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Mike Richards responds to all the hubbub surrounding ‘Dry Island’

richardslaviolette

James

In what might be the least shocking development of the week, current Los Angeles Kings and former Philadelphia Flyers center Mike Richards downplayed the “Dry Island” rumors during a Tuesday appearance on TSN’s That’s Hockey.

Richards didn’t deny the existence of the somewhat comically named idea, he just put it in what is likely the most realistic context: that it wasn’t that big of a deal. Now, it’s quite possible that character issues still were among the top reasons that the Flyers decided to part ways with Richards and Jeff Carter. It’s just tough to fathom that it all fell apart because they opted against enlisting in the equivalent to giving up booze for Lent.

Say what you will about Richards’ prickly relationship with the Philadelphia media - one of the other leading reasons why people think that he was traded - but he’s right that the duo didn’t get traded because of “Dry Island.” Richards even paraphrased the Las Vegas tourism motto when responding to the gossip.

“I believe what happens in the dressing room should stay in the dressing room,” Richards told TSN’s That’s Hockey on Tuesday. “It was just something that happened for a handful of guys, just more of a playful thing that half the team took part in and the other half didn’t.

“It wasn’t a big deal...It was just a joke around the locker room and obviously leaked out and someone’s trying to make a mountain out of it.”

(snip)

“It couldn’t be further from the truth,” Richards told TSN. “Unfortunately, things get blown out of proportion and things get said and taken out of context too. I’m not sure if people are trying to get a sense of it or trying to convince other people that it was the reason, but at the same time, it’s not true at all.”


It’s easy to scoff a bit at “what happens in the locker room, stays in the locker room” line but it cuts to the core of this story’s biggest issue. If it’s true that Flyers GM Paul Holmgren gave his team a facelift for reasons that go beyond the franchise’s desperate urge for a reliable goalie, then he still has some surgery to do. Having two “unnamed sources” spill the beans about the inner workings of their locker room cannot be a great sign for the team’s sense of order.Philadelphia Sports Daily transcribed some comments from Laviolette, who echoed the sentiment about locker room details surfacing but didn’t seem to think that “Dry Island” was such a “playful thing.”

“I just don’t think a lot of that should come out,” Laviolette said on 97.5 FM Monday, “for the simple reason of what you guys are talking about. Maybe some guys do some things, maybe some guys don’t do some things. And then there’s a reflection of what does happen or doesn’t happen from inside the locker room and it paints a poor picture.”

However, Laviolette didn’t see “Dry Island” as a “joke” or “playful thing,” as Richards suggested.

“My point was whether you were having three glasses of wine, or one beer, or one vodka — my point was that any alcohol that got taken out of play in that stretch run, while we were trying to push to get back to the playoffs, could have helped our team in any way,” he said. “We did the best we could to get back into position of the playoffs.”

Ultimately, this is a story because of the team and players involved - not to mention how funny the phrase “Dry Island” looks in print. Blaming partying as the driving force behind the departure of the Flyers’ still-young center duo is even sillier than calling anything “Dry Island.”