elmatus

This -- this right here would save a lot of people around here so much grief. It's not because a player has a solid stretch or a good season that suddenly that's what they've become. Pull it off for 2-3-4 seasons, with at least some decent amount of consistency, then if they fall off a cliff, we can maybe make a claim of something having gone wrong. Sanheim and Myers never showed anything near that amount of consistency. They had good bursts, that's it. It makes no sense to assume that means they're now top pairing dmen. They *could* be, but it takes more than one good season for that claim to be true. Worse than that is billing guys like Frost or Allison as the next big thing when they've barely touched NHL-level hockey. They did well in juniors? Great! That's a good sign, but there is no shortage of players who did amazingly well in juniors and topped out as mid-six or even bottom-six players in the NHL. There's a mammoth difference between junior and NHL hockey. The vast majority players who play in juniors eventually find they cannot make that final leap, including many who were da*n good. This isn't directed at you -- sorry if it started with a quote from you. I just see that on here all the time. Some folks have an awful habit of jumping on every "next great thing" bandwagon that shows their face in the farm somewhere. Then they start blaming everyone under the sun when Sanheim doesn't become the next Hedman. It's far more likely he never had the skill to ever be near that level of play. We don't need to make a bunch of other excuses about how the system failed to develop him properly. If players could just be coached to become the next coming of Orr, every team would be stacked with Orrs. That's not me saying the org doesn't need a massive shake up. I think it's very fair to say it does. They drafted certain players for certain reasons. Now, they never really had access to "safer" bets, given the team never really gets high 1st round picks (Patrick being the obvious exception and a huge disappointment all around), which is a fair thing to say. Could they have drafted better despite that? I don't know. As others have noted many times, they've actually drafted quite well as far as many of those picks now being on the team roster. The problem is none of the guys we have are true gamechangers -- with a wary shout out to an aging Giroux. A team full of mid six caliber players is just not good enough to be a contender in this league. It's good enough to be a bubble team for a decade and lose in the first round, but that's about it.

Did it? I honestly very much doubt this was the kind of thing that impacted many players to suddenly become more talented or capable on the ice. If fear of significant retribution is your primary motivator, you're on a slippery slope to crash and burn. Sure, holding players accountable is important, but it should never be the only tool in the belt or even the most important one. It's the kind of tool you yank out on occasion to push an underperforming player who's having a bad night, not something that can somehow make an entire team play measurably above their heads. This roster isn't good enough. Period. Does AV carry any blame for their failures? I'm sure he does to some extent, but definitely not all of it. He played with the cards he was dealt. Could he have played a bit better? Maybe, but he was also dealt a weak hand. There's only so much you can do. I would love to see the organization gutted. Tear it down. Replace the old boys club with fresh eyes and minds. Let them develop a new vision that properly suits the modern NHL, and give them the chance to enact that vision by drafting and developing a better core, and acquiring whatever other key pieces needed to complement that core. Will that happen? Likely not, but hey, we can hope. At the very least, I want to see less passing the blame around and more admitting their part in this whole deal. I want to hear Clarke, and Homer, and Fletch say: "I messed up. I take responsibility for MY mistakes. The vision and planning I was a part of has failed, and I share in that blame." I doubt we'll get any of that either, but it would be a great start to at least make fans feel like they're not just shouting in the wind all the time.

Chances are good he’ll just come back in the off season as a FA.

He's not talking about it in media yet, but it looks an awful lot like G will be traded at the deadline. Also seems like there are a bunch of teams interested, and the starting point is a 1st, conditional 2nd (likely based on playoff run), and a solid prospect/young player. I've read him linked to talks with Colorado, NYR, the Bruins, Carolina, and Calgary so far. Likely others have inquired also, but that's a decent starting point. Anyone have thoughts? Anyone from those teams we would want? The 1st rd pick from any of those would likely not be very high, so that's a bit of a wash, but are there any prospects or young players folks know about on those teams? I saw a rumour about Newhook from Colorado. I don't really know him, but that level of prospect seems to be what Fletch is looking to get. Side note, it seems likely G would resign here again in the off season. This looks like a rental situation to bolster a playoff contender.

So, one super rich hockey exec taking advantage of other super rich hockey execs? Meh. Let me just set a notice in my phone to remind me to care about this sometime next year.

Seriously man, I'm feeling very out of the weeds on all of this. I like to think I'm somewhat well versed in hockey shtuff, but this is beyond for me. So... Lou bent rules to build those teams? Also, what's a Kucherov plan? I always thought he was clearly a very savvy GM to have so much success despite not really being dealt the best hands (aside from possibly TO, which he fairly promptly lost). I feel like I'm missing a bunch of info here. Hell, I'll go one further and say I'd love to have him GM this team for a spell. Stevie Y isn't dropping by anytime soon. Who has better cred than Lou at this point? Granted, he is quite old.

I don't actually know much about him other than he's had decent success as a GM. What's the lies business?

They're good. I just don't know that they're good enough to build a team around. I think they need better players to really shine. That's what I mean by sparkplug in this context. To be fair to them though, I don't think they were ever expected to be that level of player. I agree with you in that they've been good before and stand to be good again. They should definitely both be top six players in the NHL, and I expect they will be. Provo on the other hand I do think he's had higher expectations heaped upon him. Maybe he was overhyped, but the comparisons in his case were top flight franchise dmen. He was talked about as the kind of dman who challenges for the Norris on an annual basis. He's shown flashes of that, but it's been inconsistent enough to start wondering if that was just too high of a mark for his skill level. Given how others very similar to him have now surpassed him, it seems fair to start asking whether he's more of a wingman than a driver on a first pairing. If that's true, fine, but we probably need someone behind the wheel then.

Honestly, I still think players like TK and Farabee could be very good. I just don't think they're good enough on their own. I think they'd make for solid complementary pieces, a lot like Provo. That's kind of the problem we have honestly, we have a team made up of complementary pieces. That's the product of the Hexy years imo, and in many ways it did work. The problem is complementary pieces aren't enough. You need a proper sparkplug or two for those guys to reach their potential, and we don't have that. Much like @OccamsRazormentioned above, a guy like Provo isn't a bust if he's "only" a solid 1B first pairing dman. We need that too. It's just that we need the 1A more. For a short time, it looked like Provo could be that kind of guy, now it's a little less clear. I still wouldn't say it's completely out of the question, only that it seems less clear now. Other players with similar billing and around his age seem to be outpacing him in terms of growth. That said, I do think it's fair to say he had the highest expectations (and showed the highest potential imo) heaped upon him, aside from maybe Carter Hart.

Yeah, it's such a hard thing to peg down. There have been enough such players now that it seems very fair to start questioning what may be wrong about how the org develops players. At the same time, none of those guys were projected to be superstars either. As others often point out, they generally have had more success than many other players taken in their draft years. As fair as it is to question the org's development skills, it's also fair to suggest those guys never really had the skill set we might have wanted them to. There is an awful tendency to overhype certain players because we want them to be something we need, rather than looking at them for what they truly are. If I were a betting man, I'd wager the truth is somewhere in the middle between the org's failings and our lofty expectations.

Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm giving up on him as a top dman in the NHL in the future, but I do think it's very fair to start asking more questions about it. He's young still, and the team is all kinds of bad all over -- both are fair points. At the same time, he really hasn't been any kind of bright spot either. The writer of that article makes a very good point in that he has yet to show he can carry a top pairing. He played very well with Niskanen, and that's great, but then he's been really quite bad without him. That suggests he doesn't really have what it takes to be *the guy*, though he may be a solid complimentary guy to such a top dman. Obviously, a good team needs that type of complimentary piece too, but it remains a gap for us. I don't think it's fair to rely on Ellis or any other veteran dman. Even if Ellis comes back at some point, and even if he manages to fill Niskanen's shoes to a decent extent, he's still not going to do that for the next whatever amount of years. At some point, Provo would need to show he's able to carry the top pair in the same way as others mentioned in that article (Hedman, McAvoy, Fox, etc). If he can't do that, we very likely need to find someone who can. As with top level forwards of course, top dmen are also very rarely if ever traded until they're past their primes... It's very unlikely we get one in a trade or in FA.

They'd have to retain salary for sure. That's exactly what Fletch should try to do in fact, and he should try to do it right now. Don't wait until he's even further down the hole. Call teams up and start talking shop. It shouldn't be hard to sell the idea that he's a reasonable mid-six centre at $4.5M. In fact, that's probably exactly what he's worth. Do it and move on before he becomes completely immoveable.

Again, the type of talent we need is not something teams get in trades or in free agency. The type of players that anchor a contending team are very rarely ever traded. Teams hold on to them for as long as possible. If they're ever traded, it's when they're past their prime and no longer that type of player anymore. There's no realistic way I can think of that lands us the caliber of player we need right now in some sort of trade. Those players -- the ones that every contending team seems to need at least one or two of nowadays -- are virtually always drafted and developed by that franchise. Your Crosby and Malkin example is a good one in fact. The Pens have those guys and an above average dman who only plays about half of any given season. They've taken pretty much just that with very little in the way of supplementary talent, and they've been contenders for the better part of the last... what... 12 years? Chris Kunitz scored 35 goals in 13-14. How did he do it? He didn't. Crosby and Malkin did. Those two guys are a good 80% responsible for all of the success that franchise has had in recent history (and they've had a ton). That's what having that caliber of player can do. Now granted, those two are a cut above even the elite cast (at least one of them is for sure), and we probably shouldn't come to the conclusion we need to have the best player in the world to win a cup. But we definitely need better than Giroux and Couts. Bottom line, while I do agree a proper contending team needs to make moves to really cement their place and become a contender, they first need to have elite-level players to build on. The players that can be obtained via trades and FA are not that caliber. You can get a 30 year old Ellis or a 32 year old Atkinson, but you're not getting a Crosby and Malkin; you're not getting a Toews and Kane; you're not getting a Kucherov and Stamkos; you're not getting an Ovechkin and Backstrom. Those are not guys who are traded, at least not until they're well past their prime. Consider what it would take to somehow get Barkov and Huberdeau or MacKinnon and Makar. What would we have that could ever snag McJesus and Draisaitl in a trade? Nothing. There's zero we could offer to get those guys, which is why they're not going to be traded anytime soon. Sure, we can hope and pray that we pull off a St. Louis Blues for a year or whatever, but that seems an awful thing to try and bank on.

I was a big Hexy fan. Not that anyone has the time, but any look into my posting history early to mid in Hexy's tenure pretty much shows this as an obvious statement. I spent a solid amount of time posting up thoughts on how Hexy's doing it right, and we just need to be patient. I remember posting how Giroux is looking like he may just be that guy, and Couts is going to be a solid 2nd punch. I remember talking about Provo and TK, and how they were going to be the support pieces needed to finally start seeing results. Unfortunately, I was wrong. I think it was easy enough to believe all that. I certainly wanted to, and the approach Hexy took was refreshing after the Homercoaster we had endured prior. But it just didn't work. We should have seen the results of his plan some years ago, and those results never came. Not only did they not come, but they never even came close. This team has barely even made the playoffs over the last decade, let alone win anything once there, and even less make any real attempt at contention. They've never once seemed like they actually might have what it takes to contend, despite all those efforts. I still remember those Hexy years fondly as a time where I still had hope, but I'm mature enough to admit that hope was obviously misplaced. In terms of tangible results, there really haven't been any. So now we have Fletch. I never took to Fletch in the same way as Hexy. I think that's because by the time Fletch came around, I was already realizing that the biggest problem with the team wasn't Hexy's vision, it's the lack of top end talent. Fletch came in saying something along the lines of "this team has all the pieces needed to contend right now", but it clearly did not and does not have those pieces. That said, I thought the coaching change was a reasonable trial. If he was right in his assessment--again, I could have been wrong--then a coaching change could have made all the difference. Hakstol was a garbage coach. AV had a solid record. It made sense to try, and I was open to it. I also frankly am not opposed to some of the player moves he made either. Atkinson seems decent. Ellis was a valiant effort and I do think worth a shot in the dark. What I object to more is definitely his handling of certain contracts though. Hayes was an obvious mistake, and Risto stands to be a second one before the year is done. I would also add that he now should absolutely feel an imperative to move the old core out and start planning for the future rather than the present. If he doesn't do so in 2022, that should absolutely be the final nail in his coffin as a GM for this team.

I agree for sure. That said, I do think the type of core elite player that is virtually essential nowadays is basically never obtained in trades. I mean, never is maybe too strong a word, but very very rarely at least. No team is trading these guys, because every team is trying to win, and those players are essential to being contenders. That caliber of player is almost always drafted and developed. Again, we can try to win a lottery ticket and get super lucky with another team mis-evaluating a certain player who turns out to be of that ilk, but that requires a ton of luck and really isn't something any GM should have as part of a gameplan. As it stands for the Flyers right now, we don't have that skill level in the system. No player currently on the team fits that billing. We have a number of pretty solid supporting players, including some younger ones (TK, Farabee, Provo), and guys like Couts and Atkinson and Giroux who are still above average good, but a proper championship core needs players who are a cut above those guys, and we don't have them. That level of player is extremely hard to get via a trade or free agency or anything like that.

I get what your saying. Mind you, ours is one of the teams who are stuck in a state of perpetual suck-i-tude, and it's been that way for quite some time. I can't speak for others here, but when I talk of rebuilding, I mean trading guys like Couts and G (though he isn't as valuable as he once was). I say that for two reasons: 1) this team is not anywhere near contending. If anything, they're trending downward to the bottom tier of this league after a decade of being a bubble at best. Even if things start right now to somehow get much better, it will likely take years before this team sees measurable improvements. By then, G for sure and quite possible Couts also will be even less impactful as they are now. At some level, this becomes a question of asset management. Couts and G are assets with value, but their value is right now and diminishing every year. If they aren't enough to anchor a team into contender status, it makes sense to try and use those assets to build a team that is. Is trading them a surefire way to get proper young elite players to build around? Of course not, but it's *something* at least, which is a lot better than the nothing we've got going right now. 2) They are good players. They may have bad stretches, but they're better than many and will help a team win games. They are in some ways very responsible for the state of this team as a bubble team. Sure, generational talents may only come around rarely, but we may not even need the next McDavid to build a team. We do need players who are some of the best in the world, because no team in today's game wins anything without some of those guys. It just doesn't happen. And the vast majority of that caliber of player is drafted very early. Having guys like Giroux and Couts effectively means getting mid 1st round picks most of the time. Doing that largely takes us out of the game in terms of getting that caliber of player to build around. We're just not even in the running for them, aside from hoping to luck out with a lottery grab of someone like Kucherov or Pastrnak. Sure, that can happen, but it's essentially catching lightning in a bottle. I'm not a big fan of hopes and prayers as a means to build a contending hockey team. So, yeah, i think Couts and G should be traded. Atkinson would be a good idea too, if he can be moved for something reasonable. I mean, don't just ship them for scraps, but shop them around and see what the highest bidder can offer. I would also add that I like Giroux and Couts a lot. They've been bright points in an otherwise sombre period of this franchise's history. They both deserve a legit shot at a cup, and they're just not going to get it here. So a side part of me wants them traded out of respect to them. They caught a bad deal playing for this team during this time period through no fault of their own.

This topic should be renamed to a call to trade Couts, Farabee, TK, Provorov, Hart... any of those leads to a more fruitful discussion. Giroux was phenomenal and is still a very good player, but he won't fetch the kind of return needed to kickstart a rebuild -- not anymore. To get that type of thing started, younger pieces would need to be moved, and possibly more than one. So what's the temp there for folks? How would you all feel about reading a headline that at least one if not two or three of those names have been moved?

Giroux should have been traded probably a couple seasons ago now, when it became painfully obvious this core was not going to be enough to get it done. Don't get me wrong, G's an amazing player and would still today be a great boon to a playoff team, but his value has declined now to the point where trading him just wouldn't net nearly as much as it could have up to maybe two seasons ago or so. Honestly though, I don't blame the org for keeping Giroux around. He's been one of very few bright spots on this team for years now. I advocated for trading him for a couple off seasons now not because he's bad by any means, but really because he's good. He's not good enough to anchor a contender, but he's good enough to push a team into the playoff bubble. That's fine if you have a young team with a bunch of up and comers who need experience. We're not that team. We don't have a good enough core to build around and really haven't for a long time. But keeping or trading G I don't think is a big convo at this point in his career. Couts I could see. He'd still fetch a solid haul if he's traded in the next 2-3 seasons or so. Maybe we get to watch and see if the brass make the same mistake over again with him now. The bigger challenges I have with Fletch though is with Hayes and soon to be way overpaid Ristolainen. The Hayes situation was obvious to anyone paying attention. It was and is and always will be an awful contract. He's the new McDud, and personally I wasn't over the last one yet. When they hand out another similarly terrible contract to Ristolainen (and they will), we're going to be stuck with two garbage contracts that can't be moved for half a decade or whatever. That is entirely on Fletch. It's been said before, but someone somewhere clearly overvalued this team some whatever number of years ago. Someone clearly saw the very good Giroux and Couts and somehow-productive-though-no-one-knows-how Voracek, and they decided this team just needed a few tweaks and a couple above average younger players, and they'd be a contender. They looked at the roster some 6-7+ years ago and thought they had the core pieces to build around. They were wrong. I don't even blame them for being wrong about that 6-7+ years ago. Giroux had some stellar years. Couts is a very very good two-way centre. These are guys that absolutely can be part of a contending team. I can understand where they might have thought they just needed to tweak. What I have a much harder time understanding is how they could persist in that folly for so long -- long after it really should have been blatantly obvious this core just isn't good enough to contend. I mean, the only players I've felt even mildly excited about have been youngsters who frankly are probably never going to be as good as Giroux, and Giroux has clearly proven to not be good enough on his own. In what world does adding TK or Farabee or Frost make this team into a contender? It doesn't. They're good, maybe eventually better than good even, but they're not gamechangers. They never were going to be gamechangers. To think otherwise is just wishful thinking with no basis in reality. We need guys who have significant impact over a game. We don't have those guys. They're not on the team as vets. They're not in the stable. We do not have any top-level impact players in the system right now. Until we do, we're just going to be living on the bubble at best.

Yeah, I really think this is the only truly rational conclusion at this point. Now, I'm not sure I really blame the players either. I think they're doing the best with the tools they have. My position is just that I don't think they have the tools in the first place. AV is a fine coach. He's had plenty of success. I agree with the idea that if anyone is to blame, the brass and org seem the most logical candidates after ten years of a rebuild that never seems to end. The team isn't a vacuum either. This long period of irrelevance is not endemic to the whole league. There are absolutely teams who have found ways to be relevant over that entire timeframe and even more. What do they have that we don't? To take the most prominent examples: Why is it that Pittsburgh, Washington, Tampa Bay, and Boston have been contenders basically every single year for the same decade? Obviously, they haven't always won in that span, but they're always a legit threat. Cut the decade in half, and you can easily add another 2-3 teams to that list. So what's the deal?

It's definitely not. The puzzling bit to me is that some of these guys were actually very good PP contributors at some point in their careers (Giroux being the big one here). I'm curious what it is about the current line up that feels so lacklustre in terms of PP skill. Did Giroux lose his touch, or is it the supporting cast he had during those years (e.g. Hartnell, Simmonds) was a very different type than what he has now? I'm harping on G, which might not be entirely fair, but he's definitely the biggest culprit in terms of going from that as a strong part of his game to now being quite weak. Other members of the vet core really didn't have such a significant fall from grace, as they were never amazing PP contributors to begin with (i don't really know much about Atkinson in this dept). Like others here, I would put Yandle in there for a while and see if he's still got it. Being a QB on the advantage was his bread and butter for years. He may be past his prime for it now, but maybe not. Worth a shot anyway. Aside from him, it's notable how G's glory days included a grinder with a scoring touch, which is something we currently don't have on the team. Maybe that's the kicker here? I imagine it's a combo of things, but for the sake of breaking things down I guess. Could be worth starting there.

I agree with this, but the earlier comment about having to get more out of picks remains important imo. It's worth noting that both can be true. It's very possible Hexy did pick really quite well given where he was picking. At the same time, it's entirely possible those picks are still not enough. They may be the best we had available (give or take), but that doesn't mean they're good enough to make a team into a contender. I've said this before, but this team is sorely lacking in real top flight talent. Giroux has had phenomenal seasons, and is definitely the closest to great we've had in many many years, but he's getting older and frankly has always been inconsistent even there. This team is built on a considerable number of moderate to high potential players. Even if we say something like most of our team is pretty good, I don't think that's enough to contend. Contending teams in this league -- minus a very very short list -- don't just rely on pretty good players. They have gamebreaking talent on their rosters, and that talent is what takes them from "probably a playoff team" to "a possible cup contender". I want to speak of the Flyers as cup contenders again. I'm tired of the "well they should make the playoffs I think" way of talking about my team. For that, I think we need players to feel truly excited about in more than just "well Farabee looks like he could be a solid top six guy" or "TK is remembering how to play hockey again". The Burgh team we faced last night had really quite a lot of pretty good players. They didn't have their gamebreaking talents though. The Pens have been considered contenders every single year for over a decade not because of Guentzel and Carter and Zucker... We have Guentzels, Carters, and Zuckers too. What we need is better than that.

Ah, fair enough. My bad. I agree with this for sure. Those are not big expectations, and absolutely it should be a minimum. Part of his penalties of course is that he's been told part of what he does well is hit people, and like so many others, he's just not good at doing that without getting the stick for it. Again, we're hitting on the physicality without smarts problem, and I agree completely on that. Give me more of the smart physical guys and not just the guys who like to hit things whenever possible.

Ha, who's trying to be cute? No, NAK is not and has never been a favourite of mine. I just don't think what he does or doesn't do matters all that much in the grand scheme of things. I certainly wish he were a better player, as that would clearly make the team better, but he's never been much more than what he currently is. He's playing a lesser role on an NHL team, and I'm guessing he's doing it just as well as anyone else we have available to play in that role. It's just a hard thing to measure really... I mean, it's easy enough to say we want Giroux to get say 90pts. It may or may not happen, but him doing that would be a huge boon to the team, and it's not out of the realm of possibility that he would do that. He has the skill and history to back it up. It's fair to ask for more from the TKs and Farabees of the world, as they're stars on the rise who seem to have another gear they might be able to tap into. It's fair to be frustrated with Hart and his annoying gaffes, or Sanheim for being too weak on the puck at times. Those are all guys who could conceivably be better, and them doing so would quite possibly have a significant impact on the team's fortunes. What NAK does or doesn't do by comparison is... not super important really. There are no great expectations for him, and that's for a good reason. He's a 4th line NHLer very similar to a vast majority of others. Again, I certainly wish he were more than that, but he's really just as average as anyone else playing that same role. It just feels a bit nitpicky to me. Maybe it's a question of our top two lines actually playing some decent hockey, so we feel compelled to keep reaching for a new whipping boy? If so, I would direct your attention to a certain frankenstein on the back end as a starting point...

I mean... this seems an awful stretch, but okay. I don't think NAK has gotten any more rope than others on the team. He's not showing up prominently on the ice. He's not in the top six. He's part of a bottom old school energy line. The expectations for him aren't great. He just needs to make life hard for opposing lines for a shift now and again, so that players better than him can hop on fresh and work their magic. In that role, he's probably as good as really anyone else we have right now. Put another way, any games we lose are really not because of NAK. It's because either the players expected to anchor the team didn't show up, or they did and just got awful luck, or the other team is just flat out better than ours. NAK has never been the kind of guy who impacts the outcome of a game in any great way.

Except this is also exactly Risto, which is kind of the problem. In fact, Risto and Radko are very good comparables all around. Risto may have produced a bit more, but most of that was on the back of not playing virtually any defense and spending most of his TOI pinching in areas he really shouldn't be. Both have an awful penchant for taking awful penalties, and both play a physical game. There are far more similarities than differences between them, with the main diff probably being that Radko doesn't feel the need to prove he's more than a defenseman. Risto wants to show that he's Pronger 2.0, which he clearly is not and never will be. I agree that we needed physicality on the back end, I just wish it were more of the smart and effective Provo or Niskanen brand of physicality, rather than the HULKSMASH + two minutes and a flurry of odd-man rushes against us type. Dude needs a leash in the worst possible way. The good news is most of Fletch's other moves this off-season seem to have paid off quite nicely actually. If Hart can be consistent, and we don't lose too many to injuries, we might get at least some playoff hockey this season. It's obviously a very very small sample size, but it's what we've got to work with so far, and it's definitely not all bad to date.