Things you remember from being a kid ...
Wanamaker's in Center City. The Eagle. The pipe organ. The restaurant on the 9th floor.
That restaurant is now the Crystal Tea Room and on Tuesday, the Philadelphia Sports Congress honored a number of people, including Flyers chairman Ed Snider and center Claude Giroux.
It's been so long I had not realized that NO Flyer player had won the Wanamaker Award as the city's top athlete since ... Bernie Parent in 1975. Honest. I would have guessed that Eric Lindros had to have won that at least once during the 1990s.
Really, what athlete in Philly was more dominating in his sport or in this town in the 90s other than Lindros? Yet he never won it.
“I didn’t know what the award was until I looked it up,” Giroux told me.
“It’s bigger than I thought. It’s a great honor to win this award. It’s weird to see that Lindros never won and he had a lot of great years. I feel pretty lucky to win this.”
Giroux showed so much leadership on and off the ice this season that you would have assumed he was the Flyers captain if you didn't know they had someone else or that Chris Pronger was shelved with post-concussion syndrome.
Mike Richards never asked for the captaincy. It was bestowed on him by the club and I felt he wasn't ready for it. Some people worry it might happen with Giroux, too. But Giroux genuinely WANTS to be this team's focal point and I think he would embrace the captaincy with a very different attitude than Richards if offered it.
An aside: GM Paul Holmgren, while insisting he still hopes Pronger returns next season, admits there has been no change whatsoever in Pronger's status.
The Flyers can't go another year without a fulltime captain. And I feel Giroux has the inside track though I don't discount Kimmo Timonen or Danny Briere.
Back to the awards ... Snider was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
He told me this was "special" to him because it encompassed everything he has done as a sports entrepreneur in the City and not just centering on hockey. It honors his business acumen and not just his passion for hockey.
There's much more to today's events, including some poignant moments among the other guests honored that left Snider visibly moved.
For more, check out CSNPhilly.com:
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Philadelphia Flyers Blogger • 
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