Could we pinpoint the beginning of the implosion?

[Ironworker]

Hey guys. I'm just wondering, can we pinpoint the beginning of the mess that is the current state of the Flyers? I do alot of posting on the GDT and PGT, mainly complaining. So I was wondering if we could put our minds together and really highlight some moves/injuries, anything that put us where we are? Where exactly did it start to go bad?

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[Striiker]

The introduction of the salary cap, which forced teams to be smart instead of just rich.

 

[Henry Miller]

The introduction of the salary cap; then Pronger’s injury; then the failed rebuild by Hextall; then the prospects not living up to their potential( I fault prospects, Flyers development and scouting, all); then Fletcher failing to right the ship; the players not caring after being in an apathetic organization, lame coaches, etc. Ultimately I point to the lockout though

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

It pretty much started at the end of Homer’s tenure. He had no prospect pool to speak of & started making bad moves/signings (MacDonald, Lecaviller, etc). They essentially forced themselves into a rebuild on the fly while guys like Giroux, Voracek, Simmonds, Schenn, Couturier, etc. were in their early to mid 20’s which in theory is when you should get the most value from a player from an on ice standpoint & a contract standpoint. They wasted a good chunk of those years trying to shed cap space & draft prospects. These guys drug an otherwise awful team to mediocrity so the Flyers missed out on the high end picks you usually get when you do a rebuild while wasting the primes of their top players career.

Even as these issues have alleviated the pro additions have just been largely terrible. They’re not ran like a modern franchise.

 

[BillDineen]

With the intro of the cap, teams had to find new ways to gain an edge and the Flyers perpetually are stuck in the past. They will never, ever do anything innovative first in the league. Never.

 

[sigma six]

It does go farther back, but the Pronger injury was huge. There's no replacing a guy who controls the game like he did.

He was so important that when we lost him, the team was willing to sacrifice four first rounders to offer sheet Shea Weber as a damage control move.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

Real answer: The Salary Cap being implemented.

Sarcastic Answer: When the Flyers won the Cup playing bully ball and that forever became their identity.

 

[BritainStix]

Losing Pronger set this franchise back 10 years. We tried to fill his void with terrible acquisitions and transformed from a contender to a Ln average team.

 

[romulus augustulus]

May 19 1981 - Michael Leighton’s birthday

 

[Gurglesons]

The introduction of the salary cap, which forced teams to be smart instead of just rich.

Flyers built a hell of a team heading into 2011.

Trading Richards and Carter so they could sign Bryzgalov and Pronger was the downfall.

They could have easily won by trading Richards and Carter had they not shelled out for Bryz.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

Flyers built a hell of a team heading into 2011.

Trading Richards and Carter so they could sign Bryzgalov and Pronger was the downfall.

They could have easily won by trading Richards and Carter had they not shelled out for Bryz.

Meh. He was a Flyer for two years and they lucked into a compliance buyout being a thing so his contract really didn’t matter all that much.

Are you saying signing Bryzgalov and Pronger was the downfall or saying signing Bryzgalov and what happened to Pronger was the downfall?

 

[Striiker]

Flyers built a hell of a team heading into 2011.

Trading Richards and Carter so they could sign Bryzgalov and Pronger was the downfall.

They could have easily won by trading Richards and Carter had they not shelled out for Bryz.

Yeah, the Richards and Carter trades were great. I'd do both of those again 100 times out of 100.

It's the decisions following those trades that were the problem. They never fixed the defense and goaltending situation, which wasted that great crop of forwards.

 

[Gurglesons]

Meh. He was a Flyer for two years and they lucked into a compliance buyout being a thing so his contract really didn’t matter all that much.

Are you saying signing Bryzgalov and Pronger was the downfall or saying signing Bryzgalov and what happened to Pronger was the downfall?

Signing Bryz led to the team dealing Bob for nothing. Pronger was a beast for the Flyers. Issue was his injury never him.

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

Losing Pronger set this franchise back 10 years. We tried to fill his void with terrible acquisitions and transformed from a contender to a Ln average team.

To be fair though you were betting on two aging defenders in Pronger & Timonen with nothing really behind them. Pronger got finished off with a freak injury but he was starting to slow down some even before that which is just natural given his age. That doesn’t mean he was bad but even Timonen started losing some too while still be useful in totality & it didn’t really matter much.

 

[BritainStix]

Pronger "slowing down" was a top 3 defenseman in the NHL level. He was a freak of nature, he would have lasted just as well as Chara did.

 

[Ironworker]

I really appreciate all the replies. They make some very good points. I remember when we traded Richard's and Carter and that was the end of that team they built. But in doing that they did get pieces to make a new team. I guess Pronger getting hurt was huge. But I also didnt like getting rid of Bob for Bryz essentially. I feel like they should have signed Vokoun to 2 year deal and had Bob grow under him. I'm happy we have Hart but Bob is very talented.

 

[landsbergfan]

The Pronger injury is the straw that broke the camels back. They could’ve weathered that storm if they had a prospect pool to speak of and were smart with cap space allocation, but they used so much capital to build that team they had no other options.

Homer actually started the tear down process but it made sense to bring in a new face of that.

 

[freakydallas13]

The decision to keep Giroux/Voracek/Schenn/Couts here, while simultaneously not fixing the defence or the goaltending. It made sure this team would be too bad to bottom out, but not good enough to compete. The team either needed to put talent around the forward core in order to compete, or sell off everything and rebuild from the ground up.

They decided on neither.

So now waiting for the team to draft their own defenders, the forward core would no longer be in their prime. It doesn't help that by the time everything was supposed to fall into place, Chuck was the GM and had no idea how to take the team from rebuilding to a contender.

I still hate the decision all those years ago to go full steam ahead on rebuilding the defence from within while our forward core was ready to compete. At best, it gave the team a 2-3 year window in which the dmen we drafted we're experienced enough, and the forwards were still young enough to be cup caliber. Assuming it worked out perfectly, and all the dmen we drafted actually panned out (which of course they didn't due to awful player development), it gave this team a very narrow window of competition, which always felt worse than rebuilding for a shot at a 5+ year window later down the road. The risk of even one thing going wrong during this window would have crushed this team's chances (which we can see now come to fruition), and would leave this team in cap limbo with players at all stages of contracts. Old vets locked into long term deals. Young players needing new contracts. Team not good enough anywhere in the lineup. No hope of contending, and scorched earth rebuild the only option left to them.

I always thought the choice of going for the 3 year window over a full rebuild was the wrong choice, and after seeing the team royally f*** it up and bungle the whole thing, it has made me even more cynical of the route they chose. Maybe it would have worked out better if the people in charge weren't doing their best to run this team into the ground, who knows. But a strategy that has to assume the people running the flyers be competent at their job is doomed to fail before it even begins. The 3 year window was never going to work, because it meant management would have had to be good at their jobs. It felt it was the wrong choice then, and the decision has aged like milk since.

 

[MiamiScreamingEagles]

Hey guys. I'm just wondering, can we pinpoint the beginning of the mess that is the current state of the Flyers? I do alot of posting on the GDT and PGT, mainly complaining. So I was wondering if we could put our minds together and really highlight some moves/injuries, anything that put us where we are? Where exactly did it start to go bad?

Losing the Draft Lottery and having the selected top pick win the Cup in 2010 was the definition of what followed. Even with that, the need to have a simplified answer to this and other questions isn't universal. The salary cap was implemented in 2005 and five years later the Flyers were within two games of winning the title. The erosion of identity preceded the last 10 years but the 2010 Finals was the slap in the face that has never been squelched.

 

[Ironworker]

Losing the Draft Lottery and having the selected top pick win the Cup in 2010 was the definition of what followed. Even with that, the need to have a simplified answer to this and other questions isn't universal. The salary cap was implemented in 2005 and five years later the Flyers were within two games of winning the title. The erosion of identity preceded the last 10 years but the 2010 Finals was the slap in the face that has never been squelched.

Cant even make that up. The guy that should have been ours. Scores the overtime winner for the Cup.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Clarke being gifted a GM job in 1984

 

[Magua]

Sweet imosion,
Sweet imosion.
Flyers talk propaganda that nobody cares,
Wearing out plugs that nobody wears,
Clarke calling Makar’s name but I gotta make clear,
I can't say, Flyers, if you know what’s the year.

 

[Embiid]

Cant even make that up. The guy that should have been ours. Scores the overtime winner for the Cup.

I remember Holmgren's comment when Chicago leaped over us in the draft..

"We can't even lose to win"....something along those lines and he was correct.

Holmgren and Snider had the right approach at the beginning of Holmgren's tenure when they said they were going to build through the draft and through youth. Started off good with Upshall, Carter, Richards, Lupul, Hartnell, Briere (could have had Sharp!) etc...but then Holmgren had to break up the party boys by trading Upshall at inopportune time and then later Lupul. That started the miscalcs. Then Holmgren pivoted on the youth movement and traded for Pronger and even when asked if it was the right thing to do he said "ask me in a few years"...he knew the risk but never imagined injury would knock Pronger off the roster. Emery getting injured didn't help nor did thinking Leighton could carry the team through to a cup when he went down. Somewhere in all of this was Holmgren's screw up trading for Eminger and passing up on the opportunity to draft John Carlson. Said Eminger was already NHL ready, a right hand shot and had a good playoff showing. This was obviously a disastrous decision. Holmgren redeemed himself with the Richards and Carter trades which had to be done and then followed it up with a shit sandwich with AMac, Lecadaverlier, Streit etc etc. We also know how Bryzaster led to us letting go of Bob and it just went all down hill from there. The farm system was an utter joke under Holmgren as well with barely any players on the roster drafted and developed from within. He did stop trading draft picks like they were nothing and stocked up on D ...but we see how that panned out.

It has just been one clusterphuc mish mash of futility after another with this org with no end in sight due to the country club management team and an ownership that is just about making a quick buck and glossing over the mistakes with corporate marketing ploys.

The Flyers only out of the box thinking move has been Holmgren's choosing of the name Gritty for our awesome mascot meant to distract from the putrid and stale on ice product...

 

[CanadianFlyer88]

I disagree that the salary cap was the turning point. Clarke bungled the roster decisions after the 2005 lockout, which coincided with the introduction of the cap, but the team recovered quickly.

The 2011 offseason should have set the franchise up for a strong decade of competitiveness, but the Bryz signing was the warning sign that would become the "bias for action" decade.

Bobrovsky shit his pants in the 2011 playoffs. I'm not sure what the 2011 offseason would have looked like of Bob confidently dispatches with Buffalo only to lose to Boston in a non-sweep second round. Bob and Biron would have been a good medium term tandem, but they chose to go with a wildcard instead of bringing back a humbled Biron to support Bob.

The team is remarkably different if Pronger doesn't get that eye injury/concussion. That really is the single event that set the Flyers off course, though it's certainly unclear how the rest of his 35+ career would have panned out.

Holmgren never knew what to do when the Flyers lost Pronger. The 2012 offseason was the year of the Weber offer sheet to replace Pronger. They, thankfully, could use a compliance buy out on Bryz, but Holmgren was out of ideas. He lucked out with Mason, but they still bungled that situation, too.

There were no other Holmgren trades that moved the Flyers forward.

Hextall came in with a lot of work to do and slow rolled his way to a firing.

The Flyers never had a plan once Pronger went down and made almost all of the wrong possible decisions in the aftermath. And here we are.

 

[Ironmanrulez]

Meh. He was a Flyer for two years and they lucked into a compliance buyout being a thing so his contract really didn’t matter all that much.

Are you saying signing Bryzgalov and Pronger was the downfall or saying signing Bryzgalov and what happened to Pronger was the downfall?

Not bryzgalov was the downfall. But to trade Bob because you signed Bryz was the downfall in my eyes! when it comes to goalies!