Phanatic Hockey Editor
Remember when sports talk radio ruled the roost back in the late 1990s and early 2000s?
A time when the Flyers found minimal coverage or conversation and a now disgraced long-time sports reporter came up with a clever term for how their fans unfailingly and unrelentingly failed to question anything the top brass did?
It was Howard Eskin over on 610 WIP, during a time when both names meant a damn, calling Orange and Black faithful "Stepford fans" when the club kept changing its lineup in pursuit of a Stanley Cup only to continually fall flat on their faces in the postseason.
The "Stepford" part refers to a thriller from the 1970s where a group of successful suburban Connecticut men decided to remove a major headache in their respective marriages and conduct bizarre experiments to turn their wives into nothing more than obedient zombies.
For Eskin, it was a playful reminder for a local media player who witnessed the entire arc of the franchise ebb and flow so many times with the same general result; for anyone not a Stepford, it was a source of endless laughter when the unwitting dopes on the other end of the phone line had zero clue they were the latest 2-minute dupe in an endless conveyor belt of unwitting dupes across a 2-hour show.
Those memories still rear their ugly head now and then, particularly on hockey twitter when the rabid masses, frustrated with a constant cycle of rebuilding, end up comparing the pre (alive Ed Snider) and post (deceased Ed Snider) Dave Scott hockey operations era.
Nowhere was this Stepford ugliness more apparent last Jan. 11, when Flyers fans -- fresh off the news of Boston College sophomore forward Cutter Gauthier's rebuff of several front office members and the trade to Anaheim which followed -- decided to turn their eloquence towards the 20-year-old forward. The fact the Flyers won easily, 6-0, fanned the flames of their desire for vengeance.
The constant, withering boos I'm cool with. That's what we do. But the whole "F*** YOU CUTTER" nonsense uttered by some ritual mouth breathing ticket holders that was loud enough to be picked up on the broadcast made the sellout crowd look like they made their living digging sewage lines. Like school in the summer, no class.
New Year, Same You
Never one to forget a grudge or the past, 360 days later on Ed Snider Legacy Night, the organization surely made a calculated move and opened up its broadcast of the first Philly-based Ducks-Flyers tilt of this season with a 30-second recap of the Gauthier situation that, again, cast the nascent star as a villain.
Why did Gauthier refuse to meet with any member of the Flyers front office last holiday season?
Because he didn't.
We don't know.
We're never gonna know.
He might have bristled at the (correct for once with this front office regarding college talent) belief that he needed another year on the Heights before coming to the pros.
He never even set foot anywhere controlled by the franchise at any level.
He plays for an out-of-conference team.
Shut up and move on.
Couldn't tell that to the paying Stepfords, though, who soundly booed Public Enemy No. 61 beginning just 84 seconds after the opening faceoff and didn't let up on him until the final buzzer of an eventual 5-2 Philadelphia triumph.
The noise had its peaks and valleys, first reaching a crescendo with 4:15 played as his blast from the bottom edge of the right circle on a power play put the desperate Ducks (0-6-1 in their last 7 games) on the board.
It was the kind of goal you'd want the Flyers to start scoring with regularity to try and repair a consistently-broken man advantage, with a draftee taken at wing who's allowed to stay at wing, who has that shoot-first, killer mentality. It was his 20th of the season, which would far and away be the team best in Philly.
From there, the sustained sonata drifted in and out every time he was spotted on the ice. Like his counterpart who was shipped the other way, Gauthier is owed time and space to play the game for his team without being subject to the stupidity of local yokels who seem to relish in misplaced catharsis. He was more concerned with his team's performance on ice than with the maelstrom above it.
"It was a really hectic atmosphere. I thought we had a great start with getting up and after that, the little things, the details in our game kinda crept in and we weren't executing at a high level," he said in team-sponsored locker-room comments. "To win in this league you have to be pretty damn perfect to make plays with really good players on the other team that are going to haunt your mistakes."
I have to give *some* credit to the cretins, who managed to spit out a F-YOU CUTTER loud enough to bleed through any control-room blocks on the broadcast on just two occasions. I hear tell there were more than two outbursts in the crowd.
Long-Term Implications
Three things I strongly suspect will enter into the collective minds of the Flyers front office as a result of the Gauthier fiasco:
A) It soured the front office on young, flashy goal-scoring types and;
2) Put a couple nails in the coffin of selecting any players from BC in the future (not that there was much demand in the past) such as James Hagens, who went seventh overall to the Boston Bruins last June and;
D) Put a dent in any kind of consideration to take on more longer-term projects at the D1 level with either a first or second-round selection, hence the gamble on quicker-ready players like Porter Martone, Jack Nesbitt and Oliver Bonk.
Gauthier deserved his share of scorn from the ticket-buying public when he made his first NHL appearance here with the Ducks a year ago. But this year, come on, low rent garbage.
Playing amateur psychologist for a bit, it's screamingly obvious that explosive expression of emotion is telling on a vast amount of the fanbase that they're jealous of the Ducks rocket ride but their Stepford impulses can't bring them to lay the criticism at the feet of the Flyers brain trust.
After all, how could Johnny Vermont or Jonesy or Handsome Pat or Danny Clutch NOT know what they're doing? They're our heroes, not from corporate. They cook, they don't get cooked.
In other words, classic transference.
Only those who don't want to stretch their brains to understand sports and life beyond a middle-school level could have boiled down a matchup between two young, exciting clubs to how many goals Gauthier and former Duck Trevor Zegras scored.
That includes at least one legacy print media member who kept a running tally of both guy's goals and contributed little else on socials while afforded the usual spot for intrepid reporters.
Although I couldn't talk to him because I was denied a credential to cover the game in person, Zegras, I'm pretty sure, isn't in competition with Gauthier and refused to mention him by name in the afterglow of victory. Didn't mean he wasn't pumped to beat his old club, but he's clearly not giving in to that narrative.
"I missed the game last year but I heard all about it and I was fired up to play in this one," Zegras admitted when egged on by ex-Flyer Scott Hartnell in the post-game bench interview after his 2-goal night. "The boos were great but the cheers were even better."
Little Z even channeled Chase Utley and let fly with two weapons grade live TV F-bombs of his own when pressed by Hartnell on how he felt about the arena's atmosphere.
"I've been thinking about this game for a long time, he added during the locker-room pool interviews. "It's funny how these two teams have turned into such big games. Playing against your old team who kinda shoved you out the door. (Ducks starter Lukas) Dostal's usually got my number. It was good to get a couple on him."
Truth Hurts, We Need Something More Exciting
Right now, Anaheim is advancing past Philadelphia in terms of development, talent and progression in its reconstruction, season records notwithstanding.
Why? First of all, because the often-overlooked SoCal franchise was able to perform a complete teardown. Seven straight years out of the playoffs, during which they never finished higher than sixth in their own division. Slow cook. No "almost-but-not-quite-making-the-playoffs-on-the-season's-last day" nonsense before a scheduled regression like last year's Flyers.
The Ducks raced out to an 11-3-1 record by mid-November and at that point, led the NHL in both total goals scored and goals per game. They were flash and dash. The Flyers on the other hand, were perpetually behind since the opening puck drop, still mired in dump and chase.
The visitors crashed back to Earth as we hit the new year, going just 10-15-2 since then due to the drag of a 6-month regular-season journey, less attention to defense and an injury to certified bleep-stirrer Frank Vatrano. There's also the as-yet-to-be-revealed injury status of goaltender Petr Mrazek, who went down in a 7-4 loss at Washington on Monday and was replaced on an emergency basis by Ville Husso.
It doesn't hurt that Anaheim head coach Joel Quenneville, again allowed to ply his trade after falling on the sword in the wake of the Blackhawks prospect abuse scandal, is a 3-time Stanley Cup winner with a history of success at three other NHL stops (St. Louis, Colorado, Chicago).
The Ducks front office under GMs Bob Murray and Pat Verbeek -- only stocked with ONE former player of note -- found, drafted, traded and signed talent like Leo Carlsson, Mason MacTavish, Gauthier, Beckett Sennecke, Troy Terry and rounded out the vanguard with valuable vets like Ryan Poehling, Alex Killorn, Radko Gudas and two-time NCAA champion Chris Kreider.
From the opposite coast, I get a strong sense that Quenneville is playing with house money in an atmosphere way more conducive to acceptance of the lessons learned through trial and error. Remember, the Ducks, with new ownership, new branding and a garish non-Disney color scheme, won a Cup as recently as 2007 but have skated waaaaay under the radar since glazing and bronzing Teemu Selanne in 2014.
"I don't think we want to feel good about ourselves right now, but I think that tomorrow's a fresh day and we gotta find a way to break this little ... not little either ... stretch here," Quenneville said after the club's latest setback left the Ducks at a negative-18 (17-35) goal differential over their 7-game slide.
Said Carlsson to The Athletic's Eric Stephens in November about the team's transition to a more open mindset, “Immediately, I feel we have a little bit more freedom to make plays,” Carlsson said. “If we make a mistake, it’s not really as hard, like to be on the bench and stuff. Like, that’s not my ultimate place. I feel like the young guys with skill, we just make plays. Sometimes it backfires, but most of the time this season it’s been good. Just more freedom, I would say.”
Freedom. What a concept.
If only Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet weren't an ex-Flyer retread, so constrained by the pressures of an organization packed with a chairman/CEO who openly admitted there's a vested interest in dredging up the glories of the past, other ex-Flyers involved in hockey ops and generations of fans now doubly desperate for their younger players to blossom and their prospects to bloom.
Or if Tocchet actually won anything of consequence in his three previous NHL stops (Tampa Bay, Arizona, Vancouver).
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| Courtesy of OnPattison |
Quenneville seems relatively unbothered with a much longer tether and the shine of experience.
The Flyers have ascended the standings by grinding it out, addressing the culture, taking accountability and other abstract nouns. They have allowed the game's first goal in more than half of their 41 games. Miraculously, they've won 15 of those, including Tuesday night's attempt at reviving Old Time Hockey.
It's not sustainable. Not when a win against a non-conference opponent costs the team so much in energy and expenditure. Not when there's more valuable in-conference games with Toronto, Tampa Bay, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and the Rangers on the horizon. Worse, the ride's just not as fun as the one in SoCal.
The Ducks may not make the playoffs and the Flyers might make it. Or vice versa. Both could make it and both may not. Regardless, nobody could mistake this year's Orange and Black for being dynamic or free to live and learn. Win or lose, the Ducks seem to have a personality and an ethos. Win or lose, game to game, period to period, the Flyers don't seem to know who to be. They've been incredibly lucky and a little bit good so far.
Besides, what did all that misdirected hate accomplish? Created an on-ice circus where both Bobby Brink and Jamie Drysdale left the game and did not return with injuries. The Ducks lost, but remained intact. Lose the battle, win the war. You don't need to play a playoff-style "heavy game" in early January, even though Tocchet denied that type of intent.
"'Heavy' to me is different than back in the day," Tocchet told a media scrum on Wednesday. "All that little contact, bumping up against a player constantly night after night that's how you wear teams down ... being a pain in the butt to play against, that's 'heavy to me. You get into the odd fight, I get it, it's more just being that hard team to play against, we're still trying to find that every game."
For club and fandom, save the hate for who really counts. They're the guy behind the bench and the guys in the suits in the suites who may be trying their best, but keep feeding you the same old lines.
