Dale Weise takes shots at Flyers leadership

[FD19372]

20 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

AV has tried to make the wealthier players on this team accountable. He benched Ghost and should have benched Voracek at certain points. 

Fixed. Though Hayes should have been benched also.

Edited April 22, 2021 by FD19372

[tucson83]

34 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

AV has tried to make the wealthier players on this team accountable. He benched Ghost and Voracek at certain points. He, and they, know that can't last long..so there's no enduring consequence...unfortunately.

yeah, the problem with sitting all overpaid guys is you are going to hurt their value and you wont be able get rid of them at all, i feel for av on this, im sure he would want to bench them all and play the kids but he's got no choice but to play the overpaid guys.

[CoachX]

I guess when the front office pays 8mil for a stiff, they want him out there every night, even if he treats each game like a wednesday night public session

[Samifan]

50 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

AV has tried to make the wealthier players on this team accountable. He benched Ghost and Voracek at certain points. He, and they, know that can't last long..so there's no enduring consequence...unfortunately.

Don’t remember Jake being benched or having minutes reduced? I do recall a “demotion” to the 3rd line at some point this year but he was still out there being Jake. 

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

I'm gonna rant here a bit because it irritates me a bit when players leave an organization and then talk out of their arse about things where THEY had the chance to make a difference, but didn't.

Begin rant\

You know, there probably IS some locker room lack of leadership going on in Philadelphia.
Some guys thrust into a leader role who really weren't cut out for it, mixed with some very, very still-green NHL guys doesn't make for a good "championship winning leadership" group.

But also, the Flyers DO have some good, hungry young talent that simply hasn't found its way in the rough NHL waters.
Leadership comes from the front office and filters on down, so right now, I look to Fletcher to fix this mess (if he can) and then AV and his staff to reinforce that, then finally, to the vet players to further reinforce AV and his staff.

What the answer is right now, I don't know, other than to say, perhaps the Flyers need a few more hard nosed bottom six established guys mixed in with some more patience with the young players and act on any trends management sees, up to and including unloading certain 'anchors' along the way......again, I am putting this on Fletch and AV's group first and foremost, though by no means giving vet players on the team a pass.

That all said, Dale Weise never struck me as a particularly smart player.
In fact, I think no matter where he has been, I've always found him to be somewhat of a cement head actually.

Why would  you take a shot at a former organization with no real axe to grind against them?
Are you not planning on having an NHL career beyond playing?
If so, you are alienating a potential employer in Philadelphia, burning bridges with some players, and even possibly ruling yourself out with OTHER orgs simply because they see you throw people and teams under the bus like he has.

Not saying Dale Weise is wrong, but what I am saying is, he should just STFU about such things. Those things sound like behind the scenes stuff that media loves, but teams, management, and players prefer stay "in-house".

Sure, Dale...go ahead and laud the team who last employed you....laud a very good leader and player in Shea Weber...but NOT at the expense of others...at least not publicly.
Keep that ^%#@ between you and whomever it is you feel didn't pull their weight while you were on the Flyers.

Because honestly, Dale, you weren't the answer either in Philly.
You were an average type checking forward who, in the grand scheme of things, never really moved the needle in Philadelphia yourself.
And if your own leadership were that great, Philly would have kept you despite your "average checker" status.

Montreal would have been just fine without you as well, Dale.
They needed some physicality, and while you brought some, they obviously saw you were NO long term answer either, and they brought in other guys who were (Chiarot, Petry, Perry, Toffoli, Anderson), and all of which most definitely move the needle for the team much more than you ever did.

So basically, Weise comes off as a guy who just has too much time on his hands and for some reason, felt the need to crap on a former team and teammates.
Philly's got their issues for sure, and they will fix it...eventually. But they really don't need "pearls of wisdom", in thrashing public form, from the likes of Dale "I Took Another Stupid Penalty" Weise.

End rant/

[CoachX]

8 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

So basically, Weise comes off as a guy who just has too much time on his hands and for some reason, felt the need to crap on a former team and teammates.

I dunno, it doesn't come off to me like he just found a microphone and decided to pile on. It seemed more like he was asked a relevant question about his current captain, and his time in Philly was a direct example of how Weber is more effective as a leader

[TropicalFruitGirl26]

Just now, CoachX said:

I dunno, it doesn't come off to me like he just found a microphone and decided to pile on. It seemed more like he was asked a relevant question about his current captain, and his time in Philly was a direct example of how Weber is more effective as a leader

 

That's fine.
Which is why I said he COULD laud Weber all he wants.

I just seriously question the smarts on a guy who himself, a supposed vet, didn't do much of anything to change things in Philly.
Then to publicly dump on a former teammate...and, say what you want about Giroux, Claude has more talent on his lazy days then Weise ever had on his best.

He could have praised Weber without necessarily dumping on former teammates is what I am saying.

[FD19372]

59 minutes ago, TropicalFruitGirl26 said:

He could have praised Weber without necessarily dumping on former teammates is what I am saying.

Yeah, I get what you're saying and he probably should have doone just that, BUT if there IS a lack of leadership or accountability on this team, he might have really put this team...including Giroux, on the spot. Flyers fans now have one more thing to think about. Maybe it's not just a talent deficiency, but a leadership one. Did Weise go too far? Very possibly. Maybe he should have "minded his business". Yes, Weise was a bit of low IQ hockey player at times, when he played here. However, if Giroux's leadership or lack thereof.. is the perception with far more players than just Weise, it could be that there is a SERIOUS culture problem on the Flyers. The Flyers need to go out and sign a really good wing and defenseman in the off-season. This could effect the thinking of some of the better FAs. Maybe these comments from Weise...though very critical of Giroux...are something the Flyers shouldn't just dismiss, but should really examine. One fact remains, although blaming it on organizational culture is arguable. They've won ONE playoff series since 2012. 

Edited April 23, 2021 by FD19372

[AlaskaFlyerFan]

@TFG,

You sound like a closet Flyers fan!   maybe you can petition @hf101 to add a 3rd favorite team to your profile!!!   welcome to the misery!

[CoachX]

Whether Wiese went too far or not is irrelevant. What kind of player he was for the flyers is also irrelevant. Is he a POS for spouting off, sure. But that is a matter of opinion. None of that has anything to do with what he said. The question for me is, was it true or not? Just because Weise sucked as a Flyer doesn't make his personal experiences as player any less true. All the comments about his skill level, contribution, or violation of unwritten player code, is redirecting from the real issue.

 

Now, if what he said is a lie, okay. Thats a relevant discussion. But I haven't heard any rebuttal to contradict him

[radoran]

14 hours ago, CoachX said:

As far as I'm concenred. Laughton just robbed the organization and committed fraud to get that contract. Of course they are idiots, so I guess they get what they deserve.

 

Does it surprise anyone that Laughton was a Homer draft pick and got that extension?

 

I didn't think so. It's more and more apparent that the organization's raison d'etre over the past decade has been to make Homer's moves look good.

 

How's that going for them?

 

[elmatus]

1 hour ago, CoachX said:

Whether Wiese went too far or not is irrelevant. What kind of player he was for the flyers is also irrelevant. Is he a POS for spouting off, sure. But that is a matter of opinion. None of that has anything to do with what he said. The question for me is, was it true or not? Just because Weise sucked as a Flyer doesn't make his personal experiences as player any less true. All the comments about his skill level, contribution, or violation of unwritten player code, is redirecting from the real issue.

 

Now, if what he said is a lie, okay. Thats a relevant discussion. But I haven't heard any rebuttal to contradict him

 

Yeah, this seems a fair assessment to me. 

 

More importantly for me is how do we address the challenges on this team. This team is not performing and frankly hasn’t been consistently good for a decade now. In my mind, that means the roster isn’t cutting it, and that we’re crazy to think they will magically get measurably better. A failure is only truly a failure if you refuse to learn from it. 

 

bottom line for me is this team needs a rebuild. They need more skill. They need more snipers. They need better defense. They apparently also need better leaders. So let’s stop asking the current group to be something they’re not. Let’s move players that can get us good returns and start addressing all of the above needs. 

[mojo1917]

18 hours ago, CoachX said:

this just kind of ices it for me. Ive seen enough comments from current and former to players to convince me the culture is poisoned. the team is filled with entitled, coddled, players who are happy with thier paycheck

Which other former players?

 

This is the first I've seen and I'm a regular visitor to a site with an axe to grind. 

 

It comes as zero surprise that DW in particular would provide the icing on the confirmation bias cake.

Funny how a guy that was supposed to add grit and a goal occasionally yet, didn't, has a valid opinion now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CoachX]

1 hour ago, mojo1917 said:

Which other former players?

 

This is the first I've seen and I'm a regular visitor to a site with an axe to grind. 

 

It comes as zero surprise that DW in particular would provide the icing on the confirmation bias cake.

Funny how a guy that was supposed to add grit and a goal occasionally yet, didn't, has a valid opinion now.

I said current and former, but I put an "s" meaning several current, but only one former (DW). Not sure why it matters, but there you are.

 

I don't get your comment about icing on the cake

 

Your going to have to fill me in on how a player's comments only have credibility if he was successful on the ice during games. Of course, if that's the case, based on his current play, we should not hear another peep from Giroux or "Soap"

[GratefulFlyers]

2 hours ago, elmatus said:

bottom line for me is this team needs a rebuild. They need more skill. They need more snipers. They need better defense. They apparently also need better leaders. So let’s stop asking the current group to be something they’re not. Let’s move players that can get us good returns and start addressing all of the above needs. 

 

Good post and I agree that a rebuild *could* be worthwhile. But I can't get past the fact that last year pre-Covid this same team (minus Niskanen plus Pitlick) was playing extremely well. The consensus around the pro hockey world was they were one of the best teams in the NHL and the eye test backed it up. So what happened?

 

The obvious answer, though nobody's gonna like it, is Covid. Every team is dealing with it but if Weise was even partly correct then the Flyers were ripe to fall into an abyss...i.e. to play the way they're playing, which is disinterested, soft, no sense of Team D...with occasional bursts of great play.

 

The Covid theory makes the most sense to me because every young player has gone backwards in his development this year while the veterans (and coaches) have coasted along with it, putting up decent numbers but apparently incapable of leading the Flyers out of their dysfunctional abyss.

Edited April 23, 2021 by GratefulFlyers

[FD19372]

3 hours ago, CoachX said:

Whether Wiese went too far or not is irrelevant. What kind of player he was for the flyers is also irrelevant. Is he a POS for spouting off, sure. But that is a matter of opinion. None of that has anything to do with what he said. The question for me is, was it true or not? Just because Weise sucked as a Flyer doesn't make his personal experiences as player any less true. All the comments about his skill level, contribution, or violation of unwritten player code, is redirecting from the real issue.

 

Now, if what he said is a lie, okay. Thats a relevant discussion. But I haven't heard any rebuttal to contradict him

They need to use this as an organizational "look in the mirror". If the team chooses to use this as a galvanization, without honestly examining where they truly are as a team, and who Giroux really is (Is he a good leader?)..our Flyer fanbase will be stuck in Groundhog Day for a long time. The answer with these types of situations, when a former player...for lack of a better term....spouts off against his former team, lies somewhere in the middle between there's something truly there with what was said, and validity to it ..and the player (Weise) being out of line and there being sour grapes of some kind.

[elmatus]

2 minutes ago, GratefulFlyers said:

But I can't get past the fact that last year pre-Covid this same team (minus Niskanen plus Pitlick) was playing extremely well.

 

Were they? I dunno. I remember watching a team that could barely scrape together wins vs a 24th overall habs roster that really wouldn't have even come close to making the playoffs in any other year... and then collapsing entirely and getting demolished with little to no chance against an Isles team in what would have been the actual first round of a regular playoffs.

 

In fact, there hasn't been a year in recent memory where the Flyers haven't sucked for a large portion of it. They have had some streaky runs, usually somewhere around the latter half or third of a season, but that's really about it. Their records going into the new year virtually every year have been either awful or bubble-worthy at best. I admire their ability in those cases to perk up mid way through, but it wasn't the most inspiring performance really.

 

Moreover, over those same ten-ish years, they only made the playoffs at all about half the time. And when they did, they almost always just got wiped clean in the first round.

 

I was very willing to jump onto the Giroux/Voracek train for a while, but the truth is it really has not panned out at all. Those guys were meant to be the pillars this team was built upon, and it has proven to be just not good enough. That's not to say they're awful players -- and that really isn't what I mean to say. Giroux is a great player. He's just not enough. Voracek is an above average player, but he's likewise not good enough. Couts, Hayes... same thing. These guys amount to a pretty solid supporting cast. What we need is a primary protagonist or two, which we do not have. 

[CoachX]

9 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

They need to use this as an organizational "look in the mirror". If the team chooses to use this as a galvanization, without honestly examining where they truly are as a team, and who Giroux really is (Is he a good leader?)..our Flyer fanbase will be stuck in Groundhog Day for a long time. The answer with these types of situations, when a former player...for lack of a better term....spouts off against his former team, lies somewhere in the middle between there's something truly there with what was said, and validity to it ..and the player (Weise) being out of line and there being sour grapes of some kind.

I could get on board with the "sour grapes" theory, if Weise left on bad terms. Did he? Do we even know? 

 

Like I mentioned earlier, when I read the article it didnt strike me as him grinding an axe. It came off more like he was offering perpsective on the current situation, based on bad past experience. Its not like he jumped on twitter and just came out of left field

[radoran]

1 hour ago, mojo1917 said:

It comes as zero surprise that DW in particular would provide the icing on the confirmation bias cake.

Funny how a guy that was supposed to add grit and a goal occasionally yet, didn't, has a valid opinion now.

 

Surely he didn't bring a whole lot of "grit" but his ~1 goal every 8 games is about on par with his career production.

 

Like you, I don't recall a lot of former players' comments, but certainly Gotstobehere and Couturier have said things to the effect that some guys weren't giving it their all this season. There's also that other quote that I know you know so will just leave unrehashed...

 

And I look at the continual "leads by example" references that are made to Giroux - including coming out of the worst month of hockey in organizational history.

 

I'm not sold on "lead by example" being an effective leadership style at this point. It seems apparent to me that a leader content with simply playing his best and thinking that that will carry over to inspire other players doesn't necessarily work.

 

I went on here, but we've been over this many times and we know where each other stands so I'll just leave it lie.

[GratefulFlyers]

3 minutes ago, elmatus said:

Were they? I dunno. I remember watching a team that could barely scrape together wins vs a 24th overall habs roster that really wouldn't have even come close to making the playoffs in any other year... and then collapsing entirely and getting demolished with little to no chance against an Isles team in what would have been the actual first round of a regular playoffs.

 

I said "pre-Covid" - everything after falls under my Because Covid theory.

 

4 minutes ago, elmatus said:

These guys amount to a pretty solid supporting cast. What we need is a primary protagonist or two, which we do not have. 

 

Agreed. I was never on board with Giroux/Voracek will lead the Flyers to a Stanley Cup. I never thought either one is enough of an impact player. It's been obvious for years that the Flyers need that game-breaking type of guy and they refuse to look or they just can't find him. They did accomplish one thing, they found Hart. But Hart isn't enough without a Pronger or a young Chara leading the back end.

 

[tucson83]

14 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

They need to use this as an organizational "look in the mirror". If the team chooses to use this as a galvanization, without honestly examining where they truly are as a team, and who Giroux really is (Is he a good leader?)..our Flyer fanbase will be stuck in Groundhog Day for a long time. The answer with these types of situations, when a former player...for lack of a better term....spouts off against his former team, lies somewhere in the middle between there's something truly there with what was said, and validity to it ..and the player (Weise) being out of line and there being sour grapes of some kind.

i think this in house stuff has what got us in this mess because none of them have won anything and that's the culture it has turn this team into a mediocre phantoms team. hopefully if fletch can clear cap and bring in some winning culture type of players on defense and offense maybe it will turn this team into a contender. 

 

 

[elmatus]

10 minutes ago, GratefulFlyers said:

I said "pre-Covid" - everything after falls under my Because Covid theory.

 

 

Yeah, I mean, all teams have had that same struggle for one thing. Also, the rest of my post was all completely pre-Covid.

 

I guess my point is: Successful teams are rarely ever a collection of a whole bunch of very good players. They're almost always built upon a foundation of excellent players and then supplemented with some pretty good ones. We thought Giroux and Voracek could be that foundation, and it turns out they really haven't been. That's not just a last year thing -- that's an entire decade's worth of seasons kind of thing.

 

I'll do you one better: If Giroux and Voracek were in their mid 20s and had just "emerged", signing big contracts say last year, there's a very good chance I would be preaching how we need to give them a chance and see if this season was an anomaly and if they just need time to settle into being the core of this team... but that isn't where we're at now. They're not just entering their prime and likely to get better -- just the opposite. 

 

So the question then becomes, do we have anyone else on the current roster who is likely to be even better than those two were? Well, I think Couts is already better than Voracek, but he's really more Bergeron and less Pastrnak. That's great to have, but we need a Pastrnak. Giroux on the other hand has been a great playmaker throughout his career, but there's no cup in Washington with just Backstrom and no Gr8. And at this point, it's reasonable to assume he's unlikely to have any more 90-100pt seasons even there.

 

So the problem we have is that we lack any of those elite caliber players. And unfortunately, these aren't guys who are typically added via trades. If we're to get any such player, we're almost definitely going to have to draft them. We could get amazingly lucky with a Kucherov, but that would be being very very lucky. If we want to turn the odds in our favour, the only real way to do that is just to have top picks in the first round, as that is where the vast majority of gamechangers are found.

Edited April 23, 2021 by elmatus

[radoran]

5 minutes ago, elmatus said:

Moreover, over those same ten-ish years, they only made the playoffs at all about half the time. And when they did, they almost always just got wiped clean in the first round.

 

When you look at wins, point totals, and division finish it reflect they've been a middling, bubble playoff team for that stretch.

 

Wins: 42-33-41-39-42-37-41 (in 69)

Points: 94-84-96-88-98-82-89 (in 69)

Finish: 3rd-6th-5th-6th-3rd-6th-2nd (in 69)

 

There's no doubt they were playing well when the world stopped. And they did put it together nicely in the bubble during round robin and then took out the Habs. They had three tight OT wins against the Isles, too.

 

But then laid the egg in Game 7.

 

And, to your point, that's the problem. They show spurts of good play followed by inexplicable(?) drops.

 

And that's been the case under four different coaches now.

[radoran]

24 minutes ago, GratefulFlyers said:

a Pronger or a young Chara leading the back end.

 

I think this is where they really miss Niskanen more than might have been thought.

 

As you note, the influence of that "steady vet" on the back end is hard to overstate, especially one with a Cup winning pedigree. Those guys aren't a dime a dozen and are hard to replace.

 

And to your Covid point, losing Niskanen seems directly attributable to the pandemic.

[FD19372]

1 minute ago, radoran said:

 

I think this is where they really miss Niskanen more than might have been thought

It's not JUST THAT. It's that they tried to replace him with far less talented stiffs like Braun, and the now traded Gustaffson. This organization was caught, with it's proverbial pants down, with a much less than brilliant plan.