"Be A Fucking Flyer" - Alain Vigneault, Who Is Already A Philly Sports Icon
The first episode of “Behind The Glass” aired last night, which is pretty much just NHL Network’s version of HardKnocks. It was pretty good. I mean there wasn’t any revolutionary footage thrown in there but it was great to see what some of these guys are like off the ice. You don’t really get that much with the Flyers. Most of these guys are pretty reserved and they don’t do a ton of mingling with the other teams in this city. But it seems like the organization is trying to do everything different these days, which I’m a huge fan of. They’re little things but even just the idea of putting one big logo at center ice instead of two smaller logos on either side of the redline shows that this team is ready to move forward and stop relying on the past so much. Don’t get me wrong–I appreciate all the history of the Flyers organization to this point and don’t want to see them get rid of everything. But the fact of the matter is that this team hasn’t won shit in decades, and it’s time to start moving forward instead of standing idle.
One of the guys who is in charge of moving this organization forward is head coach Alain Vigneault. I would say that AV is pretty much the 1997-2012 Philadelphia Flyers of NHL head coaches. Always successful. Always in contention. But just never able to pull it off and get his hands on the Cup. He wants to win a Stanley Cup just as much as anybody else in that organization and in this city. And with just one episode of Behind The Glass–or really just 4 words–I am now all the way in on AV being the leader of this team.
“Be A Fucking Flyer”. Need that on a t-shirt right away.
Listen. I’m a simple man, okay? All I really need to hear is a strong voice, a few impromptu cuss words and I’m sold. The “fucking” in that line is so crucial. It’s not like AV was going around dropping F-bombs every other sentence. He’s a hockey guy so he certainly drops them more frequently than most people do. But he still reserves an emphatic F-bomb for when he needs them the most. If he just told the guys to “Be A Flyer”, it wouldn’t instill any sort of motivation or pride. But “Be a fucking Flyer”? Well now that jacks you up. That gets you going. That has you ready to go to war for 82 games and then another 16-28.
And that’s the emotional leader that this team has been missing ever since Laviolette was fired. I realize that Dave Hakstol didn’t have cameras following him around while he was here so we don’t know exactly how he talked to the team. But I have to imagine it wasn’t anything like that. I can’t imagine that Dave Hakstol could come in and command a room like that. Dave Hakstol was a couple small shakes of table salt, Alain Vigneault is an entire jar of crushed red pepper flakes.
A few other thoughts from episode 1 of “Behind The Glass”…
1) Chris Stewart needs to make the team. Not because he’s any good–he’s actually kind of bad. But because the Flyers need a guy out there without a visor. Bauer 4500 with no visor is a crucial component to getting this organization back to where we need to see them.
2) I’m not sure if the voice over guy is just an absolute dolt or not, but he pronounced Ivan Provorov as “Ee-von” Provorov and I just really hope that was a mistake. Because I will not be saying that.
3) Carter Hart is so pure.
4) Needs more of the Gostisbehere dogs. I know they’re coming in episode 2 but I feel like we need at least one full scene dedicated to those pups in every episode.