Rich Nixon
No Prior Knowledge of "Flyers"
The team quit on the coach tonight. The Flyers are in extreme crisis mode. The players have had enough of Hakstol.
Not exactly a great night to make sweeping judgements on players just because you saw them one game televised nationally during a team wide meltdown.
Flyers fans have been saying forever Hakstol is the main problem here.
Yes. All of this.
Yesterday the team shut out a decent Rangers squad. There were no complaints about the defense then, everyone did their job, they still played like a meek crap team but they made the most of their opportunities and got a win.
Tonight they came in and got run over. This happens a lot with the Flyers: There is no consistency, continuity, or motivation. The players are good, but you're not going to tell me that 18 capable players are so synced up that they all either do their jobs or don't at the same time without that being a coaching problem. Some nights the entire team is fine and some nights the entire team is trash and there are no exceptions. The coaching staff is tasked with preperation and, for lack of a better term, quality control. This team receives neither.
It's a bad situation for young defensemen. The decisions all over the lineup are also bad: rookie Lindblom had 5g 5a in ~20 games with Voracek and Patrick, and his reward was an inexplicable demotion to the 4th line with Dale f***ing Weise taking his place.
For Provorov and Gostisbehere, Christ, what do you expect from them? They're both paired with a bottom-pairing-at-best guy. Ghost is a better defender than people give him credit for, but you want to give him a steady partner to open up his game. He's instead played with Christian Folin all season, who is not an NHL d-man, let alone a top 4 guy. So Ghost's offense is completely neutered and he's being asked to punch above his defensive capabilities to make up for his trash partner. Of course he's gonna look bad! Same deal with Provorov, except Hagg's a bit better...but he's still a #5 or #6 and Provorov has to carry him around for f***ing first pairing minutes every night.
Our team is horribly, horribly coached. You can evaluate players from afar, but at least understand the context here.
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