Although it’s been 16 years, featuring 9 head or interim coaches, four GM tenures and one irreplaceable ownership loss since their last appearance in the Stanley Cup Finals, it’s pretty clear the Philadelphia Flyers are insistent they’re going to do it their way.
On the Nasty Knuckles podcast released on July 9 – 25 days after the Carolina Hurricanes won the second Cup in franchise history – the boys welcomed former beloved Flyer, ‘Canes head coach and 2-time Cup winner, Rod Brind’Amour to the fold.
In general terms, the path toward winning the title during the 2-month war of attrition, usually encompasses four things: overall health, systemic buy-in, near perfect execution, along with outstanding play by at least three players: one forward, one defenseman and a goaltender.
Oddly enough, these are the elements which elevated failed Flyers head coach Craig Berube in 2019 when he took over a moribund Blues club and rode the wave to the championship: near freakish health up and down the roster; stellar performances from Ryan O’Reilly, Alex Pietrangelo and the lack of a book on rookie netminder Jordan Binnington.
But that was an eternity on the NHL timeline.
Brind’Amour and the Hurricanes – whose core has been together for 8 years – finally broke through after 7 long years of losing in either the conference semifinals or conference finals, by tapping into that formula, which does, admittedly, rely on some freakish luck.
“A perfect example in these playoffs, you gotta be healthy at the end,” he said. “You’re not going to beat the best teams if you don’t have your best. We went through this playoff, I had one forward miss one game. (Nikolaj) Ehlers missed one game in the Ottawa series, that’s it. Our sixth defenseman (Alex Nikishin) missed two games.”
There’s the rub.
Flyers hockey has always been about parroting the same abstract nouns you’ll find in any TV advertisement for the military: honor, sacrifice, taking the hit to make the play, protecting teammates, etc. Problem is, that sacrifice has *always* caused issues that damage durability.
Not that they are difference makers, but Nikita Grebenkin and Rodrigo Abols’ lack of availability due to injury killed bottom-six depth. Owen Tippett missed 4 games and was injured internally for however many before that; Dan Vladar hurt his right upper body area 3 games in and played for the remainder.
The list goes on: Trevor Zegras had a sprained elbow ligament, Travis Konecny broke multiple ribs and one nose; Alex Bump sprained an MCL in one knee, Christian Dvorak a separated shoulder and broken rib, Cam York a broken rib and Garnet Hathaway a broken leg. That was only across 10 games in 2 rounds, while Carolina played 19 over 4 rounds.
It is asking A LOT of the current coaching staff and even more of the hockey gods to bless the Flyers with excellent playoff health for 2 months straight, given their franchise ethos in the spring is nothing short of coming in like a wrecking ball.
“There is a learning curve to all this,” Brind’Amour continued. “You don’t really know it when you’re in it, but now that you’re on the other side of it … there’s little things we’ve figured out.”
Could Tocchet, as bench boss, “figure it out” having been on the losing end of two Cup Finals vs. Edmonton and a Wales Conference finals run vs. Montreal whose hopes of victory were scuttled by repeated serious injuries to key personnel (Tim Kerr, Dave Poulin, Brad McCrimmon)? Or is he too caught up in the hero worship in this town from all the heroic, broken bodies pushed to their limit against superior foes?
One of those big “little” things the ‘Canes learned, is how to maximize their strengths by subduing the opposition through puck possession – and the fatigue that comes with the opposition chasing whoever has it – rather than brute strength shown in big hits and corner/netfront play.
They surely did so by embracing analytics, which Brind’Amour admitted he’s not crazy about, but which owner Tom Dundon and GM Eric Tulsky are clear devotees.
“Even in the playoffs that we lost, he’d (Dundon) come to me (and say), one year we got beat by Florida four straight and he said, ‘You guys should have won all those games.’ If we lost 4 straight and we were getting pounded analytically, there probably would have been a change,” he admitted.
They’ve also figured out how to maximize what Flyers head coach Rick Tocchet calls “low-event hockey” with respect to keeping pucks out of the net: in an era of increased offense, only 12 times during the regular season and 3 more in the playoff over a total of 101 contests did the ‘Canes surrender 5 or more goals.
When co-host Riley Cote asked Brind’Amour about “organizational patience” given Carolina came up short 7 straight years in the 2nd or 3rd round before making the finals and winning it all this year, hit answer might have hit on something deeper than the usual.
“I think what probably happens is you get GMs in place who are worried about their job, so they don’t really have the vision, the long term vision, so that hurts,” he offered. “I also think, from our standpoint here, our owner wants to win. When we won, he came to me and the first thing he said was, ‘Well, that took a long time!’ Why did it take so long? He really didn’t understand.”
I bet a lot of you reading this are with Dundon. However, what’s unstated is the imbalance between a relatively new hockey market in the Triangle region of a southern state and one of the league’s legacy franchises.
Success often depends on building from a clean slate. Front office regimes can’t realistically bear the cement parachute of previous failed attempts. By nature, the inherent confidence of the new group, starting at Day One, has to be the driving force behind their decision making.
On the other hand, there are multi-generational families of Flyers fans who have seen failure after failure with different cooks concocting different recipes in the vain attempt to distill the glory of half a century ago. Young men have married, become fathers and grandfathers and some have passed on with no significant replication of whatever formula each generation utilized to reach the top.
And yet, Danny Briere is constantly asking for renewed patience as he waits for deals which “make sense” to move this roster forward.
Keep it here 2 weeks from now where the next Phanatic Offseason Biweekly completes the examination based on Brind’Amour’s interview.
