Outside of Giroux and Laughton, all those guys were traded for by the current management! You want them to stay the course now, after making all these moves that have given us the core we have? That's fine. I have no problem with that, but don't call out the management and say Snider needs to step down, while at the same time talking about our young core.
Well that is a different story. A change in philosophy is different than saying Ed Snider needs to step down or that the Flyers will never win with Ed Snider at the helm. This argument started because someone was bad mouthing Ed Snider saying they'll never win with him at the helm, insinuating that he's the problem.
The GMs in LA and Chicago had years to draft players in the top half of the draft. Pretty much a decade each. Not all were gems, but the cores of their teams are made up of essentially players drafted during their ****** years (CHI: Toews, Seabrook, Kane, (plus some others drafted in later rounds during the ****** years like Duncan Keith); LA: Kopitar, Brown, Doughty, Voynov (32nd pick)). It's really hard to argue that drafting these cornerstone, all-star, award winning players with these picks was all management and the fact that they were drafting so high because they were bad the prior year doesn't impact it. I understand that having good management obviously helps. But it also helps to be picking in the top of the draft consistently. So like I said...you want a team like Chicago, get ready to suck for a few years. Show me a team that consistently drafts in the second half of the draft that has as good a core and is as successful as Chicago. You likely won't be able to find one outside of maybe Detroit and NJ.
There absolutely have been good moves and bad moves. No doubt about that. For the record, since the 1995 playoffs the Flyers have lost in the first round six times, the same amount of times they have been to the ECF or Cup finals (plus missing the playoffs twice and getting to round two 4 times). So this notion that they are seemingly making these moves and are not actually competing is pretty far from the truth, unless of course your definition of competing is different than making to the ECF/Finals more than the amount of times you are being eliminated in the first round.
That's not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is that winning a Cup is not as simple as getting rid of Ed Snider and Homer and taking the team in a different direction. To win a Cup everything has to be perfect AND you have to get lucky.
