guy emailed me and was like ‘you know your ads are the wrong size?” So I changed them and, then…holy shit, pretty much.”

Lindsay signed with an agent and started taking meetings. He eventually signed a deal with Sterling Publishing, a New York based company not exactly known for their work in the comedic non-fiction world.

“When I went in there, it was all young kids, and one of them came up to me and said ‘dude, thanks for writing this book, because we do mostly self-help shit and it’s boring as hell, and this is the first exciting thing we’ve ever had.”

His towering epic, Emails from an Asshole, was released on April 1^st, 2010 to moderate critical acclaim and, according to his agent, impressive sales. It contained 70% new material and a “greatest hits” collection from the website.

“It’s like Sasha Baron Cohen on the internet,” proclaimed Jane Wells of CNBC.

Show runners at MTV and Comedy Central starting calling, intrigued by the back-and-forth interactions within the book. They envisioned a Crank Yankers style show based around his ideas, with live actors reenacting the dialogue.

Meanwhile, Lindsay continued updating dontevenreply.com and started considering ideas for a follow up.

“We were supposed to have a second book, and in the final stages they made me an offer for more money than the first one. Then they pulled out.”

“We found out the president of Sterling was super fuckin’ offended by the first book and wanted nothing to do with me going forward.”

What started as a few running gags on a crudely designed website was making actual waves in the publishing world.

“They pretty much burnt their bridge with ICM (the entertainment agency representing Lindsay) with that one.  I don’t know what happened after, but from what I’ve heard, that really fucked up their relationship with (Sterling).”

He went on to take a few meetings in Los Angeles with a group of television executives, but after talks of a possible holding deal, nothing ever materialized.

“They said they were trying to get away from the whole ‘reality’ thing, which is weird because that shit is bigger now than it’s ever been.”

Although his experience working within the entertainment field may have ended abruptly, Lindsay is still receiving royalties from sales of the book (“apparently it’s selling well in France, which is fucking bizarre,” he quips) and advertising revenue from dontevenreply.

He seems content with how his foray into the publishing and entertainment industries played out. He owns a house in West Goshen, a suburban neighborhood 35 minutes southwest of Philadelphia (“a fucking tree fell through my roof last summer,” he casually mentions) and clocks 40+ hour weeks at his consulting job.

As Lindsay orders another double Jameson, I ask him if his experiences with the industry left any lingering bad taste in his mouth.

He looks as if he is in deep thought and inhales deeply as the tone-deaf funk band continues hammering away in the background.

Then he snickers and calls me a pussy for ordering a beer instead of whiskey and gives me the kind of candid answer you might expect from a guy who’s only published works label him an asshole.

“There’s a ton of those blog-to-book things now, and it’s their desperate attempt to cling onto the way times are now with the internet. They have to deal with Amazon and Kindles, e-readers, all that shit. They’re, I don’t know…trying to capture youth again?”

“Fuck ‘em.”

Test Blog: Rubén Amaro, Jr.: Purveyor of Listlessness

May 5th, 2014- The 2014 Philadelphia Phillies are one game over .500 and one and a half games behind the Atlanta Braves for first place in the NL East. They are fresh off of a 1-0 win from fifth starter Roberto Hernandez in a game that featured a triple from Jimmy Rollins, an RBI single from Chase Utley, and closer Jonathan Papelbon's ninth save in ten opportunities.

All things considered, the Phillies are having an above average spring. They're contending in an admittedly depleted division. Ryan Howard has gotten off to one of his hottest offensive starts since 2008. Cliff Lee continues to piss excellence, or whatever it is other Philly sports blogs have dubbed it. "Marquee" signing Marlon Byrd has been serviceable, if not an asset.

So why does the entire city seem to feel so listless about its baseball team?

To say there was a lack of excitement going into spring training would be an understatement. Sports radio hosts could barely create the dialogue they're paid to manufacture without getting Rubén Amaro or John Kruk on the phone. The conversation continually shifted back to the Eagles. The Desean Jackson saga was a godsend for ratings and dominated the top of the hour chatter through the start of the season.

Amaro has proven himself to be the definition of mediocre throughout his tenure with the Phillies. He inherited the keys to a baseball kingdom full of treasures, and like his predecessor Pat Gillick, has never shied away from making the big move. In many ways, however, most of those "choices" were almost certainly handed down from above. The smaller baseball decisions have presumably been Amaro's alone. At best, they've led to complacency. At worst, they've been atrocious.

It would be flat out asinine to blame Howard's monstrous contract or Rollins' resigning on Amaro while David Montgomery continues to sit comfortably upstairs, letting Amaro's smug face serve as a symbolic punching bag for fans and bloggers alike. To suggest Amaro acted alone in acquiring Halladay or reacquiring Cliff Lee would be foolish. The ownership group hasn't been meek about the return they want on their investment, especially post 2008. In situations where Wade or Gillick may have been handicapped, Amaro has been given the green light to spend well into luxury tax territory.

Amaro's micromanagement has been his true Achilles' Heel. His lack of charisma further harms his reputation.

Papelbon is off to the best start of his Phillies' career and may be returning to form. He's still one of the most unlikeable players to ever wear a Philadelphia uniform. The rest of the bullpen is a mess; it's like playing roulette at Sugar House casino every time Antonio Bastardo or Mike Adams takes the mound. Freddy Galvis, boasting an awe inspiring .032 batting average, is somehow still getting regular playing time.

We're dealing with the most uncharismatic team to grace South Philly since the Ed Wade era. Jimmy Rollins has pronounced himself "untradable" and seems more interested in chasing individual Phillie records than a pennant. Ryan Howard continues to alternate between looking at strike three and attempting to pull balls into the parking lot while showing occasional flashes of his former self. Chase Utley, currently hitting .346, seems destined to come back down to earth. It'll be a minor miracle if he stays healthy through 162 games.

The "feel good" guys Phillies' fans felt compelled to cheer for in the past are gone. There is no Raul Ibanez, Placido Polanco, or Shane Victorino on this club. Marlon Byrd could hit .400 and knock in 100 this year, but he'll still have the pizzaz of a dying fish. Matt Stairs exudes more personality from the press box than the majority of the Phillies' roster.

This team is going to win some ball games. They may even make the playoffs. Just don't expect anyone to notice until July or August.

Even if Papelbon, Byrd, and Hernandez continue to perform to Amaro's expectations, it won't buy the GM much good will. Anything short of a pennant and we're back to square one next season with little to show for it. The cupboard has been stripped bare over the years. There's almost nothing to be excited about in the pipeline. Ken Giles continues to show promise in Reading, but doesn't project to crack the big club bullpen anytime soon. Maikel Franco is 6 for 14 in his last 3 games with one home run and a .206 batting average. Anthony Hewitt is looking more and more like a total bust.

The Phillies are Rubén Amaro's baby. They're built to compete now, but any kind of real run would be unprecedented by MLB standards and in all likelihood change the perception of Amaro and his legacy.

It all seems like a stretch. The hopes and dreams of the team rests solely on Amaro's Heroes, a group of crabby millionaires with World Series rings and misfit veterans with the collective charm of a broken window in Upper Darby. Ladies and gentlemen, your 2014 Philadelphia Phillies.

High hopes!

Test Blog: "Together" We Build

I've recently come to an unsettling revelation regarding my Philadelphia sports fandom: I can no longer support, endorse, or cheer for the 76ers.

As it stands, I actively despise them. 

It's not the team's abysmal style of play that bothers me. Throughout the shitstorm of the 2013-2014 NBA season, the Sixers seemed to battle harder than their putrid record suggests. They lost the lion's share of their games in relatively close fashion. There weren't a ton of blowouts. Brett Brown seemed genuinely invested in fighting futility, God bless his soul. Michael Carter-Williams is a no brainer for Rookie of the Year and arguably the single most exciting talent to don a 76ers jersey since Allen Iverson. 

No, what irks the hell out of me about the current Philadelphia 76ers is the mindset. 

This team is going to be a meticulously crafted pile of dog shit for the next few seasons. The front office has publicly admitted as much. It's a method that has become quite popular in the NBA (and the NHL, to a lesser extent), specifically in the salary cap era: if the current roster isn't built to win, management blows it up, hordes cap space, and tanks for a lottery pick. The Sixers did it this year. They want to do it next year, too. Logic dictates it's a distinct possibility for the indefinite future.

Joshua Harris, Sam Hinkie, and the rest of the Sixers brass want you to embrace this. They want you to smile, say thank you, and then open your mouths and take a big bite of the shit sandwich while they take your picture and put it on Instagram. The audacity of having a slogan like "Together We Build" during one of the worst campaigns in the history of professional sports is infuriating.

"We" aren't building a damn thing. "We" aren't doing anything but intentionally losing games in the hopes of finding one or more 18-22 year old kids who can somehow turn water into win. We're praying to Jesus, Moses, and Satan that these messiahs attract real talent to Philadelphia in support of the youth movement. 

The Philadelphia 76ers want you to accept a losing culture in the hopes that they'll bottom out and return to contention. They want you to be excited about it. They want you to ignore cautionary tales like the Cleveland Cavaliers, who employed this very same methodology and used it to draft the league's best player, yet still can't find their way out of the basement. They want you to believe buying 12 dollar tickets on Stubhub is the equivalent of being a janitor at Google in the late 90s. You're getting in on the ground floor!

Sure, this could all work out in the organization's favor. The NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins are the quintessential example of what can happen when your tank goes right. Sidney Crosby, Marc Andre Fleury, and Jordan Staal were all first overall picks, and Evegeni Malkin was taken second only after Alexander Ovechkin came off the board. They've been perennial contenders and won a Stanley Cup as a result, but only after Yinzer Jesus Mario Lemieux rescued them from a move to Kansas City in 2004. Their fanbase will tell you they were along for the ride in the late 90s and early 2000s, but most can't name 5 roster players from the era. 

As the saying goes: "fuck the Penguins, Crosby sucks." 

The Flyers, for all of their shortcomings, have remained one of the most competitive teams in North American sports for almost their entire existence. Since the first lockout in 1994, they've only missed the playoffs twice. If and when they finally get it done (which is a topic for another blog, of course), it's going to taste much sweeter knowing they didn't have to adopt a losing culture to get there. 

Drafts in professional sports are designed to promote parity. The lesser teams, in theory, receive a quality piece that should help them avoid the lottery in the years to follow. The Sixers are attempting to completely circumvent and abuse this process. Their top pick from last year's draft didn't play a single game. Their other rookie was their single best player. With the exception of Thad Young, who has to consider playing in China a better choice than spending another year in Philadelphia, every other player was traded for second round picks, cap space, and in some instances, absolutely nothing. All of this in the hopes of landing the first ping pong ball and drafting Andrew Wiggins or Jabari Parker.

Wiggins, for all of his talent, couldn't get his team into the Sweet 16, let alone compete for a championship. He's an elite player, by all indications, but not one capable of carrying a team by himself. Parker has proven he's a gamer, but scouts seem mixed on how his game will transfer to the NBA.

How can you cheer for a team knowing they would likely forfeit their entire season if it were legal? How can you spend even a cent of your hard earned coin on anything bearing the team's logo? How can you pretend like the tank never happened when the clouds part? What if those clouds never part?

The scary part about promoting a losing culture is realizing more often than not the culture will permeate. Time will tell if this is the case for the Philadelphia 76ers. Are we willing to forgive Joshua Harris if the franchise turns it around? History suggests winning will bring back the casual fans just as quickly as losing ran them out of the building. 

The answer for me, however, is a resounding no, even if that asshole decides to sell the Devils. 

Test Post: Panaccio: Hartnell and Berube Not Speaking

Somewhere in southern California, two former Flyers are laughing their asses off.

CSN beat writer extraordinaire Tim Panaccio, presumably distressed about having to spend yet another offseason watching his former BFFs Mike Richards and Jeff Carter chase the Stanley Cup, is once again chasing assistant captains out of Philadelphia.

Panaccio, if you'll recall, doesn't have the greatest track record when it comes to player rapport. Timmy's knack for stirring the shit eventually helped uncover the "Dry Island" scandal that rocked the Jersey Shore and Center City a few years back while simultaneously engaging in a twitter war with Richards, who accused Panaccio of writing "articles that are nowhere close to true".

So far, there are no reports suggesting Craig Berube revived Dry Island during the Flyers' series with the Rangers, but if he did, Scott Hartnell missed the memo.

In fact, Hartnell may have missed a couple of Berube's memos, because according to Panaccio, the two are not speaking to one another.

The displaced redhead of the famed "Ginger Line" is apparently dying his beard somewhere in the depths of Berube's shitlist. Panaccio's latest piece of tabloid fare, published yesterday on csnphilly.com, suggests Hartnell is furious about being demoted to the fourth line and forced to play with Vincent Lecavalier, perhaps the only Flyer more overpaid than himself.

Hartnell took to his twitter to dispel the rumors:

"not true at all BUCKO"

Direct hit! Panaccio, likely infuriated with being referred to by his childhood nickname, responded almost immediately.

"believe what you want"

Bucko has truly upped his game since running Richie and Carts out of town. He's using twitter's informal language and complete lack of grammar to his advantage, all the while keeping his defensively vague tone intact. His casualness suggests he's a reporter with nothing to lose, and he won't let silly journalistic trends like citations and attributed quotes stand in his way.

Whether or not there is any actual merit to Panaccio's claim is irrelevant. What matters is that he now has a story to run with while his former nemeses chase another cup in Los Angeles.

This is the stuff trade fodder is made of, folks. Strap in and prepare yourselves for daily trade "rumors" involving Hartnell, Shea Weber, Dustin Byfuglien, and the third Schenn brother you didn't know existed. It's going to be a summer of "silence that speaks volumes" from Berube, Homer, and co.

Tim Panaccio is here for you every step of the way, or at least every other day, assuming he doesn't decide to have Sarah Baicker run Buzzfeed-style lists about Ray Emery and Cal Heeter instead.

Do us all a favor, BUCKO, and have some of your Russian Mob buddies plant some coke on Andrew MacDonald so we're not stuck with six more years of porous defensive end turnovers.

Panaccio, by the way, still has yet to confirm or deny his suspected involvement with the Russian Mafia. Silence speaks volumes.

Future Los Angeles King Scott Hartnell could not be reached for comment.

TEST POST: How the Flyers Ruined Erik Gustafsson

The Philadelphia Flyers' press box is where NHL defensemen go to die.

For the past few years, the upper levels of the Wells Fargo Center have seen their fair share of aging vets: Pavel Kubina, Kurt Foster, Andreas Lilja, and the much maligned (and maimed by twitter users across the Delaware Valley) Hal Gill, to name a few. Erik Gustafsson, at the ripe age of 25, has spent FIFTY SIX games shooting the shit with Sam Carchidi and Frank Seravalli this season alone.

Gustafsson, now in his fourth season with the Flyers, had split time between Adirondack and Philadelphia in his previous three. 2013-2014 was supposed to be the year the young Swede would finally see enough ice time to iron out the bumps in his pro game. After a stellar run as a top pairing defenseman for Sweden in their gold medal run at the 2013 World Championships, armchair GMs and local media alike had "Gus" penciled in as the Flyers' sixth defensemen going forward. On paper, his game looked like a perfect fit for the big club: a young, mobile puck mover with second power play unit potential and the ability to soften the quickly aging (and similarly undersized) Kimmo Timonen's minutes.

It didn't work out that way.

Gustafsson didn't suit up for any of Peter Laviolette's final games behind the Flyer bench. He managed to hit the ice in 31 of Craig Berube's 79 games, but beyond a 5 and 8 game stretch in October and November, respectively, never managed to crack the lineup for an extended period. In those 13 games, Gus had 5 points and was a +3 while averaging around 17 minutes of ice time. Not particularly notable, but more than serviceable for a 25 year old third pairing player.

Certainly more than serviceable for a player that held the distinction of being the Flyers best (only?) defensive prospect before the recent signings of Robert Haag, Sam Morin, and Frozen Four MVP Shayne Gostisbehere.

Still, Gustafsson has only seen 11 games in 2014, and no more than 3 consecutively. He's a +5 with 5 points this calendar year.

With the addition of Andrew MacDonald and the relative health of the Flyers' blueline this season, it's not all that surprising that Gustafsson couldn't secure a regular spot in the lineup. What is surprising is the nonchalant attitude the Flyer organization has shown in terms of developing their own defensive talent.

Gus has spent most of his time at the rink getting his ear chewed off by beat writers and veterans in the twilight of their career while a floundering cast of glorified dinosaurs (Kubina, Lilja, Gill) and defensive miscreants (Andrej Meszaros, Bruno Gervais) ate big minutes for the Orange and Black.

What exactly, then, are the Flyers looking for out of Gustafsson?

"I don't think I'm looking for anything more than what he's capable of," said Berube earlier this month. "Confidence comes from playing. I think a lot of times, confidence comes from knowing that you're in every night."

By that logic, it should be to the surprise of no one that Gustafsson has struggled to piece together a real semblance of consistency in his game. Defensemen are notorious for taking much longer to develop than forwards. In Philadelphia, they don't develop at all.

Despite his strong showing at the World's last year, Gus wasn't expected to get top pairing minutes. He was, however, expected to be able to crack the line up for an extended period of time and be given the opportunity to iron out the kinks in his pro game and ideally flesh out some of his offensive potential.

Instead, he was shuffled back to the press box at the first hint of a gaffe to be taught lessons in being a consummate professional from consummate professional Hal Gill. When an injury to Nick Grossmann opened up a spot in the line up, that spot went to the only man who has spent more time with Carchidi and Co. than the young defenseman: Hal Gill.

Gustafsson may not have been a difference maker in Game 5, but recent history suggests he wouldn't have been a minus player.  Gill, for his part, was a -2 and directly responsible for at least one Ranger goal.

Realistically, the trials and tribulations of Erik Gustafsson will be nothing but a footnote in Flyers history. He'll probably continue to be a fringe player under this management and coaching group if resigned as a restricted free agent, and it more than likely won't affect their long term success. However, with guys like Morin and Gostisbehere waiting in the wings, the Flyers are going to need to seriously reevaluate how they develop homegrown defensive talent. Handing out huge contracts to stopgap guys like MacDonald equates to lodging a piece of chewing gum in a leaky hose. Sure, he'll patch the hole for a short period of time, but it's not a long term fix. Eventually, you're going to end up soaked.

The Flyers are going to have to give regular ice time for extended periods of time to these guys if they hope for them to become star caliber players (or even serious minute eaters) at the pro level. They're going to take time to develop in the NHL, and they're going to quickly outgrow the AHL just like Gus did. Hopefully, the coaching staff won't take the same shortsighted approach in delegating ice time.

Erik Gustafsson needs to be a cautionary tale towards changing the organizational standard.

REVIEW: Marriages "Kitsune"

Read the full review on Stereokiller.com

"With only one EP under their collective belt and exactly one trek of the proper (read: beyond the state of California) United States, it would be easy to label Los Angeles' dreampop three-piece Marriages as yet another upstart act in the shoegaze revival of the current decade. The reality, of course, is that vocalist/guitarist Emma Ruth Rundle and bassist Greg Burns have both spent the better part of their lives toiling around with some rather notable acts, culminating in their work with post-rock innovators Red Sparowes..."