Kurz: Im thrilled to be back in Philadelphia and be your new Flyers beat writer

Growing up in the Philadelphia suburbs, there are, naturally, certain things I can still remember loving as a kid.
Mack & Manco’s pizza in Ocean City. Sitting in the 700 level at the Vet with friends for an afternoon game. Jim’s Steaks on South Street. Reggie White. Late-night Wawa runs. Mark Howe.
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On the other hand, of course, I can also vividly recall some of the things I hated. Peas. Michael Irvin. Math class. The Mets. Piano lessons.
And Claude Lemieux.
The goal Lemieux scored from just inside the blue line in the 1995 Eastern Conference final was particularly crushing. That Flyers team, led by a dominant season from Eric Lindros, could very well have won the Stanley Cup were it not for that half-slapper that somehow drifted its way past Ron Hextall with less than a minute left to give the Devils a 3-2 series lead. They would close it out at home in Game 6.
Eight years earlier, Lemieux helped provide one of my first memories as a sports fan — heck, it was probably one of my first memories, in general — when he started a pregame brawl between the Canadiens and the Flyers in the 1987 playoffs. Any Flyers fan who was around back then surely remembers it, particularly the image of a shirtless Dave Brown going at it with Montreal’s Chris Nilan with no officials in sight.
And Doug Crossman out there in flip-flops.
There are too many enjoyable aspects of this job to list, but one of them is that we sometimes have the ability to revisit those memorable episodes through the connections we’ve made over the years. So, two years ago, when I wanted to put together an oral history of that moment — a seminal one for the league but also in my life as a young Philly sports fan — I needed to reach out to the man who was most involved in sparking the fracas, even if it conjured up some of those distasteful feelings from my earlier years that never seem to go away.
Within just a few minutes of messaging Lemieux, if it was even that long, my phone rang. Turns out those old-time hockey tough guys like to reminisce about the past, and Lemieux couldn’t have been more willing to give a detailed recollection of what went down.
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The result of that interview, and about a dozen others, helped me put together what is still my favorite piece I’ve done here at The Athletic, on what is, today, the six-year anniversary of my first day with what was then a nascent company.
It’s six years and a new beginning, as it turns out, as I’ll be taking over the Flyers beat here starting now.
Some more personal background: I worked for the Flyers organization in the early stages of my career before shifting to the media side to cover the Sharks for 10 years, from 2011 to ’21 (the first six of which were with Comcast SportsNet/NBC Bay Area), and then the Islanders for the past two.
My hockey career started with the AHL Phantoms, before the move to Lehigh Valley and back when they called the Spectrum home, doing public relations and team services. I moved over to the Flyers’ public relations department under the recently retired Zack Hill, and then shifted over to digital media, back when those departments were only just starting to bloom. My final season with the Flyers was 2009-10, which, as I’m sure most of you know, was easily their most thrilling season in at least the past decade and a half.
I wrote about that one here, too, as well as contributing other Flyers pieces over the years: like speaking to Jay Snider about his recollections of the Lindros trade 30 years later, or talking to Claude Giroux about being free of the captaincy after his trade to Florida, or doing profiles on Bernie Parent and Bobby Clarke for our NHL 99 project.
Suffice it to say, I’m familiar with many people who are either still in the organization or have since returned. I’m confident those connections will allow me to hit the ground running here and provide the kind of in-depth coverage The Athletic is known for. I’ve been assured we are not shirking the Philadelphia market, which was important to me before I accepted the move here from New York. (And for Islanders fans, please note there are plans to get another writer to replace me.) I’ve already booked my flights and hotels for the first four Flyers road games next month and reached out to a few colleagues about what it’s like to cover a certain fiery head coach.
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And let me state very clearly that even though I grew up a Flyers fan and then spent seven years working for the team, that’s not going to affect the way I cover them. I’ve been doing this beat writing thing long enough to know that providing honest, blunt coverage with a healthy dose of opinion and columns is the only way to do this job successfully. I learned that growing up here, in particular, reading the likes of Tim Panaccio and Les Bowen, and listening to Angelo Cataldi and Howard Eskin on my drives to and from school.
I don’t consider it a coincidence that former Eagles beat guy Tim Kawakami helped bring me aboard at The Athletic after my departure from NBC in 2017. When you’ve either lived in or spent time in the Philadelphia sports media market, there are some shared experiences that usually result in agreements on how to do the job. The fans demand it.
From a Flyers standpoint, it’s the perfect time to jump onto the beat. No one here needs me to explain that the team is bound to struggle for at least a little while longer, but that there is at least now some hope for the future with new a front office and what seems like a much clearer direction than there was a few months ago. There are some promising prospects in the system, and a willingness to be patient to let them grow. They are building. Whether it will be successful, well, we’ll find out. But it’s at least going to be interesting.
From a personal standpoint, to say I’m excited to get back home and be a part of the robust media scene in the best sports city in the country is an understatement. It took a dozen years to return, but this is exactly where I want to be.
I hope you’ll join me as we all try to figure out what this “New Era of Orange” is all about.
(Top photo of Kevin Kurz interviewing Joe Thornton)
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