It's Time For A Flyers 'State of the Union' As The Team Heads Towards The Olympic Break
Mitchell Leff. Getty Images.The Philadelphia Flyers are currently a pretty big story in hockey on a national level. It's not like they're an exceptionally good team. It's not like they're a horrifically awful team. They are a team that has been stuck in hockey purgatory for the past decade. Right in the middle, and completely irrelevant as far as standings are concerned.
So you might be asking yourself why the heck anybody would give a rat's ass about the Flyers on a national level. We'll get to that in a minute, but let's just start off by talking a little more about the purgatory the Flyers have found themselves in yet again this season.
The Same Exact Era of Orange
It's been the same exact story for a few years in a row now for the Philadelphia Flyers. The Flyers are a young team. They don't have a ton of star power, but they have young guys who can show some flashes at time. So every year to start the season, this team comes out of the gates with a ton of energy. They overachieve through the first 25 games of the season because they have energy, they are pesky, and they catch a few breaks. But then they hit a wall. Water finds its level, and they can no longer just win games through working hard anymore. They don't have the talent to keep up in this league, and it all starts to unravel. They play themselves into a playoff position to start the year, they shit their pants in the middle of the year to drop out of the playoff hunt, and then the end of the season they'll usually have one last push to finish somewhere around 19-20th place in the league. Just good enough to draft 12th overall, and take a guy who could end up being a solid 3C in 5 years.
It doesn't matter who the coach is. Alain Vigneault, John Tortorella, Rick Tocchet. It doesn't matter. The Flyers will never be good enough to actually contend for a Stanley Cup, but they'll never be bad enough to stockpile on elite prospects through the top 3-5 picks in the draft. It is organizational malpractice, and it's all Comcast-Spectacor's fault. Because this piece of shit ownership group doesn't have the balls to fully tear this thing down to the studs in order to properly build it back better. Instead of suffering through 3 years of dwelling in the basement to land a few top 3 picks, they'd rather suffer for 10 years of just barely missing the playoffs. Because they don't actually care about giving Philly a great hockey team. All they care about is having a team that is good enough to still sell some tickets, and parents who will spend $300 on Gritty merch.
There are plenty of people to be upset with about how this Flyers season has gone so far. Rick Tocchet has continued to run this team into trouble because he refuses to shut his mouth and keep issues in-house. Danny Briere wildly overestimated the free agency market--especially for true 1C--and put the Flyers in a position where they had to sign Christian Dvorak to a 5-year extension. Matvei Michkov hasn't done himself any favors, and has been struggling big time in his sophomore season. But if you want to know the biggest reason why the Philadelphia Flyers are still giving you the exact same shit we've seen for 5 years now, it's because of Comcast-Spectacor. It's because ownership doesn't give a shit about winning a Cup, they just want to make sure the arena isn't completely empty every night.
The Michkov-Tocchet Saga
So obviously this is the big story surrounding the Flyers right now. The growing divide between Rick Tocchet and Matvei Michkov. Honestly, I don't know how much of this is actually a divide between Tocchet and Michkov anymore as much as it's a divide between Tocchet and the Flyers fanbase on behalf of Matvei Michkov. But it has taken on a life of its own, and has gotten so bad that Danny Briere had to publicly address the media during warmups of last night's game to try to cool things off. Other GMs around the league are on the phone trying to trade for Artemi Panarin before the roster freeze, and Danny Briere has to talk to the media in the hallway during warmups because his head coach can't stop publicly shitting on a star player for showing up to training camp out of shape 5 months ago. That has to be demoralizing to Briere.
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Now all of this started a couple months ago when the Flyers were playing well, but the media continued to ask Tocchet questions about Michkov's playing time.
That right there was the moment you knew something was off here. The Flyers have been irrelevant for years at this point. They finally have a potential superstar in the making, and he's the one player that the fans are the most excited about. Of course the fans are going to be frustrated with the lack of ice time Michkov has been getting this year, regardless of the fact that has hasn't played particularly well at any point. Of course the media is going to ask questions about Michkov's ice time, because that's what the fans want to hear about. The fact that Rick Tocchet would get that frustrated over questions about the most important player to the Flyers' rebuild shows that he has no idea what's going on here, or what has been going on for the past few years. This fanbase is starved for star power, but Rick Tocchet thought a 17-10 start to the year was more important.
The Flyers are not in a place right now to prioritize winning games over developing talent. I know Rick Tocchet thinks that his job is to lead this team to winning games, but it's not. At least it shouldn't be the main priority right now. Right now, all the Flyers need to be focusing on is developing their young players so that when the time comes that this team has the roster to actually compete for a Stanley Cup, all of those guys are ready. Travis Konecny is a great player, but he can't be the best player on your team if you actually want to win a Stanley Cup. He just can't. So who gives a shit about a 17-10 start to the year when you know it's not going to actually amount to anything? But Tocchet was frustrated with the amount of focus the media was putting on Michkov, and that's where he started to look like a guy who was going to start holding a grudge over Michkov coming into camp "a little out of shape".
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Michkov shouldn't get a free pass for showing up to camp out of shape. I just want to make that abundantly clear off the bat. Sure, he's a young kid still learning how to be a pro in this league. But I don't think Rick Tocchet should have just turned a blind eye to him coming into camp unprepared to keep up with the speed of the game for 15,16,17 minutes per night. Rick Tocchet is competitive and fiery, Matvei Michkov is competitive and fiery, and I'd have no issues if Tocchet was a little extra hard on the kid in order to push him to become the best version of himself that he can be.
But once you start airing shit out of the media, that's where there's an issue. Rick Tocchet has been around hockey for long enough to understand what things need to stay in the locker room. Pat Maroon asked an easy, lay-up question for Rick Tocchet to praise Michkov on NHL Network. But instead, Tocchet decided to throw it out there that some things happened in the summer that threw off his training and had Michkov show up to camp out of shape. There wasn't any need at all to put that out there besides the fact that Tocchet doesn't respect the kid enough to just keep that one in the locker room. And that's the quote that really started this entire firestorm. And not only did Tocchet decide to air it out to the media a month or so ago, but he doubled down on it this past weekend at the Flyers Wives Carnival.
Again, I cannot stress enough that I have no issues with Rick Tocchet being hard on Matvei Michkov. The best players in the world are able to take tough coaching, and I'm sure Michkov will be able to use this down year to fuel him throughout the rest of his career. Where I have a serious problem is when the head coach of the hockey team is the one who is throwing around the most public criticism towards a star player. You want to ream him out at practice? Go for it. Want to get in his face during film sessions? By all means. But when you have a microphone in front of your face and you are talking to an audience, just shut the fuck up and say a bunch of positive shit. It's so easy if you aren't a completely braindead idiot. But that's what we're dealing with here in Rick Tocchet. And it's far from the first time that Rick Tocchet has been openly critical about highly skilled players on his own team before. It's an awful quality as a leader, and it completely destroys any credibility Rick Tocchet would have to establish any sort of culture in that locker room.
Rick Tocchet has done so much in the NHL. He's won Stanley Cups as a player. He's been a part of coaching staffs that have won Cups. He had over 900 points in his NHL career, and has played with some of the greatest players ever. But as a head coach? This dude hasn't done a damn thing. He's had 1 decent season out of 10 years of being a head coach. He's never won a playoff series as a head coach in this league. And he has to be reminded by Flyers' management to play the younger players while this team is in the middle of a rebuild.
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He doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the position he is in, but he's too stubborn to figure it out. He's convinced he knows more than anybody else. He'd rather go down swinging with guys like Garnet Hathaway getting 12 minutes per night than even consider giving Michkov a few games playing right wing. He's not the right guy for this job, because he's likely not the right guy for any head coaching job.
Rick Tocchet doesn't deserve to get fired because the Flyers are currently 8 points out of a playoff spot just 55 games into his stint here in Philly. But if the Flyers are going to have any sort of sustained success in the future, it's because Matvei Michkov developed into being one of the best players in the league. And it's becoming increasingly obvious that will never happen as long as Rick Tocchet is behind the bench. Whether it's because Tocchet refuses to play him on the right wing, or give him enough minutes of ice time to really find his game and not have to constantly worry about making a mistake out there. Or because Tocchet's north-south philosophy doesn't utilize Michkov's ability to create offense going east-west. Or because anytime the kid has a bad game, the coach is going to run to the media to bitch about him showing up to camp out of shape. The record doesn't mean a damn thing right now. But the fact that he's never shown any history of developing skill guys in the NHL is a huge red flag for this team considering the most important piece of the rebuild is a skill guy.
So Where Now?
The Olympic break couldn't come at a better time for the Flyers. It'll give everything a chance to cool down between the coach and management and Michkov and fans and media. Everybody is at everybody's throat right now in the Flyers world, and everybody could benefit from taking a break from each other.
The biggest thing the Flyers need to focus on for the rest of the season is development. Michkov needs to use this break to get his legs under him. He can't use this as a break in the season, but instead a chance to work his ass off to finally catch up on his conditioning. That way he can handle the minutes that fans think he deserves to be playing tonight, and the minutes he needs to really find his game.
I wouldn't expect to see a ton of movement around the trade deadline, even though I think the Flyers need to be selling off as many wingers as they can. There's a log jam of wingers, and you need to make room for guys like Porter Martone coming up next year. Maybe we see Briere trade off one or two guys around the deadline, but nothing that is going to bring back any big returns. I don't think Danny Briere is in the business of straight up lying to the fans, so if he says that it's going to be a quiet deadline then it's going to be a quiet deadline.
There are still some bumpy times ahead for the Flyers. They're still not even close to being bad enough to finding themselves with one of the top 3 picks in the draft, unless they catch some unreal luck in the lottery. They still don't have a true 1C or 1D, and they aren't going to be able to land one in free agency this summer. The Flyers need to stop lying to themselves, and realize the position they are in right now. Nothing else matters right now besides developing the talent that is already here. Until that is the priority, then it's purgatory forever.