Phanatic Hockey Editor
Mike Keenan was Rick Tocchet's first NHL coach, beginning with their respective NHL rookie season of 1984-85.
Keenan oversaw the first 278 games of Tocchet's illustrious playing career but it took just 44 games for the new boss to become same as the old boss, the one every player on those memorable teams spat a curse at more than once.
The Christmas Eve Bag Skate of 1984 is legendary and multiple players have mentioned it publicly over the years. After a rousing home win over the Capitals the night before allowed the Flyers to keep pace in the race to first place in the Patrick Division, a planned easy practice the next day ahead of holiday travel turned into a nightmare of epic proportions. Two days later, they laid an absolute stinker in a 6-0 road loss at Washington.
Following a 5-1 loss to Tampa at home on Monday, Tocchet and the Flyers proceeded with a normal routine the following day. On Wednesday, however, facing the first of a back-to-back road stint at Buffalo ahead of a 7:30 pm national TV start, he conceded to the ghost of Iron Mike and declared the team would have a practice at noon instead of a pre-planned day of rest ahead of travel.
Interesting move for a team looking like and playing like the Walking Dead ever since their 5-2 home win on Jan. 6 against the Anaheim Ducks left them devoid of energy and emotion as a whole and down two additional players: Bobby Brink and Jamie Drysdale.
Two nights later, it wasn't the power play that doomed an eventual 2-1 overtime setback to the Maple Leafs, but the general lack of power which saw them score the game's first goal but unable to do anything other than bear witness to that slender 1-goal edge melting away in the late stages of regulation and OT.
Then, down Brink, Drysdale and Travis Konecny on Saturday night, the Orange and Black's burst of brio early on was savagely slapped down by the Lightning in a 7-2 slaughter. Although Konecny returned in the back end of the home-and-home on Monday, no life was detected until the hosts were already down 3-0 in the second period of an eventual 5-1 defeat.
Worse still, facing 3-and-4-goal deficits, the Flyers expended whatever lifeforce remained in meaningless pissing matches during the entire third period, mostly started by the battling Bolts and joyfully joined in by the hostile hosts. It played out like an entire chapter of Old Time Hockey, where score settling and calling cards in a blowout were more important than, y'know, trying to score and reduce the margin of defeat.
It added 15 to 20 real-time minutes to a game that should mercifully have ended much sooner than it did. Harp on the bad officiating? Argue with a wall. I get it. a big part of the Tocchet ethos is a callback to what made him a respected player. Win and go full bore to do it. Lose but don't take it sitting down and cause some chaos.
What's starting to wear already is the lack of any insight into the learning process. When asked point-blank on Monday in the postgame what lessons the young team could learn from these back-to-back embarrassments, Tocchet offered the following word salad:
"I mean, it's a good hockey team over there. It's a measuring stick. You know, you can't get frustrated, you gotta keep working and just do the proper things," he said. "We gotta hold onto pucks. We need some guys ... let's face it, their best players are very good. There's a level we gotta find some of our guys to get to and that's what we're trying to get to, every day."
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| Courtesy of FoxSports.com |
Anyway, the result was inevitable. A tired visiting team made more tired-er by a vigorous practice touched down in a city whose team was justifiably upset at losing their previous game to the 2-time defending Cup champion Panthers late in regulation.
The Sabres, winners in 12 of their last 14, bolted from the block and could have been ahead 5-0 in the first period. Instead, they settled for a 2-0 margin which was extended to 4-1 after two and closed out at 5-2.
Among the brain-dead highlights in that one: Trevor Zegras and Konecny sprung on a 2-on-0 break from their defensive blue line that resulted in zero shots on goal after Zegras opted to curl left, deke, then attempt a drop pass to a then-covered TK. Three Flyers including the comedy duo Seeler & Juulsen, standing within 6 feet of Sam Ersson, covering no one, as Vince Dunn scores from atop the crease.
The vortex also managed to swallow up first-half team MVP and nominal starter Dan Vladar, who left the game with an apparent lower-body injury spotted on a routine save early in the contest. Later updates termed the injury "not serious" but a timetable is still unknown.
"I just think we maybe we've got to ... get our spark, our mojo back a little bit," Zegras said in the Sabres postmortem. "We just got to, I guess reboot our brains a little bit and know that it's a hard league and that you're going to go through these tough stretches."
"We're a pretty young team and I know we've played well up to this point, but we haven't really accomplished a whole lot," he added. "Got to keep the foot on the pedal and just keep going."
Oh Trev. So close I can taste it. Blink once if I'm on the right track.
Onto Pittsburgh. And the same thing happens.
The hosts pumped home two goals in the first and added another score early in the second before any Flyers answered. It took several minutes but the adrenaline burst arrived and helped carry the club, which had the better of the play until the middle buzzer.
But it was only just before Rodrigo Abols cut the visitors' deficit to two, instead of right after Egor Chinakhov scored, when Tocchet decided to replace Ersson with call-up Alexei Kolosov. And despite the goal and uptick in energy and puck possession, they still faced a 3-goal hole entering the final 20 minutes.
Despite promising signs like Denver Barkey adding two assists and his customary solid play with and without the puck along with Matvei Michkov notching a goal and a fight, it didn't matter and the night ended with a 6-3 defeat to a Penguins club on an 8-3-1 run since their 8-game skid prior to Christmas.
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| Thanks to the Tribune Review |
The only club worse recently, the Blueshirts themselves, at 6.75 GPG against in their last 4 contests.
Tocchet laid it all bare after the loss last night. He blamed the terrible power play and the lackluster penalty kill. He called out the excessive passing and lack of shooting. He assailed players making bad choices that lead to penalties, bad choices which result from "playing too hard" and being soft in the corners.
Yet, not a peep of accountability for himself or his coaching staff.
Might be the right time for a Rangers Eve bag skate. That'll teach 'em to keep losing and not learning any lessons.
"There's adversity (that) hit our team and in your career you're going to have adversity. I don't care who you are and (how you improve is) how you deal with it," he added, with no context as to how this patchwork roster can accomplish it.
Remember back in May, when I wrote that hiring Tocchet was a calculated gamble based on nostalgia? Despite the Flyers' above-expected performance in the season's first half, I can't point to anything objective that he's done to help the team win. Just showed two glaring examples of something he's done that put the team into, then failed to break them out of a slump -- right out of the old time playbook -- and might have amplified the main issue behind this current losing stretch.
When all NHL players adhere to similar, year-round regimens, sweat equity can become a physical and psychological punishment, not an edge. In his time, Keenan was way ahead of the curve on health, exercise and the need to push athletes to their limits, thanks to Pat Croce riding shotgun. It was a key component of the Flyers' youth movement, which often won games in the third period due to that significant edge in fitness.
I don't think it's coddling to let a beaten batch of youngsters facing a stretch of 6 games in 9 days rest in the midst of a losing skid. Tocchet obviously didn't think so, so I hope he's learned a lesson about the proper time to push the pedal to the floor. He'll certainly be given a wide berth to figure it out.
As it stands now, the choice to run the kids down in the midst of a spate of depth-killing injuries, overall malaise and quality conference opponents might be enough of a negative inflection point that could grease the skids upon which another empty April are greased.
On Jan. 6, the Flyers rose to sixth place in the Eastern Conference. Ten days later, they've managed to backslide all the way to 11th place while seeing Washington, Toronto and Pittsburgh race past them. All losses hurt. But these losses coming in the midst of a veritable (bleep) storm hurt more.
New York may be waiting to settle a score, or willing to engage. Either way, they're playing with house money after team GM Chris Drury admitted a retooling of the roster around younger talent would be underway soon.
Twenty-five days ago, Philly wasted leads of 3-1 and 4-2 at Madison Square Garden before dropping a 5-4 OT result, one which featured Nic Deslauriers illegally checking, then legally abusing, Rangers newbie Brennan Othmann. Thereafter, the Orange and Black embark on a brief road swing, part of going 5 of 6 away from home.
The smart move would be for Tocchet to hammer home the importance of staying cool and focused on winning the game. The actual move remains to be seen.
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