Trouble already brewing?

Inquirer columnist Bob Ford files a piece today on the latest Flyers line to catch fire -- Michal Handzus, John LeClair, and Mark Recchi. Ford comments on how Hitchcock needed to tinker with his lines to help get the team out of the funk it had been in during the first half of January. Necessity is apparently also the mother of fresh line combinations in the NHL, and coach Ken Hitchcock knew he had better invent something when the Flyers were skidding through their six-game winless streak last month. The team was flat and couldn't seem to find that one group on which a game could be reliably fastened, a line that would score goals and not give them up. Which, as Hitchcock notes, is sort of the point. "I was thinking of going back to putting [Mark] Recchi, [Jeremy] Roenick and [Tony] Amonte back together, but that group wasn't having a positive effect on each other," Hitchcock said. "We had to find another combination that could carry us offensively." Ford goes on to point out that, though Hitchcock put the three together and they have combined for 43 points in the 10 games since the swoon ended, hockey lines come and go and to expect this one to go soon with another ready to replace it. Lost in the article is a deeper examination of Hitchcock’s quote. It seems clear that Hitchcock is insinuating that there are divisive forces in the locker room. For the past two years, ever since the departure of head coach Bill Barber after a very public player mutiny, little has been made of how fractious the locker is or was. Team chemistry has been touted, with GM Bob Clarke saying that if the team failed in the playoffs again it wouldn’t be the coach that would go. This was a clear threat to the players to play nice -- and well -- or else. So -- either they have the right players and they're playing nice enough and well enough, or the front office is doing a very tidy job of sweeping things under the carpet. Side note: I think I may be leaning toward the latter as a lot of people seem to think that the trading of Justin Williams dealt a severe blow to the team's chemistry.