The Demise of our once beloved Flyers

[pilldoc]

https://www.flyersnation.com/the-demise-of-our-once-beloved-flyers/

 

Saw this article and thought it would make a great discussion thread.  I know, I know, sort of beating a dead horse.  However, in your opinion, what where the catalysts in bringing this once proud franchise to the ground.

 

In the summer of 2010, the Philadelphia Flyers were two games away from winning the Stanley Cup for the first time since 1975. The Flyers had inexplicably made a Cinderella playoff run in a season they had no business in even being in the playoffs. It took a miraculous shootout win over the Rangers in game 82 just to make it, on top of the fact that they had to pull out a historic comeback in the second round against the Boston Bruins. The Flyers looked legit though, and even though it was heartbreaking that they they had come so close but lost, the future looked very bright with Mike Richards and Jeff Carter at the forefront.

 

The Flyers won their division the following season with a healthy lineup but slumped to a very disappointing playoff performance. The frantic and erratic behaviours synonymous with the front office took shape, and the Flyers reconfigured their entire roster in the hopes of finally figuring out the jigsaw puzzle. Ilya Bryzgalov was brought in, Richards and Carter were both gone, Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk were given the keys to the team, and they brought in several veteran free agents, including Jaromir Jagr.

 

It was another successful regular season followed by a disappointing and somewhat embarrassing postseason finish. 2011-12 was the last time the Flyers had seen the second round of the playoffs for a decade and within that time, the demise of the franchise took place and is currently taking place. How a team could come so close to winning it all and then dramatically fall off the face of the earth within a ten year stretch is unthinkable – yet, it is the Flyers way.

 

Ownership/Front Office

As for why they slumped to oblivion and haven’t come back? There are a myriad of reasons but it all starts from the top. The ownership group has taken a lot of slack since the passing of Ed Snider, and rightfully so. The Flyers weren’t doing earth-shattering things in the final years with Snider at the helm, but they were watchable, respectable, and they had a plan. Ever since, this team has been sinking further and further into purgatory, they are making haphazard comments and moves that don’t reflect the current state of the team, and they seemed more focused on the in-arena attractions than the on-ice product.

 

From the head of the snake comes the front office, and the Flyers possess and have possessed a very volatile group. Paul Holmgren and Bobby Clarke have had their say on a lot over the years and their old-school mentality doesn’t seem to fly in the modern game. It has been said time and time again that even though they hold very high positions within the organization, they actually don’t possess a lot of say, sway, and action. However, over the last few years it has become more and more known and visible that they both have a lot of sway.

 

Clarke’s comments on The Cam and Strick Podcast were a good start, where he said he was shocked when Ron Hextall made moves without consulting anyone and that the entire front office was left aloof during his reign. You can also add in the fact that Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman alluded to both Holmgren and Clarke wanting John Tortorella in Philadelphia and were a huge part of the hiring process. It just seems that they are the ones now pulling the strings behind the scenes and the last two years make it hard to think otherwise.

 

General Managers 

General managing hasn’t been a strong suit for the Flyers either as Holmgren, Hextall, and Chuck Fletcher have all messed around with the fabric of this organization in one way or another. Holmgren’s tenure was a tale of two halves as he excelled in the first little bit but then lost the plot after their Stanley Cup defeat. He made all the right moves leading up to the Final appearance, rebuilt the team with shrewd moves, and found the right pieces at the deadline and in free agency to compliment his younger players. Then he started overpaying unrestricted free agents and impending free agents, overpaying in trades, undervaluing his own players, overvaluing opposition players, and in the end he put the Flyers in salary cap hell that would take years upon years to recover from.

 

There was only one man deemed fit for that job, and it belonged to Ron Hextall, who twisted the arm a little to get the general manager position. He was being groomed as an assistant general manager for a few years between Los Angeles and Philadelphia after rejoining the Flyers in 2013, but upon receiving interest from other teams, he leveraged that and found himself at the helm of the Philadelphia Flyers after the 2013-14 season. His five-year plan was going to be something the Flyers hadn’t seen since their inception. He wanted to start from the ground up, stock up on future assets and draft capital, hoard all of them and use them at the draft to fill up the prospect pipeline, and then patiently wait for the flowers to blossom.

 

He made over 50 draft selections during his time as Flyers general manager, and every year we were constantly reminded on how deep and talented the prospect pool was in Philadelphia. It was like an iron curtain and we were believing everything that was being said but at the same time, why wouldn’t we? The prospects seemed legit, the plan was in motion, and they had a plethora of prospects to choose from. Ivan Provorov, Carter Hart, Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost, and Wade Allison remain from the five-year plan and they have all had their fare share of turmoil and rollercoasters. For better or for worse, they represent the core of the team and the Flyers haven’t moved on from them just yet – even though Fletcher has tried.

 

Hextall dug the Flyers out of Holmgren’s salary cap mess by being super patient, even idle in most cases, but got draft picks in return. Fletcher was essentially handed a puzzle of sorts but with most of the pieces in place. In his first offseason, he had nearly $34 million dollars in open cap space to play with, which is unheard of for a Flyers hockey team. He used it all up on expiring contracts like Provorov and Konecny, but then also on new acquisitions like Kevin Hayes, Matt Niskanen, and Justin Braun. After a successful season that was interrupted by COVID, the Flyers found themselves in an unusual spot – the second round of the playoffs.

 

They ended up losing to the New York Islanders but had their heads held high after what was a very successful campaign. All that came crashing down as the Flyers have looked worse for wear since, and missed the playoffs in back to back seasons for the first time since the 1990s. His drafting has actually been pretty good, all things considered, but he has overvalued and overpaid players time and time again like his counterpart in Holmgren. Now the Flyers are in a position where they might miss the playoffs for a third consecutive season, and their roster hasn’t improved all that much after months of constant noise that they were going to be aggressive this summer.

 

Head Coaches

With three general managers came seven head coaches, all bringing a little something different to the table but never lasting long enough to see their vision through, with the exception of Dave Hakstol. Peter Laviolette was on his way out after a bad lockout shortened 2012-13 season and then a quick 0-3-0 start to the 2013-14 season, and then Craig Berube was brought in and did very well before being let go because Ron Hextall had a different vision in mind.

 

In came Dave Hakstol from the University of North Dakota, who definitely overstayed his welcome. Hextall wanted to see his plan through, he believed Hakstol being the head coach of his successful dream, and in doing so didn’t want to fire him at any given point. The Flyers essentially forced his hand and because he wouldn’t fire his head coach, the Flyers decided to fire the general manager and then the head coach shortly after. The Flyers also looked very disoriented, disengaged, and tuned out the head coach before his eventual dismissal. The writing was on the wall for years but with Hextall no longer in the picture, his future was bleak at best in Philadelphia.

 

Scott Gordon came in as an interim and it was obvious he wasn’t going to stick around as the newly-minted Fletcher wanted to put his imprints on the team. He brought in a slew of experience with a three-headed monster behind the bench in Alain Vigneault, Michel Therrien, and Mike Yeo. It seemed like a smart move, the Flyers needed accountability, and going from the college-bound Hakstol to the 1000+ NHL game veteran Vigneault, it just all made sense. It really worked for the 2-3 months from January 2020 to the COVID interruption in March 2020, but then after that the wheels fell off and Vigneault didn’t have a step to stand on anymore. Vigneault and Therrien were dismissed in December of 2021 after the Flyers had sunken to a new low. Mike Yeo remained and was given the interim head coach tag for the rest of the season, but nothing beyond that as he eventually signed on as an assistant in Vancouver.

 

This summer was the offseason for coaches, and the Flyers got their man in John Tortorella. They didn’t have a chance at Bruce Cassidy, Barry Trotz was offered a historically large contract but opted not to sign on the dotted line, and the Flyers’ executives were enamoured with Tortorella, so it only made sense. He is also the only coach who could really jumpstart this team and light a spark as quickly as possible, which is exactly what the Flyers want – something positive to hold onto and potentially make a surprise playoff run.

 

Personnel

The Flyers essentially hitched their horse to Ilya Bryzgalov, Chris Pronger, and the emergences of Claude Giroux and James van Riemsdyk. The Flyers traded their cornerstones in Richards and Carter within an hour of each other not only to make room for Bryzgalov’s large contract, but also because of the perceived feud the duo might have had with the media and the coaching staff. Peter Laviolette essentially drew the line in the sand once Pronger was acquired and looked to him to be the leader of the locker room even though someone else was wearing the “C”.

 

The Flyers were also very high on Giroux, who burst onto the scene with a 20-point playoff performance in 2010 and then followed that up by carrying the team lead in points (76) the next season. James van Riemsdyk was the second overall pick in 2007 and he had finally made his way onto the Flyers, so they were hoping he would have the same impact as Giroux. Bryzgalov struggled mightily and lasted two seasons before being bought out, Pronger suffered a career-ending injury, and van Riemsdyk was traded shortly after to Toronto for Luke Schenn after failing to impress.

 

The Flyers became a heavy and slow team with bad contracts and very few skilled players. Giroux and Jakub Voracek were the new faces of the franchise and got very little help from the rest of the team, outside of the power play specialists in Wayne Simmonds, Brayden Schenn, and Shayne Gostisbehere. The supporting cast behind them was rather ineffective for years as the likes of Valterri Filppula, Jori Lehtera, Matt Read, Michael Raffl, Scott Laughton, and Sean Couturier provided little to no secondary or tertiary scoring. It took Couturier until the 2017-18 season to finally be the player the Flyers envisioned drafting in 2011 but in his defense, he was limited to a lot of bottom-six duties at the beginning of his career.

On defense, the Flyers played with fire on a yearly basis when they had the likes of Nicklas Grossmann, Luke Schenn, Andrew MacDonald, Michael Del Zotto, Evgeny Medvedev, Brandon Manning, Radko Gudas, and Nick Schultz, among several others who played very important minutes on a game by game basis. The emergences of Ivan Provorov, Shayne Gostisbehere, Phil Myers, Travis Sanheim, and Robert Hagg was part of the Hextall-vision and it looked promising for a short while until they all, for one reason or another, failed to replicate their early success.

 

Hagg was a good defensive defenseman for a year or two before becoming a barely-used 6th defenseman, Gostisbehere lost all confidence and motivation with the Vigneault-led Flyers, Myers had a terrific rookie season before finding a seat in the press box and then was eventually traded to Nashville, and the jury is still out on Provorov and Sanheim.

 

The former of those two has found himself in a vicious cycle of playing with a new partner every 20 games, and then believing he needs to carry the load because the rest of the defensive corps is not up to task. The latter finally showed what he was capable of doing with the newly-minted interim Yeo, and one would hope that he can continue that same success under the new regime, because the Flyers desperately need something from the back end.

 

Acquisitions 

Trading James van Riemsdyk for a defensive-minded Luke Schenn is a good place to start, along with signing Ilya Bryzgalov only for him to implode within two years, trading futures for Chris Pronger who later fell to a serious injury, and then trading your franchise cornerstones for young players who did well but not well enough to propel the team back to the promised land.

 

That was essentially the second half of Paul Holmgren’s tenure mixed in with questionable asset management in trades for Nicklas Grossmann, Pavel Kubina, and Andrew MacDonald, among others. Signing MacDonald to a six-year deal that counted towards the cap at $5 million per season was a tough pill for a defenseman who could barely crack the lineup. Signing the recently-bought out Vincent Lecavalier seemed like a good idea but Holmgren overpaid and overvalued his impact, which short-changed the Flyers before they finally found a trade partner a few seasons later in the Kings.

 

Hextall made some questionable moves as well, but his M.O. was clearing cap space and getting rid of the dead weight that Holmgren had collected. He found dance partners for Pronger, Grossmann, Lecavalier, and Luke Schenn. He also hoarded draft picks and futures in an attempt to build from the ground up, and he never made big splashes at the trade deadline or in the summer, even when the team performed well enough to make an abbreviated playoff run.

 

Hextall ended up signing van Riemsdyk to his current contract that is currently handicapping the team, but luckily and fortunately, he is on the final year of that 5×7 deal. He even made the executive decision on trading Brayden Schenn for two first rounders that netted the Flyers Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost, but also netted them the overused pylon in Jori Lehtera.

 

Hextall also traded Scott Hartnell to the Columbus Blue Jackets for R.J. Umberger because the latter had one year less on his contract than the former, but mostly because Hartnell was clashing with the coaching staff and management group.

 

Chuck Fletcher might have topped his counterparts as he signed Kevin Hayes to his 7-year deal that counts towards the cap at an annual value of $7.142 million, traded for the oft-injured Ryan Ellis who is under contract for five more years at $6.25 million, was unable to trade van Riemsdyk before other teams realized how desperate the Flyers were, traded a first and a second round pick for Rasmus Ristolainen before extending him for another five years, traded three picks for Tony DeAngelo before signing him for two more years and effectively eating up the rest of the Flyers’ open cap space, and bought out Oskar Lindblom in order to sign Nicolas Deslauriers and Justin Braun, with the former getting a modified NTC and a 4-year contract.

 

Botching the Johnny Gaudreau sweepstakes doesn’t help the cause, him not willing to trade 3 picks for Alex DeBrincat but willing to trade 3 picks for DeAngelo isn’t a good look, and deciding to go against the “aggressive re-tool” and then finding a new way to label it isn’t a good look either.

The Flyers have reached new lows every year, something that didn’t seem possible before, but they constantly make moves that leaves the entire fan base scratching their head and pulling their hair. They have no vision, they’re winging it and hoping that something clicks, and it seems like they like pinning scapegoats before things even come to fruition so they can move quickly from one disaster to another.

They were two games away from winning the Stanley Cup in 2010 and somehow haven’t even come close to sniffing it ever since. It took the Flyers a decade to get out of the first round again, they’ve barely been able to make the playoffs as is, and this once-proud fanbase has lost the urge to continue.

 

Bad luck has found it’s way into the organization as well, that can’t be discounted either. However, they’ve also made questionable move after questionable move that has stunted their potential and growth, so much so that the level of excitement for the 2022-23 season is essentially non-existent.

 

So there you have it .... some of the major catalysts to why the Flyers are where they are.  Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of small details that can be discussed here, but if go back the past 12 years it really is not hard to figure out why the Flyers are where they are.

 

[radoran]

14 hours ago, pilldoc said:

Clarke’s comments on The Cam and Strick Podcast were a good start, where he said he was shocked when Ron Hextall made moves without consulting anyone and that the entire front office was left aloof during his reign. You can also add in the fact that Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman alluded to both Holmgren and Clarke wanting John Tortorella in Philadelphia and were a huge part of the hiring process. It just seems that they are the ones now pulling the strings behind the scenes and the last two years make it hard to think otherwise.

 

General Manager does job hired to do, people who hired him upset.

 

14 hours ago, pilldoc said:

Chuck Fletcher might have topped his counterparts as he signed Kevin Hayes to his 7-year deal that counts towards the cap at an annual value of $7.142 million, traded for the oft-injured Ryan Ellis who is under contract for five more years at $6.25 million, was unable to trade van Riemsdyk before other teams realized how desperate the Flyers were, traded a first and a second round pick for Rasmus Ristolainen before extending him for another five years, traded three picks for Tony DeAngelo before signing him for two more years and effectively eating up the rest of the Flyers’ open cap space, and bought out Oskar Lindblom in order to sign Nicolas Deslauriers and Justin Braun, with the former getting a modified NTC and a 4-year contract.

 

Hard to fathom how they got to where they are. Not.

 

14 hours ago, pilldoc said:

They have no vision, they’re winging it and hoping that something clicks, and it seems like they like pinning scapegoats before things even come to fruition so they can move quickly from one disaster to another.

 

It's the way they've always done it.

 

The results really speak for themselves.

[Digityman]

49 minutes ago, FireDillabaugh said:

Tortorella's hire was completely done by the outside organization hired for the process and Dave Scott(Comcast board members probably had input as well).

 

If I'm correct, they also represented Tortorella as a client.  So they made a recommendation for the Flyers to hire one of their clients.   Say it with me kids.... Double Dip.

[radoran]

Can we get an outside company to run the Flyers?

 

Asking for a fanbase.

[flyer4ever]

Arrogant, ignorant, stubborn. The faces change, the same mistakes are repeated over and over. The outright refusal to BITFU (which is the ONLY path to a cup) clearly defines them.

[radoran]

4 hours ago, flyer4ever said:

Arrogant, ignorant, stubborn. The faces change, the same mistakes are repeated over and over. The outright refusal to BITFU (which is the ONLY path to a cup) clearly defines them.

 

Sure but, really, what's left to blow up?

 

What is the talent they are sitting on to give them a big return?

 

We're looking at the Wirtz era Chicago Blackhawks with a TV contract.

 

This team really has.... Nothing.

 

Fine. Hart. Maybe Couturier.

 

This team will have finally drafted a franchise goaltender and ****ed it up.

 

[mojo1917]

10 hours ago, radoran said:

Sure but, really, what's left to blow up?

 

What is the talent they are sitting on to give them a big return?

 

We're looking at the Wirtz era Chicago Blackhawks with a TV contract.

 

 

The prospects for the team look bleak at best. 

No one would want much of the detritus on this roster. 

Are we supposed to hope for people to die before the team can improve? Seems ****** to me.

 

They're bad, we all know it, if you've had a pulse and IQ over 80 you know what's happened if you've paid attention since 2013.

They're going to continue to be bad until some guys' contracts expire, or they quit hockey and open a Tim Horton's or Buick dealership in their hometown. 

[flyer4ever]

The purpose of BITFU is to bottom out and draft top 2 or 3 for 2 or 3 drafts, not drafting 14th or 11th and praying for development, which they also suck at. There are several pieces which would bring 1st round picks back, pieces that would get a 2nd. Its simple really. Instead, the current chucktard of a gm continually gives draft picks away for less than stellar returns, and compiles as many undersized broken 30 somethings as he can, not to mention the cap hell he has put them back in. 

[mojo1917]

4 hours ago, flyer4ever said:

The purpose of BITFU is to bottom out and draft top 2 or 3 for 2 or 3 drafts, not drafting 14th or 11th and praying for development, which they also suck at.

How'd that last top 2 pick work out? or the one before that ?

I understand what you're saying, I mean by now, how can I not?

Blowing things up and losing for certain is a guarantee for nothing. 

 

This team isn't going to be good this season.

I think the best-case scenario would be a really slow start, Fletcher is fired by mid-December, the team begins to coalesce around Farabee, Cates, Tippet, Sanheim, York and Hart by February and finishes the year on an upswing but still in the bottom 5 of the league.

The young guys take the Tortorella message about hard work to heart and begin to play in the manner he has described in his pressers.

That would result in two top 5 picks in 2 years.

Sell off JvR's expiring contract at the deadline for a 2nd in 23 and maybe say goodbye to Atkinson as well for more picks.

 

For me it has been BlownTFU already and this is where the upward trajectory starts.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 30, 2022 by mojo1917

[pilldoc]

4 minutes ago, FireDillabaugh said:

Wish I could agree.  Unfortunately, it can get worse.  And, we will soon see that very early in this season.  The circus is starting soon...

 

Don't see how any upward trajectory can start until the front office is completely replaced with competence.  And, that includes Scott(probably a pipe dream), Holmgren, Lombardi, Fletcher and Flahr.  Until then, it can continue to get worse, even as bad as it currently seems.

As much as I agree with Mojo. You are not wrong either.  As with you, and I agree, I too have said in the past, that until they totally clean out the FO….. sadly nothing will change.

[radoran]

6 hours ago, mojo1917 said:

For me it has been BlownTFU already and this is where the upward trajectory starts.

 

3 hours ago, FireDillabaugh said:

6 hours ago, mojo1917 said:

 

Wish I could agree.  Unfortunately, it can get worse.  And, we will soon see that very early in this season. 

 

3 hours ago, pilldoc said:

As much as I agree with Mojo. You are not wrong either.  As with you, and I agree, I too have said in the past, that until they totally clean out the FO….. sadly nothing will change.

 

If the guy titularly in charge of things didn't absolutely confidently assert that they were bound and determined to continue to do things "the way we've always done it" for a franchise that hasn't won a Cup in over 40 years, hasn't been to a Final in over 10, and has been out of the first round once in a decade, I might feel better about where they are going.

 

I don't.

[elmatus]

On 8/30/2022 at 4:54 PM, mojo1917 said:

How'd that last top 2 pick work out? or the one before that ?

 

 

I get this line of reasoning, and you're not wrong, but it does suffer from Flyers tunnel vision.

 

Patrick was a bust. JVR turned into a decent player elsewhere, but not the impact player one might want in a 2nd overall. Fair enough. That's one team though. 

For one thing, being a crappy team does not in any way guarantee a top 2 pick. It's more realistic to expand that to something like a top 3 or 4, maybe even 5. We may be in that ballpark this year anyway without doing anything, but it's way too early to say that for sure.

 

But let's expand say to top 5 and look at what are likely the best 10 players taken at those positions over some number of key years. I'll go 2013 to 2017, as those would be players who are both still quite young and have had time to develop and show how consistent they can be.

 

2013: MacKinnon (1), Barkov (2)

2014: Draisaitl (3)

2015: McDavid (1), Marner (4)

2016: Matthews (1)

2017: Makar (4)

Honourable mentions: Eichel, Heiskanen, Pettersson

 

That's seven players. Now name the top ten NHL players in the league right now. All seven of those likely feature on that list, and the ones missing likely include top picks from previous years (*spit* Crosby).

 

So while you're right in that picking high in the first doesn't guarantee anything, it definitely makes getting that caliber of gamechanging talent far far more likely.

[Icechipper]

Philadelphia fans eventually run everybody out of town

[mojo1917]

54 minutes ago, Icechipper said:

Philadelphia fans eventually run everybody out of town

kindly take this worn out trope and stick it in your eye.

k ? thanx- bye.

 

[OccamsRazor]

3 hours ago, mojo1917 said:

kindly take this worn out trope and stick it in your eye.

k ? thanx- bye.

 

 

He's just mad the Vikings are 0 for 4 in the playoffs vs the Eagles.

 

38-7 still makes him see red.

 

[Podein25]

21 hours ago, mojo1917 said:

kindly take this worn out trope and stick it in your eye.

k ? thanx- bye.

 

As it is, @Icechippergot it wrong : Flyers fans invite you to town and then hurl snowballs and other stuff at you. If you decide to leave town at that point (like a wuss), that's entirely up to you. 

[BobbyClarkeFan16]

Tortorella has 'major concerns' about Flyers' locker room 
https://www.thescore.com/nhl/news/2416257

 

Say what you want about the guy, but Tortorella hit it out of the park talking about what's going on. He didn't just call out the players, he also called out staff and management. When's the last time a coach came in and has said that everything is a concern? Torts is already putting the vehicle in motion to rid the team of the management group there. That's pretty brazen.

[BobbyClarkeFan16]

1 hour ago, FireDillabaugh said:

Is it?  For Tortorella?  No, it's really not that brazen.  It's just more of the circus that comes with Tortorella.  Talks, talks, and talks some more.  The quotes are justified, but they don't have much substance to them.  All they are is exactly what Tortorella is.  All talk.  There are very few coaches who are capable of losing the room completely before his locker room even plays a game.  Wouldn't surprise me one bit if this was just one of many of this type of talk from him.  Any coach with half a brain coming into this organization should clearly have concerns about the whole process and accountability.  Especially after the pathetic off season the front office just had.  Talk, talk, and more talk.  What matters is what he does about the concerns, not the talk about having concerns.  This is just more of the circus.

I don't ever remember Tortorella throwing an entire management group under the bus. He did today. And honestly, as much of an ass the man is, if what he did means that not only management, but the senior advisors are also on the chopping block,  I'm good with that. Been a fan of this team for over 40 years. The past 20, they needed to clean house in terms of all the former Flyers working in executive and management roles there. The rot needed to be cut long ago. Today was potentiality the start of cutting out the rot. I'll take any small victories at this point. 

[Cheesesteak]

On 9/7/2022 at 6:20 PM, OccamsRazor said:

 

He's just mad the Vikings are 0 for 4 in the playoffs vs the Eagles.

 

38-7 still makes him see red.

 

LOL

 

FOLES! FOLES! FOLES!

 

[OccamsRazor]

8 hours ago, Cheesesteak said:

LOL

 

FOLES! FOLES! FOLES!

 

 

One of the best year's of my life!!!

 

[Icechipper]

I actually worked that Super Bowl in Minneapolis. On the red carpet, watched game at hotel...

[mojo1917]

justified with no substance sounds like a new Kanye West record. 

Prior to camp and actually practicing, what can be done vis a vis improving the team other than planning and talking to the players?

I'm glad Fonzie is setting a pubic expectation. That way when things get hard for the organization there can be little to no "we didn't know it would be like this" coming from their pie-holes.

 

So far, I've liked what I've heard from Torts. It's been hard, but I'm trying to take him as he is today not as he was. 

 

 

 

 

[Bertmega]

On 8/28/2022 at 6:27 PM, pilldoc said:

It was another successful regular season followed by a disappointing and somewhat embarrassing postseason finish. 2011-12 was the last time the Flyers had seen the second round of the playoffs for a decade and within that time, the demise of the franchise took place and is currently taking place. How a team could come so close to winning it all and then dramatically fall off the face of the earth within a ten year stretch is unthinkable – yet, it is the Flyers way.

2020 season?

 

I should read the entire article before commenting....

Edited September 20, 2022 by Bertmega
reading is fundamental

[GratefulFlyers]

And hiring Tortorella only confirms what we already know, that after more than a decade of mediocrity, and now under Fletcher unable to reach even that mighty plateau, the senior advisors are simply doubling-down on their "Win Now" philosophy. You'd think at this point, as a courtesy to their corporate masters if nothing else (such as professional integrity), to say nothing of what they've been inflicting on Flyers' fans for so many years, you'd think they would want to reevaluate their performance and consider a new approach. Whether they admit it or not they must know they own the lion's share of responsibility for this mess.

 

But evidently they're tenured for life regardless of the results on the ice. That level of entitlement is unhealthy in a workplace; it breeds resentment. I don't blame Hextall one bit for keeping them out of the loop and running his own show.