BryzyInPhilly
Registered User
- Jun 27, 2011
- 71
- 8
EDIT: ITL;DR -- the question really boils down to whether Giroux has been a bad captain, and is therefore partly responsible for our failures over the last few years. If you read on, I'm by no means saying he's the only problem, or that any of this is really his fault. I would really like to see someone argue for why he is a good captain (not meant to be combative, I'm genuinely curious, because I think saying "others are to blame" -- which I agree with -- does not mean he is not also partly to blame).
When you see a team like ours that consistently plays with such little hunger, you have to wonder whether the team lacks leadership. No doubt the coach is part of that leadership, and I think it's safe to say Hakstol was a failure. But a good captain should still get his team to show even a glimmer of heart. And he has not.
Let me start of by saying I don't think Giroux is the only problem we have, and there's a lot of blame to go around. I also want to say I have no problem with Giroux as a player, and have never wanted the Flyers to get rid of him. He's undoubtedly one of the best offensive players over the last ten years and nothing I'm saying here is meant to undercut those accomplishments.
But I think he has been a bad captain, and obviously no one really knows this, but I can't help but wonder if he isn't much of a leader in the locker room. And I think that in our appreciation of how great he has been as a player, we as fans have let him and the organization get away with how bad of a captain he's been. We have not won a single playoff series since he's worn the C. We haven't finished above 3rd in the division, and on average we've fallen between 4-5th, with three seasons in 6th. On the whole, I think we would agree that most of these seasons fell short of expectations and that we underperformed based on our roster. At what point do we question Giroux's role in this **** chapter in Flyers history?
No doubt there were other factors -- on a macro-scale, the consequences of Holmgren's bet the house policies took their toll and the replacement GM de-prioritized being competitive in the short term (leading to micro-scale problems like poor goaltending and rostering developing youths rather than veteran mercenaries, which we didn't used to do).
But no matter how you cut it, Giroux has not been a good enough leader to make this team overcome the challenges it faced (which he did not cause), or even win a single playoff series. In fact, we have won just 7 playoff games in 5 seasons with him as captain, and in the last two series we played -- 12 games -- Giroux scored just one goal and 4 points, which is pretty god-awful even accounting for good defenses game-planning around him as a result of our poor depth.
My sense is the organization did him a disservice by placing this burden on him. I felt at the time that we were drumming up the old Cold War with Pittsburgh by naming our star center captain just like their Crosby. (Sidebar, but ever wonder why we were always so good against Pittsburgh even when we sucked against everyone else? It's because we built our team to beat Pittsburgh specifically, because for years they were the only other threat in our division and the fanbase hated them so damn much. You can still see it: even as we've declined, the remnants of that system still allow us to inexplicably beat them more than you'd think we should). He was young (just 25) and he wasn't ready for it. They did the same thing with Richards and while I've still got nothing but love for him, his career in Philly (and in general) ended in a complete trainwreck.
Your captain doesn't have to be your best player (think Primeau, Desjardins, Hatcher) and Giroux never should have been captain. He's partly to blame for the lazy beer league performance we've watched for the last 5 years, and so is the organization that forced him into that role to begin with.
Food for thought, but I hope Vigneault strips him of the C and relieves him of this burden, when he's already carrying the weight of this offense on his shoulders.
When you see a team like ours that consistently plays with such little hunger, you have to wonder whether the team lacks leadership. No doubt the coach is part of that leadership, and I think it's safe to say Hakstol was a failure. But a good captain should still get his team to show even a glimmer of heart. And he has not.
Let me start of by saying I don't think Giroux is the only problem we have, and there's a lot of blame to go around. I also want to say I have no problem with Giroux as a player, and have never wanted the Flyers to get rid of him. He's undoubtedly one of the best offensive players over the last ten years and nothing I'm saying here is meant to undercut those accomplishments.
But I think he has been a bad captain, and obviously no one really knows this, but I can't help but wonder if he isn't much of a leader in the locker room. And I think that in our appreciation of how great he has been as a player, we as fans have let him and the organization get away with how bad of a captain he's been. We have not won a single playoff series since he's worn the C. We haven't finished above 3rd in the division, and on average we've fallen between 4-5th, with three seasons in 6th. On the whole, I think we would agree that most of these seasons fell short of expectations and that we underperformed based on our roster. At what point do we question Giroux's role in this **** chapter in Flyers history?
No doubt there were other factors -- on a macro-scale, the consequences of Holmgren's bet the house policies took their toll and the replacement GM de-prioritized being competitive in the short term (leading to micro-scale problems like poor goaltending and rostering developing youths rather than veteran mercenaries, which we didn't used to do).
But no matter how you cut it, Giroux has not been a good enough leader to make this team overcome the challenges it faced (which he did not cause), or even win a single playoff series. In fact, we have won just 7 playoff games in 5 seasons with him as captain, and in the last two series we played -- 12 games -- Giroux scored just one goal and 4 points, which is pretty god-awful even accounting for good defenses game-planning around him as a result of our poor depth.
My sense is the organization did him a disservice by placing this burden on him. I felt at the time that we were drumming up the old Cold War with Pittsburgh by naming our star center captain just like their Crosby. (Sidebar, but ever wonder why we were always so good against Pittsburgh even when we sucked against everyone else? It's because we built our team to beat Pittsburgh specifically, because for years they were the only other threat in our division and the fanbase hated them so damn much. You can still see it: even as we've declined, the remnants of that system still allow us to inexplicably beat them more than you'd think we should). He was young (just 25) and he wasn't ready for it. They did the same thing with Richards and while I've still got nothing but love for him, his career in Philly (and in general) ended in a complete trainwreck.
Your captain doesn't have to be your best player (think Primeau, Desjardins, Hatcher) and Giroux never should have been captain. He's partly to blame for the lazy beer league performance we've watched for the last 5 years, and so is the organization that forced him into that role to begin with.
Food for thought, but I hope Vigneault strips him of the C and relieves him of this burden, when he's already carrying the weight of this offense on his shoulders.
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