The Fact That Dave Hakstol Has Not Been Fired Yet Is An Organizational Failure And A Crime Against The City Of Philadelphia
Ron Hextall might be the biggest shit bird in a city filled with an overabundance of shit birds. Sorry for coming out of the gates so hot but it’s the truth. Ron Hextall is a coward and an arrogant ass whose own ego is destroying the status of the Flyers in this city. Philadelphia has never been a fair weather town. Philadelphia has never been a city to be completely disinterested and indifferent toward their 4 major teams. It doesn’t matter how shitty they are at times, Philly fans always ride and die with their teams. But that’s not the case anymore with the Flyers. This city went from loving this team, to hating their guts, to not even caring enough to be angry anymore. And the reason why everybody is so indifferent toward this team is because they have an incompetent head coach who can’t get his guys mentally and emotionally prepared to play each night, so they come out flat as shit to start the 1st period, give up a FUCKING HAT TRICK TO SOME NO NAME 3RD LINE SCRUB ON TORONTO IN THE FIRST 13 MINUTES OF THE GAME, and everybody just changes the channel from there because who cares. And as much as Dave Hakstol sucks at his job, it’s Ron Hextall who has the ability to pull the plug on the guy. But we got to where we’re at today because Hakstol let Ron’s son play hockey at North Dakota, coupled with the fact that Hextall doesn’t want to admit that he was wrong in the first place to hire this guy.
Over the holiday week, the Flyers got their dicks kicked in by a red hot Buffalo Sabres team 5-2 on Thanksgiving Eve. But the score was 4-0 Sabres at the first intermission. They then followed that performance up by blanking the New York Rangers at home 4-0 on Black Friday. Pretty decent bounce back game that was completely invalidated the next night when they took a trip up to Toronto and got blasted in the ass 6-0, with Andreas Johnsson (who only had 4 NHL goals before that game) scoring a 1st period hat trick to get the Leafs up 4-0 at the first intermission. A 5-2 loss on Wednesday that included being down 4-0 in the first period. A 4-0 win on Friday. And a 6-0 loss on Saturday that included being down 4-0 in the first period. The inconsistency of this team and their ability to get completely boat raced on any given night is a direct reflection on this coach and how goddamn truly awful he is at his job.
Now I’m not even considering Dave Hakstol’s job to be developing the younger players within the system anymore. I’m not considering Dave Hakstol’s job to be employing a system that gets his best players in a position to make plays with the puck. Right now, Dave Hakstol’s only job is to make sure he can get this Philadelphia Flyers team ready mentally, emotionally and physically to start games in the National Hockey League. It is his job to make sure this team is ready to go. But it’s obvious to everybody besides Ron Hextall that this team no longer responds to Dave Hakstol, if they ever did in the first place. That was the 3rd time this season the Flyers have been down 4-0 at the end of the 1st period. It happened in the Flyers’ home opener earlier this season against San Jose as well. You can blame the goalies. You can blame the penalty killing. But the only way your team gets down by 4-goals in the first 20 minutes of the game is if they’re just not mentally checked into the game at all. You’d figure a coach whose seat is on fire like Dave Hakstol would do everything in his will power to get his guys mentally checked in to start these games but we’re only 23 games into the season and that has already happened on 3 separate occasions.
Here’s the biggest argument on why you should fire Dave Hakstol before I even hit “publish” on this blog–would there be any negative impact to this Flyers team if Dave Hakstol were no longer the coach? The answer is no. At the absolute very worst, this team would remain the same dysfunctional, uninspiring team they are today. The worst that could possibly happen is Hakstol is gone and the team is the same. The best that could happen is that this could be a wake up call the guys need, and maybe they’ll respond by rallying around each other and playing up to their potential because once the coach is gone, there is nobody else to blame besides themselves. So at the best, you have the team waking up and going on a potential run. At the worst, nothing at all changes. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
But that’s not what the Flyers are about these days. The only thing this organization cares about is putting out a product that is mediocre enough to still turn a profit. Which is exactly what this Dave Hakstol era has been. But hey! At least they gave us Gritty.
P.S. – Seriously though. Hextall is so lucky that Dave Hakstol is much more hatable than he is. Because aside from drafting pretty well, Hextall has been just as reckless with this team than anybody.