What seemed to be the year for the Philadelphia Flyers quickly turned into a year that might just make Flyer’s fans sick.
Off season acquisition of Chris Pronger, pickup of goalie Ray Emery who has everything to prove, and the winning bid for the outdoor game on New Year’s day started the season on quite a high. The team won their first 3 games and ended up 6-4-1 in the first month. Adjusting to their new lines, shaking the rust off, the Flyers had a good start to the hockey season. November looked brighter, as the Flyers came out winning their first 4 games. Yet the team still ended up slightly over .500 for the month with a 7-6-0 record, totaling 13-10-1 for the season. Jump forward to today, the team is 13-13-1, 5th in the Atlantic Division, and even worse, third to last for 13th position in the Eastern Conference.
So what is the problem? Was it the coaches fault? John Stevens has been fired and replaced by Peter Laviolette. Is it the leadership on the ice? Mike Richards has vocalized his position of captaincy after the firing of Coach Stevens. Or could it be the goaltending as Don Cherry has indicated? Ray Emery is near the bottom of goalie stats, but he does post a .900 save percentage and currently has a winning record.
So what is the problem? I’m not sure, but when a coach is fired, a Captain in question, and you have Ray Emery in the locker room, all on a losing season, something internal is happening that we do not know about. The team is young and the Flyer’s season is teetering right now. On one side you have a change in the system that positively affects the team to start winning again with hopes it is not too late for a playoff spot. On the other end, the team self destructs and late night partying from young players is more frequent, the golf bags come out early this year, and next year a makeover of the entire team.
Time will tell. For me, I hope they turn it around. For now though, if you lack faith in a turnaround, dump your Flyers while you still are able to. If you wait to long, you will be stuck shopping players at a reduced price.
Kinda hard to concentrate on the article with that picture. Looks like it’s a lettle chilly there….
…well done, EB.
Anxious to see a comment from b. Lee……..
I may not know much, but I know some things. Jeremy Roenick in his TSN pieces in regards to the Flyers and their current situations also feels something internal is happening within the Flyer’s organization.
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Roenick said he couldn’t pinpoint the problem, but he offered a couple of opinions on the Flyers’ problems.
“There’s somebody bad in that locker room. Somebody is tainting something in that locker room, whether it’s the leadership, or somebody who is leading them the wrong way, or somebody who is doing something and other people are following off the ice. They need to straighten that stuff up inside the locker room,” said Roenick.
The former Flyer was asked about the team’s decision to replace head coach John Stevens with Peter Laviolette.
“I think it’s a bad thing to blame the coach,” said Roenick. “I think Peter Laviolette is a great coach, I think John Stevens did a great job. But now, it’s in the locker room somewhere. They had better straighten that out, because they can still turn their season around. Something is up, because a team doesn’t just flip like that with the players that they have on that team without something going wrong internally.
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I bet Richards jumped at the opportunity to make blondie late for her first period…
Talk about something going wrong internally.