Back when the team was truly a model franchise, much was made of the Oriole Way, a template that was used to draft, develop and train players and a way to teach the game in Double A and Triple A ball and then in the professional ranks. The concept was to teach a system and have a plug and play mentality with the players on the pro and amateur levels.

At the rookie game on Thursday, a friend mentioned that the Caps and Hershey were starting to remind him of the Oriole Way. We play the same system. The coaches and GMs of both teams are in synch. We draft, they develop. We replenish them, they send up prospects to us trained in the way we play the game. It is a virtuous cycle and as I promised, we would leverage the Kettler Capitals Iceplex and the Hershey Bears all as part of our overall rebuild. I thought our team looked like it had played together for a long time against the Flyers rookies.

There is never one thing that you can point to about failure or success. It is usually a systemic issue and I believe in the systems and methodologies we are delivering to build a great franchise now. Check out this article for a good write-up of what was seen at that game on Thursday.