Sam Donnellon: Former coach Hitchcock supports Flyers captain Richards

YOU JUST couldn't resist, could you, Hitch? You couldn't just gush about Mike

Richards before the game, call him a great player and a great captain, and stop right there.

"He's going to be a great captain for a long time because he stirs every drink," Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock said last evening on "Daily News Live."

Accidental choice of words? Maybe if it was some other coach, but the former Flyers coach has played the media game too long and too well for us to rule out a little mischief on his part. Hitchcock still reads the newspapers here via the Internet, still follows his old team and all the other pro teams in this town.

"When you live here," Hitch said later, "you get invested for the rest of your life in the passion of the city."

So yeah, Hitchcock is quite aware of a conversation that won't go away, about a young team with a young captain that has shared their own passion for this city maybe a bit too much.

Last June, after a lifeless end of the season was followed by a quick, first-round playoff exit, Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren answered a question about the players' off-ice lifestyle this way: "I think this all falls under the umbrella of discipline," Holmgren said. "It's off-ice discipline, it's night before a game taking better care of ourselves. That's a natural maturation process that a lot of our younger players are still going through."

That conversation has clung to this team since, partly due to some rotten rumors, partly due to some rotten hockey as well. Picked by The Hockey News to win the Stanley Cup, the Flyers this season played themselves right into renewed concern about lifestyles, and another autumn coaching change, the second of Richards' 5-year professional career.

Hitchcock was the first, of course.

"I find the coach is the last phase," Hitchcock said before the Flyers' 5-3 victory over his Blue Jackets. "There's a lot of tuning out that goes on inside the locker room with each other before it even reaches the coach's office."

There was also talk of that this season. There was a lot of rumor, a lot of it irresponsible, a lot of it unfair. Richards on Sunday defended comments he made to The Hockey News that the Philadelphia media had "thrown the team under the bus" this season once they had "a bad patch."

Asked after the game if he thought his words would have created such a buzz, he instead defended them, saying, "It's not just the writers. It's people online."

When I explained again that I was more interested in whether he had anticipated the reaction, he turned without speaking and walked into the off-limits training room.

Hitchcock contends that a team captain does not have to be its spokesman.

"There is a clear understanding that he fights like hell for his teammates," he said of Richards. "It's a quality that every coach in this league would love to have. We'd die to have that type of player on our team."

Richards was not the captain when Hitchcock was relieved. John Stevens made Richards captain at the start of last season. He was 23. I wrote then that it was too much for someone who had just signed a decadelong contract, for someone just being identified as an NHL superstar. I wrote it because I liked Richards' game, and when Stevens and I debated it, it was always within that context.

He will turn 25 in a few weeks, Richards will, at the onset of the Olympics. Last night, I asked Hitchcock the same question that Stevens and I had debated, whether it was too much too soon. He said no, said they did the same in Dallas with Mike Modano, said a team built like the Flyers "had to grow" into the situation more than the player had to grow into the captaincy.

"The part 'like hell' you like is that he fights like hell on the ice, which is all that matters," Hitchcock said. "The other things he does is when the game is on the line he raises his level. That's why he's an Olympian."

So is Chris Pronger who, at age 35, will play in his fourth Olympic Games next month. Pronger was a young captain once, had many of the same stops and spurts in St. Louis that these Flyers have gone through in the last couple of years.

"A lot gets made of captaincy and a young team, but that stuff gets overblown," Pronger said. "At the end of the day, it's hockey."

The Flyers now are a point out of the final playoff seed. Hitchcock predicted they will be one of the eight best of the Eastern Conference at season's end, said they will "be a very dangerous team in the playoffs because they've gone through all the adversity.

"It should make them very, very strong," said their old coach.

This was relayed to Richards before his abrupt exit. "I hope so," he said, smiling. "It was nice to see the team could battle through things and stick together and really come through together in tough times."

Well, not yet. There's still a lot of hockey left, still a lot of games against better teams than the Columbus Blue Jackets. "They've been at the bottom of the barrel already and come through it," Hitchcock said, which is true.

Richards' captaincy, though, ultimately will be measured not by rumors or reports, but by how well he stirs them toward the top.

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