Who should replace Hakstol?

[Lindbergh31]

15 minutes ago, brelic said:

 

I understand where you're coming from, but just throwing it out there that the exact same things you're saying and feeling could be happening on the other side. 

 

It could very well be that fans just don't understand what is happening because we're not in there. We don't know what it's like to be a professional hockey player, a coach, a GM, a trainer, a scout, etc. Hextall and co. do because they're there. So, maybe it is US who don't understand.

 

The world of professional sports-watching has become ridiculous. There is this expectation of instant analysis, instant fixes, instant understanding of the problems. After every single game. It's a crazy level of impatience. If only they listened to ME and my simple tweak, everything would be AWESOME!

 

You know what? Maybe in their eyes, there is  no 'problem.' It's part of the growing curve. You and I as fans have different expectations than they do. We measure success in different ways than they do. 

 

Oh well.

 

 

Well said, we as fans want our team to win and succeed and sometimes patience is a hard thing to do. Being a fan since '72, it's frustrating that the amount of times the Flyers have been to the finals since winning their last cup in '75 only to come up short. We can yell and boo the players and coaches when they play like **** but at the end of the day, it's entertainment and we as fans don't know what it's like to be a player, coach or GM. We want the problems fixed now not two or three years down the road. There is going to be lots of growing pains with this group but hopefully at the end of it all it will result in another long waited parade down Broad Street! I guess as fans we're just along for the ride, good or bad.

[pilldoc]

2 minutes ago, brelic said:

 

I don't understand this attitude. 

 

I do ... its not personal and I get it.  Fans are just upset and are venting their frustration.  It's the mentality of, if you are going to fail on the ice...then you might as well fail big time to get the attention of Flyer's Management.  Though I personally don't subscribe to this attitude,  I do understand it as Flyer fans in general saying we have had enough.

 

It's hard for fans in general to separate raw emotion for this team and how you feel, from the true reality of what is or is not happening on the ice and behind closed doors ........

 

 

[FD19372]

7 minutes ago, brelic said:

 

I don't understand this attitude. 

Changes need to made to the roster, and the head coaching position on the team. Whatever expedites this into occurring, I'm fine with at this point.

[brelic]

6 minutes ago, FD19372 said:

Changes need to made to the roster, and the head coaching position on the team. Whatever expedites this into occurring, I'm fine with at this point.

 

So if they start winning and understanding and learning, that's not good enough? Isn't that what we want in the end?

 

[FD19372]

14 minutes ago, brelic said:

 

So if they start winning and understanding and learning, that's not good enough? Isn't that what we want in the end?

 

Get back to me when they do, and of course it is.  Along with that is the responsibility of the leadership of the team stepping up and providing something to learn from, which I have not seen consistently enough.

[BobbyClarkeFan16]

29 minutes ago, brelic said:

 

I understand where you're coming from, but just throwing it out there that the exact same things you're saying and feeling could be happening on the other side. 

 

It could very well be that fans just don't understand what is happening because we're not in there. We don't know what it's like to be a professional hockey player, a coach, a GM, a trainer, a scout, etc. Hextall and co. do because they're there. So, maybe it is US who don't understand.

 

The world of professional sports-watching has become ridiculous. There is this expectation of instant analysis, instant fixes, instant understanding of the problems. After every single game. It's a crazy level of impatience. If only they listened to ME and my simple tweak, everything would be AWESOME!

 

You know what? Maybe in their eyes, there is  no 'problem.' It's part of the growing curve. You and I as fans have different expectations than they do. We measure success in different ways than they do. 

 

Oh well.

 

 

 

I'm not opposed to a rebuild. I get there are times when the current way of doing things doesn't work and you have to tear things down and start from scratch. I get it and I'm not opposed to that.

 

Even as 'professional' watchers, there's am emotional investment in the club. I know personally, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on tickets to see games, on NHL Center Ice packages to watch games, on baseball caps and jerseys, on autograph signings. You name it, I've spent money on it. To me, there's nothing more insulting than discrediting your fan base. If anything, this was an opportunity to kind of pull back the curtains to show what's going on behind the scenes. Obviously I'm not asking for draft secrets or trade insights or the like. I just wanted to see a 'hey, this is how we are preparing the young players going forward.' A roadmap of development so to speak and how everyone ties into that. Instead, Hextall does none of that and instead we get a thinly veiled 'trust the process' message. It's insulting.

 

I think you talk to most Flyers fans (especially us old timers) and you'll see that we love how Hextall has turned the pipeline into an embarrassment of riches. We understand that youth is required and that the system was depleted of that youth for far too long. Where we're angered is that we have a GM that claims wanting to make the playoffs and rebuilding, yet we have a coach that seems indifferent to the youth and didn't seem to know how to use the youth successfully. Konecny is suffering. Weal is suffering. Sanheim is suffering. Patrick looks to be lost. Gostisbehere has stepped backwards and even Provorov is showing chinks in his armor. We're seeing the young guys skidding backwards and the veterans he continually relies upon are falling short significantly of getting the job done. Instead, we get no response on that, just a Hakstol is our coach.

 

I just really need to vent because I'm absolutely upset at the product I'm watching and the apathy from everyone involved. As mentioned, I have no problem with a rebuild and there being bumps on the road, but it's almost as if the brain trust believes it's ok to lose in the manner they have and then try to sell it as part of the process. It's embarrassing that this is almost Arizona bad and nobody is upset by it. 

 

 

[brelic]

1 minute ago, FD19372 said:

Get back to me when they do, and of course it is.  Along with that is the responsibility of the leadership of the team stepping up an providing something to learn from, which I have not seen consistently enough.

 

I will

 

In terms of leadership, Giroux and his linemates show up every night. And it's good thing they do; otherwise, they'd be 0-25!!

[murraycraven]

14 minutes ago, brelic said:

Giroux

 

I don't understand how anyone can point a finger at Grioux...  to me it makes no sense.   

[Bertmega]

5 minutes ago, murraycraven said:

 

I don't understand how anyone can point a finger at Grioux...  to me it makes no sense.   

because Giroux is suck

[mojo1917]

7 minutes ago, Bertmega said:

because Giroux is suck

[colorado_al]

I feel 100 percent confident that anyone on this forum could do as good a  job as our coach does behind the bench.  That should say enough about what I think of his bench coaching abilities.

 

 

[King Knut]

On 11/29/2017 at 10:34 PM, pilldoc said:

 

Schneider >>> Elliot / Neuvy

Hynes >>> Hakstol

 

Enough said......

 

It's not really more complicated than that.

I'd go as far as to say that most of the rest of the Flyers lineup is somewhat to significantly better than anyone on the devils.  Their coach simply has them executing better.  

 

In some ways it's typical Devils' hockey.  Their team and their system bore you to a draw and their goalie keeps them afloat which all frustrates you you to the point of taking a unnecessary risk to win, which they turnover on you and use to score.  

[King Knut]

19 hours ago, colorado_al said:

I feel 100 percent confident that anyone on this forum could do as good a  job as our coach does behind the bench.  That should say enough about what I think of his bench coaching abilities.

 

 

 

Sadly I agree.  What I can say for him however, is that I do actually think his overall system is effective.  

Somehow he simply lacks the patience or the development ability to guide his young players through how to execute it effectively.

Somehow he seems to prefer older slower players who can't execute his system and will never be able to over younger faster players who are still learning NHL hockey and can't execute his system and MIGHT just be able to learn it.

 

For such an X's and O's kind of guy, it just doesn't seem logical.  

 

I understand benching a Ghost or Konecney or a Weal when it seems like they're spinning their wheels out there, but what I don't understand is deciding for long stretches that making them watch a Streit or a Weise or a Lehtera play even worse in their place is somehow the answer.  

 

And you're absolutely right.  as a leader behind the bench, a source of encouragement, confidence builder, psych-up gut check "Oh Captain my Captain" style bench coach... he's simply non existent.  

[King Knut]

22 hours ago, murraycraven said:

 

I don't understand how anyone can point a finger at Grioux...  to me it makes no sense.   

 

Trolls gotta be trolls.  

[OccamsRazor]

7 minutes ago, King Knut said:

What I can say for him however, is that I do actually think his overall system is effective.  

 

 

I think his system when performed by the players properly is effective too.

 

However what concerns me most about and i will go back to two specifically was the home and home game versus the Wild.

 

The reason i go back to those two game is i just don't think player for player they are flat out better than the Flyers.

 

I just don't.

 

Yet they won both games. And not just won them but the Flyers got shut out in both games.

 

So the reason for the alarm for myself is that the Wild employed the age old neutral zone trap sh it and Hak could not scheme around it or change the game plan to get around this stuff. FOR TWO GAMES STRAIGHT! Last line change or not he had no answer for this and just could not come up with anything to answer their game plan.

 

I was dumbfounded!

 

Sure i am not trying to take anything away from Duby he played damn well in net. However it is on the coach to find a away around the road block to force the other team to change how they do things and he could/wouldn't/didn't and they got blanked in back to back games.

 

That is purely on Hak and his staff!!! He got owned and that opened my eyes that he might be over his head. Maybe he got here to quick before he had truly earned his way.

 

He just doesn't have enough experience to fall back on and it seems none of his guys in his staff either could even suggest something.

 

So with that said if they are going to keep him around then he needs some better guys under him to help him.

 

Maybe they should just can Gord Murphy and Lappy. Maybe a Terry Murray type would be good for Hak to lean on for if nothing else experience of being around the NHL for a long time he has seen everything. Just my .02 cents.

[pilldoc]

22 hours ago, murraycraven said:

 

I don't understand how anyone can point a finger at Grioux...  to me it makes no sense.   

 

Stay away from the Flyer base discussions on Facebook. They all believe it is Giroux's fault ...what a bunch of numb nuts ....

[brelic]

 

 

Quote

 

19 hours ago, colorado_al said:

I feel 100 percent confident that anyone on this forum could do as good a  job as our coach does behind the bench.  That should say enough about what I think of his bench coaching abilities.

 

 

 

46 minutes ago, King Knut said:

 

Sadly I agree.  

 

 

No disrespect, but you guys are delusional.

 

And I mean that in the most non-inflammatory, non-trolling way possible. 

 

 

[King Knut]

22 hours ago, BobbyClarkeFan16 said:

 

I'm not opposed to a rebuild. I get there are times when the current way of doing things doesn't work and you have to tear things down and start from scratch. I get it and I'm not opposed to that.

 

 

They're at the tail end of a rebuild now.  They didn't tank for however many years like the Sixers and tell us to "trust the system" the whole time, but still... they're in the middle of a rebuild now and they're closing in on the end of it.  Once Weise, Lehtera, Filppula, Mac, Neuvy and Elliott are cycled out over the next two years, it will be complete.  

 

What's more (and this is perhaps ultimately more important to the club) Hextall hasn't just initiated a rebuild, he's been spearheading a fundamental philosophical change in the management of the team.   He's restructured their philosophy and seems to be structuring their contracts in such a way that the team will be competitive, while almost perpetually rebuilding at the same time.  

 

22 hours ago, BobbyClarkeFan16 said:

A roadmap of development so to speak and how everyone ties into that. Instead, Hextall does none of that and instead we get a thinly veiled 'trust the process' message. It's insulting.

 

I'm not sure I'd even read that much into it.  I honestly get the picture that Hextall seems to feel that it's all out on the table.  That he is being honest with us.  Not that the nitty gritty roadmap of development you're talking about isn't happening, but that it doesn't even occur to him that we don't see it.  I don't think it's insulting.  Insensitive.  Ignorant of our investment perhaps.  That's what I mean when I say things like He doesn't know how close to the edge we are.  He doesn't get that we NEED that sort of thing in order to stay invested through "the process."  Long and short is I don't think he thinks he's obfuscating or keeping anything secret.  I just don't think it's on his radar at all.  I think he probably believes he's being totally transparent.  

 

22 hours ago, BobbyClarkeFan16 said:

Where we're angered is that we have a GM that claims wanting to make the playoffs and rebuilding, yet we have a coach that seems indifferent to the youth and didn't seem to know how to use the youth successfully.

 

 

This hits the nail on the head.  What the GM says and what the coach say and what we all see every night all seem to totally contradict each other.  We're smart enough to see that, but we think we're missing something that they must not be telling us.  

 

Are they not telling us or are we just misinterpreting what they're telling us because they're so damn bad at communicating it?  

 

Last year when the team fell apart and the press was asking Hextall what the hell was going on, his response was basically that he knew all year they weren't particularly good and he told us as much.  Why were we surprised when the wheels fell off?  Let me unload MDZ and Streit as well as VLC and Umberger and then we can talk guys.  

 

22 hours ago, BobbyClarkeFan16 said:

 

Instead, we get no response on that, just a Hakstol is our coach.

 

 

I'm more concerned about why he's not giving Hakstol Morin and Vecchione and taking the Lehtera/Weise option out of his hands.  I actually appreciate him not throwing the coach or the team under the bus.  I agree however that it would be NICE to feel like they see the same contradictions we do.   

I also agree that he is playing a few things a little too close to the vest.  I'd love to hear "Yeah, Simmer's been nursing something, but the doctors tell us that he's not slowing his recovery by playing and he really didn't want to sit."  Instead I really think he just thinks we're either just assuming as much or not thinking about it.  

 

22 hours ago, BobbyClarkeFan16 said:

I just really need to vent

 

Right there with you.  

 

22 hours ago, BobbyClarkeFan16 said:

the apathy from everyone involved. 

 

I'm not sure it's apathy as much as Hextall seriously trying hard not to make the same knee jerk reaction mistakes that lead to the problems he was facing when he stepped into this job or that lead to the bad blood between Homer and Richards/Carter or Clarke and Lindros and stuff like that.  

 

What's crazy for me to think about is that this is RON HEXTALL.  This was NEVER a guy any of us assumed would be trying to (let alone succeeding in) keeping a cool head.  

 

It would be nice to hear him say, "we can't finish games.  we need to call timeouts when momentum shifts.  we need to be better on the PK... because those are the reasons we're losing. and that's what we're going to work on."

 

 

[King Knut]

1 hour ago, OccamsRazor said:

 

The reason i go back to those two game is i just don't think player for player they are flat out better than the Flyers.

I just don't.

Yet they won both games. And not just won them but the Flyers got shut out in both games.

 

So the reason for the alarm for myself is that the Wild employed the age old neutral zone trap sh it and Hak could not scheme around it or change the game plan to get around this stuff. FOR TWO GAMES STRAIGHT! Last line change or not he had no answer for this and just could not come up with anything to answer their game plan.

 

 

Totally agree.  This is where my critique of him comes in.   There's no thinking on the fly.  There's no room for creativity.  There's no contingency for a situation like that.  (Maybe it should be something like:  "Okay, they're trapping... Ghost.  You're off the leash.  Go make some magic." or " Jake, Simmer, go in balls to the wall, don't try to make a play, draw a penalty and create some chaos."  But instead he stood back there like a deer in headlights.  It's like if he can't look at hours of tape, he can't come up with... ANYTHING.

 

Similarly against the Islanders and Penguins.  They had a lead.  The opposition decided they weren't happy with losing and changed things up.   Hak had nuthin.  Nuthin' at all to the point that the Penguins in particular scored essentially 4 goals in almost exactly the same way.  A player gets beat by the same kind of goal once, that's a mistake and maybe inexperience.  The whole team gets beat by the same kind of goal 4 times?  That's a coaching problem.  

[King Knut]

1 hour ago, brelic said:

 

 

 

 

 

No disrespect, but you guys are delusional.

 

And I mean that in the most non-inflammatory, non-trolling way possible. 

 

 

 

I don't think either of us means we'd be a better coach.  But I think it would occur to most of us to say something like... "Hey guys.   Try harder."   or to calla timeout and say, "Hey guys... we're kinda losing control of things here.  let's regain some composure and get back to our game plan."  

 

These are things Hakstol doesn't seem to even notice COULD happen.  The guy barely seems to acknowledge that his team just went from being up two goals to being tied.  

 

Maybe we wouldn't be good at the between periods Herb Brooks "go get 'em kids!" speech... but I think most of us would at least realize that something like that is called for.  

[murraycraven]

15 minutes ago, King Knut said:

Maybe we wouldn't be good at the between periods Herb Brooks "go get 'em kids!" speech... but I think most of us would at least realize that something like that is called for.  

 

 

in all fairness he might do this b/t periods....   we have no way of knowing.    But if he is giving these type of talks it is obvious he is piss-poor at it...

[King Knut]

32 minutes ago, murraycraven said:

 

 

in all fairness he might do this b/t periods....   we have no way of knowing.    But if he is giving these type of talks it is obvious he is piss-poor at it...

 

Well if I'm honest, that wasn't a great example, because from my observations for the most part, the other coaches seem to be doing this between periods. It's usually in the third that they crack things open and make the adjustments to their system or their intensity level that starts to make the Flyers unravel.   Hakstol would have to be doing it during periods... and we would likely see the kind of demonstration i'm talking about.  I don't think whispering in a guy's ear is quite the kind of intensity conveying rousing speech I'm thinking of.  

[OccamsRazor]

1 hour ago, King Knut said:

It's like if he can't look at hours of tape, he can't come up with... ANYTHING.

 

 

And that IS the scary part because you know after the first shutout he had plenty of time to look at the tape and devise a plan so next game if they try that sh it he would be prepared and then he would change it up and go with fill in the blank style to counteract that style.

 

So they did deploy the same tactic and he had ZERO answers for it.......that really opened my eyes and made say "Oh f**k they are screwed!"

[King Knut]

3 minutes ago, OccamsRazor said:

 

 

And that IS the scary part because you know after the first shutout he had plenty of time to look at the tape and devise a plan so next game if they try that sh it he would be prepared and then he would change it up and go with fill in the blank style to counteract that style.

 

So they did deploy the same tactic and he had ZERO answers for it.......that really opened my eyes and made say "Oh f**k they are screwed!"

 

it's almost as if he views these games as practices or scrimmages... like preseason.  Let's just work on our system and our plays and worry about winning or losing later.

 

Like the ends of games in which they blow it are inconsequential.  He saw what he wanted to from them.  It's not time for him to worry about winning yet.  The game might as well already be over for him.  

 

Or in the case of MN, it's almost like, "hey fellas, these guys are gonna run a trap again tonight, but I don't are about beating them.  I just want to make sure you're skating my system right, so let's focus on that for now.  We'll worry about how to pull out 2 points later.  

 

Which is silly, but even if it were the case, when oh when will it be time to work on those other aspects of the game that get you wins and keep you from losing?

[OccamsRazor]

3 minutes ago, King Knut said:

 

it's almost as if he views these games as practices or scrimmages... like preseason.  Let's just work on our system and our plays and worry about winning or losing later.

 

Like the ends of games in which they blow it are inconsequential.  He saw what he wanted to from them.  It's not time for him to worry about winning yet.  The game might as well already be over for him.  

 

Or in the case of MN, it's almost like, "hey fellas, these guys are gonna run a trap again tonight, but I don't are about beating them.  I just want to make sure you're skating my system right, so let's focus on that for now.  We'll worry about how to pull out 2 points later.  

 

Which is silly, but even if it were the case, when oh when will it be time to work on those other aspects of the game that get you wins and keep you from losing?

 

 

Maybe Claude needs to stand p next time and give him the stare!!!!!