Flyers lost their charm for Philadelphia fans

[hatcher]

I like the outside perspectives here. I've been a Flyers fan and played organized ice hockey since I was a kid and in high school. Ice hockey has always been my favorite sport to play and I didn't stop until a few years ago when I was in my mid-40s. But I'll admit even I was a much bigger Eagles fan growing up even though I never played organized football. Philly has always been an Eagles town and always will be. That's no surprise to those that were raised in the area. Movies have been made about it. Growing up all my friends and family followed the team, and to a large extent our social lives revolved around Eagles games. That was never the case with the Flyers. I moved to Seattle 20 years ago so I've lost a lot of perspective on local team popularity, but I still often listen to podcasts of Philly sports talk radio while stuck in traffic, and Ray Didinger's weekend show appears the only one willing to talk about the Flyers, albeit briefly. But when Lindros was playing there was a lot more sports radio talk about the Flyers, I can recall that.

I think Hexxxy may be right about the the style of the game negatively affecting Flyers popularity. Certainly that is the case with most of my friends and family that live back home when I talk to them. They don't like how hitting and fighting has largely been taken out of the game. But for me, I think it's that recent Flyers teams have no identity and it's very obvious that some of their systems aren't working and they stubbornly refuse to address it. It doesn't take someone with 30 years of playing experience to spot it and if I still lived in the area, until that changes, I wouldn't pay to attend a game either.

Fighting isnt totally gone but hitting and hardworking players are still alive and well. This is a terible product and I would have walked 5000 miles to get a ticket just afew years ago when Jagr was here. Nothing really to watch even though there is afew good players.

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

It seems for me like Flyers are on "Union level". Although they had many years much higher TV ratings than Sixers.

I have three questions:

1) Can Flyers be again Nr. 3 in the town?
2) Is Penguins/Flyers rivalry a big deal for Philadelphia common fans?
3) Are Flyers now really that much less popular than Sixers?

Thanks

They’re not that far down. The Union probably have a cult like following type of fan base as well for a lack of a better term. But theirs isn’t on the level of the Flyers even during these down years. They haven’t been around long enough & like what was said before I think the fact the MLS isn’t anywhere close to being the best league for sport really hurts them in comparison to other leagues here in general.

I think in general those games have typically had more juice to them. They’re typically games are priced a lot higher than normal on re-sale sites along with some other teams. But lately I just think the mood towards the Flyers are pretty apathetic so it possibly has lost some of that juice especially since they’ve beat up pretty good on us lately.

Basketball & the NBA is just set up differently than the other three leagues. The parity is really bad so they tend to market around the players rather than the teams. When the Sixers were mediocre for all those years prior to tanking they as a franchise had really no buzz. However baseketball at all a national level was still pretty prevalent here. They’re not regional sport like hockey or baseball. So they can still prosper even when their big market teams are wallowing away in irrelevancy.

 

[Hexxxy]

The Pittsburgh-Philly thing to me is more of a deal for Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh has always been the step child to Philly in the state in every way. They may be part of PA but they're more of a mid-western town than an East coast city.
The fact that the Penguins are a Bettman creation is the reason that I want the Flyers, or any team for that matter, to pound their @$$e$ into the ice. Its not because they are an interstate rival. The major rivals that I have always seen for the Flyers have been the Rags and the Bruins which has been that way since the Flyers came into the league.

100% agree. I didn’t mention the Bruins since they aren’t a geographic rival, whereas the Devils and Rangers are.

Where I grew up on the central Ocean County shore, hockey (even street hockey) was a HUGE deal. Everyone around me was a Flyers fan. Or a Rangers fan. There was one Devils fan. Only one.

Interestingly enough, we all grew up GIANTS fans, not Eagles fans. That just shows the inroads the Flyers made into the NY geographic market and leached what should have been natural fans of the Rangers.

The Devils were a non entity really in the 80s and 90s, even when they were good. They only really only started to leach fans from the Flyers as they began to dominate and even then it was only the weak minded fans without strong brand affiliation and generationally, it occurred later, since these affiliations usually occur during childhood.

If the Lindros era (defined on the devils terms by stevens hit) or the Richards era teams had won that cup, the conversation today would be different and the devils may have been forced to move out of state. You likely would have had the Arizona Sun Devils, or the Nevada Devils etc.

 

[Hexxxy]

Star power would help the Flyers big time...why they went hard after Lindros because they were missing the playoffs in consecutive years... it was brutal for those of us that endured that lame period of Flyers history. This is almost no different. The Berube Hakstink years have sucked the life out of fans. The playoff futility plays a large part. I can't remember what playoff success even feels like.....it is pathetic. The organization should be scared of this futility and stop engaging in PR campaigns with Hakstol and gimmicks with Gritty. Get to the root of the problem here.....Dummy Dave Hakstooge! Fire the guy .....

The Flyers fans are used to a NY Yankees style star power and Free Agent activity. We sign the best and the best want to come here because we are the Yankees.

Except, we aren’t the Yankees. We are the Flyers which in the past was similar but now we are not even the Flyers of the mentality anymore.

 

[Curufinwe]

The Yankees don't have a salary cap. Holmgren used up the available cap space for signing free agents on Vinny and Streit for 2013-14 thru 2016-17. Once those deals were done with and Filppula was gone, Hextall went out and got the biggest free agent on the market who wasn't basing his NHL future on what his favorite childhood jammies were.

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

The Yankees aren’t even the Yankees anymore either. Baseball has changed a lot from the days when the old man was there spending money like a drunken sailor & would have like a top 5-10 team along with a top 5-10 prospect pool every year to go with it.

Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap but the luxury tax threshold might as well be as nobody consistently goes over it anymore including the Yankees. The money you can spend on prospects in the draft & international signings is also capped with the worse you are the more money you get to spend. Even with prospects being the most crapshoot of all them in sports there’s still a lot of incentive for teams to bottom out whether willingly or not.

Owners in general don’t hand out blank checks anymore to players. Every organization has an analytics department &/or GM with an analytic background to avoid long term on aging players which plagued teams before with dinosaur GM’s. Which the owner’s obviously like while the player agents & MLBPA hate it. If you’re a bad team there’s no point in spending much payroll on your team either so that kills free agency too.

Big market teams still have an advantage but it’s really not as big as it used to be. It’s really not that much different than like the advantage the Maple Leafs have over the Coyotes for example.

 

[Rebels57]

The Yankees aren’t even the Yankees anymore either. Baseball has changed a lot from the days when the old man was there spending money like a drunken sailor & would have like a top 5-10 team along with a top 5-10 prospect pool every year to go with it.

Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap but the luxury tax threshold might as well be as nobody consistently goes over it anymore including the Yankees. The money you can spend on prospects in the draft & international signings is also capped with the worse you are the more money you get to spend. Even with prospects being the most crapshoot of all them in sports there’s still a lot of incentive for teams to bottom out whether willingly or not.

Owners in general don’t hand out blank checks anymore to players. Every organization has an analytics department &/or GM with an analytic background to avoid long term on aging players which plagued teams before with dinosaur GM’s. Which the owner’s obviously like while the player agents & MLBPA hate it. If you’re a bad team there’s no point in spending much payroll on your team either so that kills free agency too.

Big market teams still have an advantage but it’s really not as big as it used to be. It’s really not that much different than like the advantage the Maple Leafs have over the Coyotes for example.

Not sure I agree with this.

MLB 2019 Payroll Tracker

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

Not sure I agree with this.

MLB 2019 Payroll Tracker

That’s all in comparison to the league though. Obviously baseball teams & their players make more than the NHL does as the league generates more money as a whole.

But baseball isn’t some free for all mired with irrational decisions like it used to be. I mean hell the Yankees themselves aren’t far removed from bottoming out. Guys like Judge & Sanchez emerged from the farm system to change the complexion of the team real quick.

 

[Hexxxy]

The Yankees don't have a salary cap. Holmgren used up the available cap space for signing free agents on Vinny and Streit for 2013-14 thru 2016-17. Once those deals were done with and Filppula was gone, Hextall went out and got the biggest free agent on the market who wasn't basing his NHL future on what his favorite childhood jammies were.

this is all true. nevertheless, both the perception by fans (especially young fans) and the reality, is that the days when the flyers could just go out and sign jeremy roenick, or even chris pronger are over. the days of a roger neilson or hitchcock type signing look over. not that it can’t swing back a bit at some time, but the way the organization is run, appear to be over. the days when the flyers dominated, and were perpetually a cup threat, or a FA signing away from being a cup threat, seem over. this makes fans, especially the non-diehards, not care, or even ready to care if it happened.

The Yankees aren’t even the Yankees anymore either. Baseball has changed a lot from the days when the old man was there spending money like a drunken sailor & would have like a top 5-10 team along with a top 5-10 prospect pool every year to go with it.

Baseball doesn’t have a salary cap but the luxury tax threshold might as well be as nobody consistently goes over it anymore including the Yankees. The money you can spend on prospects in the draft & international signings is also capped with the worse you are the more money you get to spend. Even with prospects being the most crapshoot of all them in sports there’s still a lot of incentive for teams to bottom out whether willingly or not.

Owners in general don’t hand out blank checks anymore to players. Every organization has an analytics department &/or GM with an analytic background to avoid long term on aging players which plagued teams before with dinosaur GM’s. Which the owner’s obviously like while the player agents & MLBPA hate it. If you’re a bad team there’s no point in spending much payroll on your team either so that kills free agency too.

Big market teams still have an advantage but it’s really not as big as it used to be. It’s really not that much different than like the advantage the Maple Leafs have over the Coyotes for example.

The Yanks going out and grabbing anyone, everyone, Arod, Strawberry, Oneill, Damon, whomever to create megasuperstar lineups reminds me of the way the flyers used to do things.

even if the era of this is over, that itself is a major contributing factor on how the team is perceived, the reality of failure, and attenuating popularity. the fans have been conditioned towards a different state. perpetual mediocrity is not that state.

 

[Adam Warlock]

A boring coach, lack of winning, and poor marketing all have tanked the Flyers brand.

The later took a step forward with gritty...but casual philly fans are clueless about the team. Ivan provorov isnt a well known name in philly and that's pretty sad. Hextalls lack of transparency is the opposite of the sixers which is why fans embraced that rebuild and not his.

Fire Hakstol. Exciting hockey. More Gritty. Profit.

 

[deadhead]

A long rebuild always dampens fan interest in any sport, which is why so many get short circuited by a win now deal or two, which usually ends up as "win never." Or at least until the next rebuild.

Hextall has done it right, the Flyers will have a flood of talent arriving the next two seasons, not only will this team be loaded by 2020-21, but Hextall wil have to make a couple deals just to open up AHL spots for the next wave of prospects. This is how you build a contender.

Fans who whine about the rebuild generally have no clue about the talent currently in the pipeline, nor how empty the pipeline was in 2014 when Hextall took over (Ghost, Laughton, Hagg, Morin, Cousins, Leier, Stolarz).

 

[Rebels57]

A boring coach, lack of winning, and poor marketing all have tanked the Flyers brand.

The later took a step forward with gritty...but casual philly fans are clueless about the team. Ivan provorov isnt a well known name in philly and that's pretty sad. Hextalls lack of transparency is the opposite of the sixers which is why fans embraced that rebuild and not his.

Fire Hakstol. Exciting hockey. More Gritty. Profit.

Emotion is a big part of attachment to a sports team, and the emotional intelligence of this franchise, from Homer to Hextall to Hakstol, is severely lacking.

 

[tucson83]

this is all true. nevertheless, both the perception by fans (especially young fans) and the reality, is that the days when the flyers could just go out and sign jeremy roenick, or even chris pronger are over. the days of a roger neilson or hitchcock type signing look over. not that it can’t swing back a bit at some time, but the way the organization is run, appear to be over. the days when the flyers dominated, and were perpetually a cup threat, or a FA signing away from being a cup threat, seem over. this makes fans, especially the non-diehards, not care, or even ready to care if it happened.

The Yanks going out and grabbing anyone, everyone, Arod, Strawberry, Oneill, Damon, whomever to create megasuperstar lineups reminds me of the way the flyers used to do things.

even if the era of this is over, that itself is a major contributing factor on how the team is perceived, the reality of failure, and attenuating popularity. the fans have been conditioned towards a different state. perpetual mediocrity is not that state.

it's fact that the organization has no desire go after anyone even the players that were on the block they were better than our players not firing hakstol and possibly passing up on joel q, it's mind blogging, it's like the fo doesnt care at all, they dont want to win a championship playing 500 or just barely making the playoffs is good enough for them.

 

[renberg]

The 1971-72 Bruins rag dolled the Flyers in every meeting that the two teams had that season. Keith Allen and Fred Shero decided that that was never going to happen again. That they were going to put together a team that would compete for every second of every game in every way. Out of that came the so called Bullies. Sure they scrapped but what they did was compete all game long in every way possible including throwing them down if it was called for. That's what won the city over for them and was the hallmark of the organization.
I realize that it's now a different era but a player can still compete today like the Flyers did in the past. This bunch doesn't do that and that's what is turning off the fans. CIP, if an official had got in the way of the puck with Moose DuPont the way that happened last night with Gostisbehere, Moose would have been on that puck and flattened the guy for being in the way in the process.
Competing means more than throwing them down. It's doing what it takes to win no matter what with no excuses. This bunch right now doesn't do that. If a Flyer fails but gave it his all, the fans wouldn't be on him and boo. It's when they are perceived as not doing that, that the fans get bothered no matter what the score is.

 

[Striiker]

it's fact that the organization has no desire go after anyone even the players that were on the block they were better than our players not firing hakstol and possibly passing up on joel q, it's mind blogging, it's like the fo doesnt care at all, they dont want to win a championship playing 500 or just barely making the playoffs is good enough for them.

Do you enjoy being wrong?

 

[Hexxxy]

it's fact that the organization has no desire go after anyone even the players that were on the block they were better than our players not firing hakstol and possibly passing up on joel q, it's mind blogging, it's like the fo doesnt care at all, they dont want to win a championship playing 500 or just barely making the playoffs is good enough for them.

well, it looks like hextall doesn’t think that model is sustainable. and perhaps he sees the long term rebuild as the only viable way forward. drafting and developing is the only viable economic way post-snider

teams that stink like the pens stank only to get crosby and malkin — lucky to be bad at the right time and then defat the right guy.

flyers have been plenty good at the draft and plenty lucky.

Nolan Patrick is so important to the future. Carter Hart is so important to the future. Frost, Morin, Farabee, Obrien. They can’t miss on guys like this. They can’t not develop and trade like they did with Sharp.

The guys that have come up can’t get hurt — Provy, Ghost, Sanheim, Hagg, Konecny can’t get hurt.

 

[Rebels57]

well, it looks like hextall doesn’t think that model is sustainable. and perhaps he sees the long term rebuild as the only viable way forward. drafting and developing is the only viable economic way post-snider

teams that stink like the pens stank only to get crosby and malkin — lucky to be bad at the right time and then defat the right guy.

flyers have been plenty good at the draft and plenty lucky.

Nolan Patrick is so important to the future. Carter Hart is so important to the future. Frost, Morin, Farabee, Obrien. They can’t miss on guys like this. They can’t not develop and trade like they did with Sharp.

The guys that have come up can’t get hurt — Provy, Ghost, Sanheim, Hagg, Konecny can’t get hurt.

One of these is not like (good) the others.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

Basketball & the NBA is just set up differently than the other three leagues. The parity is really bad so they tend to market around the players rather than the teams. When the Sixers were mediocre for all those years prior to tanking they as a franchise had really no buzz.

The Sixers have been relevant for roughly 12 of the 50 years before the Process -- mid 60s, late 70s through mid 80s, and the brief Iverson peak.

They were the definition of zero buzz. The Flyers had it easy.

 

[Hexxxy]

One of these is not like (good) the others.

haha. point being he serve a roster purpose on the cheap as opposed to having a more expensive vet that has to be signed to play bottom pair minutes. and truth for me is hagg is pretty much one of the only guys with real grit on the team. he can also improve. you have to let him try and improve

 

[tucson83]

well, it looks like hextall doesn’t think that model is sustainable. and perhaps he sees the long term rebuild as the only viable way forward. drafting and developing is the only viable economic way post-snider

teams that stink like the pens stank only to get crosby and malkin — lucky to be bad at the right time and then defat the right guy.

flyers have been plenty good at the draft and plenty lucky.

Nolan Patrick is so important to the future. Carter Hart is so important to the future. Frost, Morin, Farabee, Obrien. They can’t miss on guys like this. They can’t not develop and trade like they did with Sharp.

The guys that have come up can’t get hurt — Provy, Ghost, Sanheim, Hagg, Konecny can’t get hurt.

yes i agree, and that's why having a great coach matters and joel q is the right fit. he's the king of youth development, he took over a young blackhawks team in 2007, the young players development really hinders on the coach you pick.

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

The Sixers have been relevant for roughly 12 of the 50 years before the Process -- mid 60s, late 70s through mid 80s, and the brief Iverson peak.

They were the definition of zero buzz. The Flyers had it easy.

You can’t even fool the fans in basketball like you can in hockey either, making the playoffs is essentially meaningless for every team sans like 2-3 in a normal year. These past few years with Golden State has probably been crazy even for NBA standards.

Hockey likes to champion itself as some ultimate crapshoot & beacon of parity but it’s really not. There’s about 4-5 rosters out of the 16 teams in most years that are truly capable of winning it all & theyre generally teams that do well in the regular season as well.

 

[Oskar Man]

I liked that post and felt the same when I went to Philadelphia. It's the same pretty much every where in the US, actually. Flyers fans are nice, but rare. Come to Québec. We don't have a team anymore, yet Nordiques fans are still everywhere. Can't wait for it to comeback. But if it doesn't because the league stays "USA first", I might turn to another hockey league. Sorry for the politics in this post, but it's still true. The NHL sucks. I don't hate the US, but you guys aren't the center of the world.

It has nothing to do with the US or your perception of it. It has everything to do with business and making money.

Look at the populations of some of these US markets compared to Quebec City. Not to mention a lot of these southern markets have little to no competition from other major sports leagues.

 

[LegionOfDoom91]

It has nothing to do with the US or your perception of it. It has everything to do with business and making money.

Look at the populations of some of these US markets compared to Quebec City. Not to mention a lot of these southern markets have little to no competition from other major sports leagues.

 

[Rebels57]

haha. point being he serve a roster purpose on the cheap as opposed to having a more expensive vet that has to be signed to play bottom pair minutes. and truth for me is hagg is pretty much one of the only guys with real grit on the team. he can also improve. you have to let him try and improve

Id love for Hagg to improve but not even Xhibit could convert a Cement Truck into a Mercedes.

 

[Hexxxy]

Gritty gets 14 write-in votes in Camden County (N.J.) election

i wonder actually what the balance of fans is between Pennsylvania, NJ, and Delaware

does anyone know?