Hey Chris, how are things?

Apparently, not so well.

Chris Pronger feels he’s been walking a tightrope when it comes to Flyers captain Mike Richards handling of the locker room. He stepped off that tightrope in no uncertain terms in a conversation with Comcast SportsNet.com’s Tim Panaccio.

“[Richards] hasn’t come to me [to] ask me anything, and it’s delicate because at the end of the day, it’s his team,” Pronger said. “He’s the captain. He needs to show the rest of the players that it is his team. I don’t want to be the guy that has to stand up every day and tell ourselves to look into the mirror and play better and all this stuff.”

Pronger recognized it can be difficult for a young captain to step up and take the mantle of a team with a mix of players like the Flyers.

“He hasn’t asked me for any help,” Pronger said, “I’ve been in his shoes. It’s not [bleeping] easy. The expectations are high on him and on the team. We’re not playing to the best of our abilities, and a lot of that gets shouldered by the captain.

“Sometimes it’s fair and just and sometimes it’s not, and it’s hard to deal with that, especially at that age. You’re trying to figure out yourself. At 24, some kids are coming out of college, business school, some don’t even have a job at 24.”

There has been some minor sniping from Pronger this season when the team has struggled. In fact, following Saturday’s loss to Atlanta, Pronger complained of “..too many passengers”.

That the frustration would mount is unsurprising. The Flyers have been a very inconsistent team this season. The team went from having problems in their own end, to looking like a serious contender to having issues scoring goals. There have been injuries, poor play, undisciplined penalties and turmoil. Now the coach is on the hot seat, at least in the media, and the locker room seems to be an unhappy place.

Maybe Pronger’s comments to Panaccio were a calculated poke to spur Richards to step up and grab the reins. That would be an absolute best case scenario. The problem is, there are other hints that suggest some potentially serious issues exist.

Toronto radio host Bill Watters reported on a divide in the Flyers locker room, between the young studs and the older players, saying it seemed that the young guys walked around as if they owned the place, regardless of the effects it had on the team. This on the heels of that loss to Atlanta on Saturday, where coach John Stevens seemed to be talking to a distracted Richards during a timeout when assistant coach Craig Berube was reviewing a play-and where cameras caught Pronger grabbing Richards by the jersey to make sure he was following Berube’s coaching.

A divide between the kids and graybeards would be bad. A divide between two vital members of the team’s leadership group would be a potential disaster.