There are plenty of things that don’t make sense with the Philadelphia Flyers this year, but something isn’t adding up with how the front office sees this team performing compared to how the coaching staff sees this team.
John Tortorella is vocal, he always has been and always will be, and he has said on countless occasions that he wants to build an identity on the ice, he wants to build a culture off the ice, and he doesn’t want labels right now. He is still trying to figure out who fits where and who fits at all, while the front office – specifically the general manager – sees this team contending and competing, which is far and away the opposite.
Knowing that the fans are restless and upset, understanding the business that he’s currently in, and how unsuccessful the Flyers have been in recent years under his tutelage, Chuck Fletcher is still in high spirits and is once again trying to deflect blame on the bad happenings that are hemorrhaging his club.
“I don’t worry about that stuff at all. I talk to Dave Scott all the time, we had a couple hour meeting yesterday and talked about everything and the different possibilities that can happen as the season goes forward and we’re all on the same page. I understand the business. My focus is on doing what’s right for the team going forward and that’s all I do. Maybe it’s finally winning a game after the 10-game losing streak but just the way the numbers are starting to trend and getting a couple guys back, I think we have a chance to be a competitive team here going forward. What that means in terms of wins and losses, I don’t know but the vibe in the room is so much different than last year.”
Injuries have been at the top of the list for reasons as to why the Flyers haven’t had a lick of success over the last 2 seasons. It’s hard to ignore it, it’s hard to avoid it, and when your lineup is devoid of talent, you’re going to lose more times than not. However, in that same time span, plenty of other teams who have dealt with injuries have come out on top – most notably the Pittsburgh Penguins. They’ve lost Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jeff Carter, Jake Guentzel among others at the same time and were still comprehensibly winning games. They have a system in place because they had a good head coach, they’ve had depth, and their general manager has had contingency plans in place for the inevitability of injuries in a contact sport.
The Flyers have had nothing in place for any calamitous situation and unfortunately for them they lost Ryan Ellis, Sean Couturier, and Kevin Hayes for a lengthy period of time. The coaching staff headed by Alain Vigneault lost their marbles and he eventually got fired alongside Michel Therrien for their disastrous performances leading up to their dismissals. Injuries with a coaching change became the storyline for the 2021-22 Flyers. They wanted to drape the losses with a scapegoat so to speak, and they had it all wrapped up with a pretty bow. They knew you couldn’t argue the importance of the injuries and they replaced their coach with an interim who they knew they weren’t going to keep around next year.
What is hard to forget were the multiple 10+ game losing streaks. Claude Giroux, Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, Cam Atkinson, James van Riemsdyk, Scott Laughton, Ivan Provorov, and Travis Sanheim were all present and that should’ve been enough to avoid a 10-game losing streak, let alone two of them. So, how do you stand behind and defend one 10-game losing streak, let alone three now?
“I talked to Scotty Laughton on Tuesday and I said ‘Scotty, how does this compare to last year when we went through those streaks?’ He said last year, particularly the second one, he just kind of knew there was really nobody coming back and we were fractured a little bit in terms of how we were playing. You just don’t have a lot of optimism. But they believe they can compete every night. it’s a good group right now and it’s actually fun to be around them. We’ve got a tough stretch here. We’ve got some tough games. We’ll see a great team tonight, another great team on Saturday. They’re all tough games. But I’m kind of excited to see if we can continue defending and playing as hard as we are right now, can we find a way to score a little bit more, can we find a way to be competitive and what does that mean?”
I’ll give that to Chuck Fletcher, there definitely is a different feel with this team and it starts with their ability to drop the gloves and hammer the body but that’s about it. John Tortorella was given a puzzle with several missing pieces and was asked to solve it without any assistance. Ryan Ellis is now out for the season and if our memory serves us correctly, Chuck Fletcher sat down confidently at his press conference answering questions as to why he didn’t place him on LTIR to at least alleviate some much needed money.
For whatever reason he was very confident that he could return at some point this season and didn’t want to take the chances of messing up the salary cap situation upon his (unlikely) return. Then Sean Couturier suffered a setback and nothing was done to alleviate that mess either because it was too late in the summer and the Flyers had already achieved everything they had wanted to get done over the summer, which apparently meant signing Nicolas Deslauriers, Justin Braun, Cooper Marody, and Troy Grosenick – something Fletcher said himself after the first day of free agency.
Injuries have been a problem, there’s no denying that, but at some point you have to look at this team and realize they’re backpedaling. They don’t possess a superstar, they don’t possess a generational talent or one that’s even close to that level, and they barely possess star talent. Couturier is arguably their best player and he’s a fringe top-20 centre when pundits make their list before the season starts. Travis Konecny and Joel Farabee are the best they have on the wings and even though the former has been producing astronomically this year, let’s not forget he’s been Fletcher’s trade bait for the last 2-3 seasons. Things are just as bad on defence as Ivan Provorov is the lone star amongst that group. Rasmus Ristolainen has not been the guy Fletcher hoped he’d turn into, Travis Sanheim has his moments in the sun but falters just as much, Justin Braun and Nick Seeler are exactly what you’d expect in depth pieces, and Tony DeAngelo is an offensive-minded defenseman first and foremost.
“We’re five points out of a Wild Card. We’ll see if we have the capability of staying in that race and competing. There’s a path forward here to be more competitive and I expect to be more competitive the rest of the way. But I do expect us to continue to defend well, continue to compete and continue to be a hard team to play against.”
Where, why, and how Chuck Fletcher sees this team competing and contending is beyond me. Prior to their game against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Thursday, he said that they’re only 5 games out of the Wild Card spot with reinforcements on their way and that he couldn’t wait to see what would happen.
Well, Konecny, Laughton, and DeAngelo have returned and the Flyers came out with a stinker of a performance against the Lightning. It was expected, the Lightning are elite and have always handled their business against the Flyers, but it was just another moment where for Fletcher his words carried no substance or sustenance of any kind. To make matters worse, his head coach sees the situation in a completely different light.
“I’m not a big language guy,” said Tortorella, “I like building. I like using building words. I’m thrilled I have the opportunity to help there. As far as language, you can call it whatever the hell you want. I know how this coaching staff is going to go about it. I feel very strongly that you get stuck in the mud if you continue to put band-aids on and gimmicks to get people in the building and whatever it is. You get people in the building and you get it right by winning and the only way you can win is building it the proper way, and that’s how we are going to go about it.”
“This team needs to be built. It needs to be built from the footers. We’re not even in the foundation, we’re at the footer position as far as I’m concerned.”
“We’re going to feel more pain. We’re going to go through a lot of pain. When you start feeling that pain, do you change your thinking and panic and readjust how you’re going to go about it? That’s the important part for us in this organization is just stay with it. No matter how much pain you’re going through, stay with it. Because when you get on the other side, that foundation is going to be strong.”
Language is extremely important between general manager and head coach and right now they’re on opposite sides of the spectrum. One is using buzzwords like contending, competing, and wild card, whereas the one actually in charge of the players is talking about building, foundations, and growing pains. Being 5 points out of the Wild Card spot, and now 7, would mean something if this team had a chance at actually succeeding and taking down the dark horses and playoff teams.
There are too many flaws to overlook and even when the Flyers started out 5-2-0 or 7-3-2, everyone knew that was not sustainable. The cracks were there from day one, they overachieved due to amazing goaltending and once that returned to normal, the offence and defence got exposed ten times over.
Fletcher survived the 2020-21 season, then he survived the 2021-22 season, and there’s a very good chance he survives this mess of a season. Rumours are rumours and until they come to pass, we are going to be left in between a rock and a hard place. Could the Flyers remove the general manager tag from Fletcher but keep him on as president as they did when Ron Hextall took over for Paul Holmgren? It’s possible, but the meeting between Dave Scott and Chuck Fletcher might’ve spelled out important information thanks to Fletcher’s comments on “understanding the business”. For actual change to occur, Fletcher has to pack his bags and leave the organization and let the new regime do its thing and coalesce with the coaching staff instead of butting heads and having differing points of view.
Rumours are abound and I honestly don’t dismiss them either because the Flyers love to reuse and recycle. If Daniel Briere is going to be handed the keys to this lemon, he needs to be able to do as he sees fit, he needs to be allowed to undergo a rebuild that the Flyers desperately need, and he’s going to need to be on the same page as his head coach. However, with Fletcher still in the boardroom or not, you still have many of the old voices that have kept this team from progressing and succeeding.
The Flyers have kept Bobby Clarke and Paul Holmgren around for far too long, the former being the general manager who decided not to sign Scott Niedermayer or Curtis Joseph because they could sign several replacement/depth pieces at a cheaper price, and the latter being general manager who decided to cut bait on Mike Richards and Jeff Carter for Ilya Bryzgalov, trade James van Riemsdyk for Luke Schenn, and sign Andrew MacDonald to a 6-year deal worth $30 million right after making the trade that cost them 2 second round picks. Add the failures of Fletcher into that boardroom and Briere doesn’t stand a chance to supersede, succeed, or exceed his predecessors who seemingly have a lot of sway right now.
We have heard that the Flyers are 2-3 years away from becoming contenders for almost a decade, when in reality they’re 2-3 years away from being 4-5 years away from being contenders. Look at this team from top to bottom, from ownership, front office, coaching staff, NHL roster, AHL roster, prospects, pipeline, and future draft picks, and realistically come up with a timeline for when they will return to the relevancy of the late 1990s to avoid 2010. That team that made the playoffs in every season but one, that team that was constantly in the conversation of winning the Cup, making the playoffs, and/or going after the big fish on the trade market of free agency.
The first step is finding a new general manager, the second step is finally coming together with your head coach and agreeing on the same path, and third step is to weed out the undesirables and the expensive and maybe even the good and starting from the ground up.
No more retools, no more aggressive rebuilds, no more aggressive retools, just no more aggression anymore. The more you put it off, the longer it’s going to take for you to finally come full circle and accept the tough reality that you tried to avoid in the first place. Everyone is annoyed, tired, sick, and fed up with this purgatory-type cycle that the Flyers have found themselves in and that’s part of the reason why they’ve dropped below the MLS’ Philadelphia Union within the city’s sports hierarchy.
Change is needed, new blood is needed, and recycling is good for the environment but not so much in hockey or in Philadelphia sports.
