Philadelphia Flyers Finally Admit Defeat, Fire Chuck Fletcher And Name Danny Briere As New GM
Bruce Bennett. Getty Images.
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It's a start.
That's all we can really ask for at this point. The Philadelphia Flyers are a complete and total failure as an organization right now. From top to bottom, this team is riddled with incompetency. The Flyers went into this season without a clear direction. They tried to sell themselves on a load of bullshit by saying the team was going to "aggressively retool", which is just a fun little way of saying "we aren't brave enough to go all in on a rebuild but we also don't want to admit we are going to suck ass".
So what did the Flyers do from there? They wasted precious and valuable time just maintaining the status quo. Instead of firing Chuck Fletcher early enough in the season to bring in someone like Danny Briere who could use this season as a way to build an arsenal of assets heading into the 2023 NHL Draft and offseason, they kept Chuck around to do…checks notes…absolutely nothing.
The Flyers were never going to make the playoffs this year. They should have been sellers from the jump. They could have used the full season to put their players on display for the rest of the league to overpay for at the trade deadline. But they decided to scratch Kevin Hayes throughout the season. They couldn't get a trade finalized for James van Riemsdyk in time. They couldn't move Ivan Provorov to a contender. Quite literally the only things Chuck Fletcher was able to make happen at the deadline was swapping two goons for each other, and moving Isaac Ratcliffe for future considerations.
Again, a complete and total failure. And ownership would have been perfectly content with it had Flyers fans not showed up to a Town Hall meeting to ruthlessly boo the shit out of Chuck Fletcher and the rest of the Comcast chuds.
Why Chuck Fletcher even still had a job to completely botch the trade deadline is beyond me. He should have been fired months ago. But this organization is always reactionary. They have always relied on the loyalty of the fanbase to just blindly accept the fact that. That loyalty is gone, Comcast is finally panicking, and it resulted in Chuck Fletcher being fired months too late and Danny Briere stepping in to replace him.
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Now there's the part that is exciting. I think everyone has known for a while know that Briere was the heir apparent to the GM role. And it's nice to have him in place in time to prepare for the draft, albeit later than everyone would have liked. There's reason to be excited about a younger guy stepping into this role who truly cares about the organization, and will have a better understanding of building a team to succeed in today's game. He's not 70 years old like the rest of these dinosaurs in the front office who think that drafting a slow, two-way center who plays hard-nosed hockey is the way to go in 2023. The only issue is, at least as of now, all those bozos are still with the organization.
Until the Flyers finally part ways with guys like Paul Holmgren and Bill Barber and Bob Clarke, they'll always be lurking in the shadows trying to shackle this team to perpetual mediocrity. If Comcast really wants to show the fans that they care about building a team that isn't a complete embarrassment, they'll make sure those guys find themselves on a farewell tour at the end of the season. Thanks for the memories, but it's time to move on.
There's still time to finish this tank. The Flyers are sitting in 26th place right now with 17 games to go. There are only 3 standing points separating them from having top 5 odds in the draft lottery. Finish in 28th place, maybe get a little lottery luck and end this season with a top 3 pick in a loaded draft? That's something to build around. A top 3 picks gives you at least Adam Fantilli or Matvei Michkov. A new GM. Hopefully the old guard out the door. There's at least hope for the Flyers moving forward. I'm not buying into it completely yet, but it's a start.
Now let's roll some Danny B footage.