Chuck Fletcher came in as the Philadelphia Flyers’ General Manager midseason during the 2018-19 campaign and waited until the offseason to make his mark.
He had around $34 million in cap space to work with, but had to sign Travis Konecny and Ivan Provorov coming off of their ELCs. He got both of those deals done, traded for the negotiating rights for Kevin Hayes before signing him to a mammoth contract, and then traded for Matt Niskanen and Justin Braun. The Flyers took some time to get their mojo going in 2019-20 but were hitting on all cylinders heading into the COVID-pause.
The bubble provided some great memories with Oskar Lindblom’s return from cancer, the Flyers topping their round robin group, and advancing past the first round for the first time in a decade. However, they looked sloppy, different, and were not a cohesive unit despite forcing a Game 7 in the second round after being down 3-1 in the series.
Niskanen retired and Fletcher replaced him with Erik Gustafsson as the Flyers rolled into the shortened 2020-21 season with a nearly identical team from the previous year.
They were looking decent heading into March of that season before the wheels came off completely and they ushered into one of the worst months in recent history. They missed the playoffs, decided to break up the core, traded disgruntled players like Jakub Voracek, Shayne Gostisbehere, Phil Myers, and Nolan Patrick, in return they brought in Ryan Ellis, Cam Atkinson, and Rasmus Ristolainen, and rolled in with the same coaching staff despite obvious flaws.
2021-22 went off the rails with the injuries to Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis, which soon prompted the firings of Alain Vigneault and Michel Therrien, Claude Giroux was dealt at the trade deadline, but it wasn’t all so bad as Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim had resurgent second halves to acquiesce the fanbase ever so slightly.
Changes were afoot again as John Tortorella was brought in, but the only real major on-ice change was the acquisition of Tony DeAngelo. The Flyers rolled with a younger lineup that featured Morgan Frost, Owen Tippett, Joel Farabee, and Noah Cates, while receiving poor performances from veterans like Kevin Hayes and James van Riemsdyk.
Fletcher was fired after a horrendous trade deadline that saw van Riemsdyk and Braun stay put, Daniel Brière was named interim GM, and over the course of the last few months, the front office has changed dramatically. Dan Hilferty replaced the retired-Dave Scott as CEO, Keith Jones was named President, Brière was named GM, Valerie Camillo stepped down, Alyn McCauley was promoted to AGM, and the Flyers hired John LeClair and Patrick Sharp for Player Development.
Injuries took their toll during the Fletcher era, but so did horrible cap management, asset management, and big bold decisions that blew up in his face very quickly. Trading valuable draft capital to get rid of Shayne Gostisbehere was one thing, trading 2 high draft choices for the expiring contract of Rasmus Ristolainen was another thing, and then trading 3 draft picks for Tony DeAngelo was just another mismanaged move for a team that needed draft choices. It was a mess from top-to-bottom but Fletcher doesn’t necessarily think so, claiming the many rumours of what went down behind closed doors were falsified.
Chuck Fletcher made an appearance on Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek’s 32 Thoughts: The Podcast and he divulged into what happened during his tenure in Philadelphia, what he’s been doing ever since, what he regrets the most, and more importantly he discussed the dire situation that transpired after Matt Niskanen’s retirement.
It was a jam-packed session of quotes and comments and definitely worth a listen if you have the time. He was not a very well liked man but hearing his point of view is important for the whole story. Whether or not we believe him is completely different but it was an interesting listen.
Initially being asked on what happened and how things unfolded near the end:
“I saw it coming a little bit at the end, obviously hadn’t had a lot of success over the last 2 seasons, a lot of noise and dissatisfaction in the market place, had a lot of conversations with my boss. I was certainly aware that things could happen…I think the first month or 6 weeks after it happened, I watched a little bit of hockey, not a lot, I tried to get away and decompress…I’ve started to reflect back a little bit…there’s been a little bit of that and I’m sure they’ll be more.
“There certainly is an expectation there in the market place of wanting to see a good product, of wanting to see a competitive team, of having the good fortune of seeing a lot of good teams over the years, so you certainly understand what you’re getting into when you go there.
“Look, we tried hard, I would say it was a really difficult hand and clearly I didn’t do enough, we didn’t do enough to make it better but there was certainly a lot of challenges that we faced and some we dealt with better than others but we weren’t able to overcome a lot and not every decision we made worked out and yet in saying that, there’s still a few good young players that I think Keith Jones and Danny will have a part of their future going forward.
“I did feel we were getting better the last year, we improved a little bit on the ice, we were getting younger, there were certainly some things there from a directional standpoint that were making more sense but clearly we didn’t go on full-on rebuild while I was there and there was a lot of questions on why we didn’t and we didn’t win enough games.”
On 2019-20, Niskanen and how they stabilized the defense in his first offseason with the Flyers, and trying to fix the situation in 2020-21:
“We made a couple pretty good trades, we traded a couple of picks to acquire Justin Braun, we traded Radko Gudas – who was a really good hockey player – for Matt Niskanen who was a player we felt could play with Ivan Provorov who was our top young player at that time. Those guys came in, we had great success, they really stabilized our defence and when the pandemic happened in March of that year, I think we were the second-best team in the league, we were on pace for 106-107 points. We came back in the bubble and we didn’t have the same mojo that we had when the season shut down in March of that year but we still got to game 7 of the second round against a pretty heavy Islanders team.
“At that time Niskanen decided to retire and I don’t know if I regret anything but certainly from that point on it seemed like the focus we had the next 3-4 years was always about how do we replace Matt Niskanen? How do we get that right-hand shot to help Ivan Provorov to become that player we all want him to be and need him to be for us to take the next step? We tried different things the next year, we didn’t have a lot of cap space, we tried Erik Gustafson who had played pretty well with Duncan Keith for a little while and that wasn’t a great fit.”
What went wrong after Niskanen, trading for Ryan Ellis, and how the injuries piled up at the wrong time:
“We thought we did a great job in trading young players like Phil Myers and Nolan Patrick to get Ryan Ellis and then we traded a first and a second to get Rasmus Ristolainen, almost a repeat of that summer of ‘19, bringing in a couple right-hand shot D to pair with Provorov and Sanheim. We had some good forwards up front, we had Sean Couturier, Claude Giroux, in the process of moving Voracek for Atkinson, we had Kevin Hayes, we thought we had some great forwards, we were hopeful Carter Hart would take the next step but we really focused on our D and really from that point on, it seemed like everything went the other way.
“Last summer we kinda hedged a little bit in that we wanted to really try and get a right shot defensemen so we thought it was important to get DeAngelo. Our power play was terrible, our retrievals were terrible, we needed another skill player but we didn’t really go all-in because Ellis wasn’t coming back and Couturier – never in my wildest dreams did I think he would miss the entire year – but I wasn’t 100% confident he’d be ready to start the season because he had some lingering nerve irritation issues. So we kinda hedged, we didn’t really go all in but we tried to make the team a little more competitive. Obviously Atkinson and Couturier make your team more competitive – whether competitive or not, people can debate – but we didn’t trade our pick.
“You’re constantly trying to build on the fly, you use some picks to try to add to your team, to try to be competitive, but yet you’re mindful of making sure you have enough picks coming and enough young kids coming where the prospect drawer isn’t completely empty. You’re trying to do it a little bit both ways.”
On if hew knew about Niskanen’s retirement plans before the bubble had ended and how they tried to rectify the situation:
“No, we didn’t, I first found out about it was when Matt grabbed Mike Yeo on the plane ride back from the bubble and told him that its enough and he wanted to go back – and he was about 60 games shy from 1,000 games – and he had played at a very high level that year and he had been an exceptional player, a true top-pairing defenseman…I knew the pandemic was tough on him, you’re in the bubble for two months away from your family, at that point it was no guarantee when you were going to start the 2021-22 season, turned out we didn’t really know until late November and into December that we were gonna start in January. He felt if he did play another year, he would be apart from his family and all the tough restrictions. I know it was tough on him but there wasn’t any inkling till the end.
“It was a trade that made sense, we traded a couple young players, David Poile wanted to get younger but we felt we could work around them and we thought ellis would be a great fit. We knew there was 6 years left, we were a little bit concerned that maybe the last 2 years, I don’t think we anticipated getting 490 games in those 6 years but certainly didn’t anticipate getting 4. That one hurt because he was a really good fit.”
On whether or not there was any interference from the senior advisors or anyone else above him in the front office hierarchy:
“No, there was no interference on the hockey side at all. We had a big staff, we have a staff that had a lot of opinions, which I don’t mind. I’m a collaborative guy, rarely that I don’t know if I ever made a decision that I went rogue on and made on my own…generally consensus and sometimes unanimous…you’re working through it and always getting different opinions but there was no interference whatsoever.
“It’s a noisy market place, there’s a lot of rumours in that market place, people with theories outside of the team…more often than not the rumours weren’t true but they do add a different layer of difficulty at times because you have to manage around things that aren’t true. A lot of off issues but not a lot related to interference, we were always on the same page, and I worked for a man in Dave Scott who was always supportive and great to work with. Got a chance to work with Paul Holmgren when I first got there, it was incredible, he stepped away for personal reasons and that’s too bad because I would’ve loved to have Paul there for longer there but these things happen and Paul was always supportive.”
Heading into the draft, is there anyone in the Flyers’ system he’s curious about in their development for the future:
“A couple players I’m more curious about…one was Bobby Brink, a player we took in 2019 in the second round, we thought he might go late first but we traded a few picks up to get him. Bobby was coming off a great college season two years ago and then he had surgery, missed a lot of time, think he started playing decent at the end. He’s a young man that isn’t the biggest guy or isn’t the fastest guy so there some knocks on him that way but he has that passion and that hockey sense and that skill.
“Another later pick, a kid named Hunter McDonald, who was a freshman, drafted as a 20-year in the 6th round, played as a freshman last year at Northeastern, and I thought he was one of the top players in Hockey East as a freshman, big strong, heavy, rangy defenseman, likes to get up in the play and I think he will turn into a really good pro player and I’m curious to see how he develops and could be a really great find from our scouts.”
A lot of Fletcher’s regrets are tied into Matt Niskanen’s sudden retirement and trying to find the right partner for Ivan Provorov. He tried with Erik Gustafsson because of how well he played with Duncan Keith, he tried with Ryan Ellis because of who he was at the time of the trade, and once again tried with Tony DeAngelo, but they were never the players he envisioned them to be. With Ellis specifically, it all came down to the injury that has kept him sidelined for what feels like an eternity.
Fletcher still believes in many of the youthful pieces he acquired either through trade or the draft and believes some of them will be a part of the future of some “very good Flyers teams”. He is excited not just about Cutter Gauthier, Tyson Foerster, Owen Tippett, and Cam York, but also about prospects like Bobby Brink and Hunter McDonald.
As for any interference from the top-end executives, he was firmly against the notion and finished off his session by reiterating the fact that they did nothing but support him.
In fact, he made mention twice about how there were several on-ice issues but didn’t divulge too much into what they were and who they involved, but we can all take a wild guess as to who we think the culprits were.
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