The Philadelphia Flyers are awful right now injuries, penalty kill, coaching, goal tending, and even offense. Hextall needs to wipe this coaching core and start fresh because the people in Philly are tired of the same mediocrity year after year.
Introduction
I am going to talk about the absolute train wreck the Philadelphia Flyers are right now this season and what changes I think that need to happen. The Flyers are repeatedly losing badly there are no close games, they just get blown out by score lines of 4-1 to 6-1. The team has no passion, no effort, and just embarrassing themselves on home ice. This team is going nowhere and is just stuck in the same ways it has been for the past 4 seasons.
Hextall it is Time to Stop
The Flyers this season have a better team than they did a year ago and they made the playoffs. This season they are embarrassing and Philly fans are about done with this patient tactic from Hextall. The Flyers have been mediocre for the past couple of years and have not try to initiate a full rebuild it’s always been a rebuild on the fly where we make the playoffs to just get blown out in the first round. The number one thing Hextall needs to do for this organization is fire everyone in our coaching staff or at least Hakstol and Laperriere. This team has constantly looked lost and have had no energy and motivation to play for Hakstol anymore and that is a telling sign that Hakstol and his stone face need to get out of Philly. Hakstol’s decision as well on who to play on a nightly basis is just bizarre and destroys all development of young players that deserve a shot to get NHL experience. He literally benches very good young players for old veterans who have done nothing but hurt this team season after season. Ron Hextall a couple of days ago in an interview said “I’m a patient guy, but things around here need to get going fast.” Well obviously not fast enough because this team after that quote was shutout in Boston last Thursday night 3-0 and then absolutely destroyed against a joke of an Islanders team at home on Saturday 6-1. So what are we waiting for? We are all sick and tired of seeing the same product on the ice provided to us by the players and the coaching staff and having no backing to encourage our players. We get blown out 6-1 and Dave Hakstol just sits behind the bench silent doing nothing standing there looking like a lost puppy. Then our penalty kill is always ranked in the bottom of the NHL the past four seasons and haven’t improved the slightest this season with Ian Laperriere being the coach for the PK the past four years. So please we beg you to start a new chapter for this franchise and cut the dead weight and bring in fresh faces to energize this team. We fire Laviolette when he goes 0-3 to start a season but when we are 4-7 and have conceded the most goals in the NHL with 46 in 11 games Hakstol is okay and can stay.
The Philadelphia Injury Plague
Name a better duo Philadelphia sports teams and injured players. I’ll wait. You can’t that’s why because this Flyers team is having the fate as the other major sports teams in this city. Nobody can stay healthy and it has been hurting us constantly. The Flyers lose JVR second game of the season there goes scoring depth, Michael Raffl is out 4-6 weeks, McDonald gets hurt and is out for a period of time. It just keeps going. There is no consistency or chemistry with this team right now and it’s painfully obvious when you watch them play each night and lose horribly. The constant swapping of players each night also just erases any chemistry and development the younger players have in the NHL with their teammates because they are forced to watch a terrible team play from the press box each night. Thanks Hakstol your bad decisions once again making this team worse than it already is.
Goal Tending Curse
The Flyers can’t get a single goalie to perform well between the pipes consistently, the tandem of the Flyers is just a mess Elliot is good one night then the next three games he is awful. Neuvirth can never stay healthy then he comes back and is inconsistent. The Calvin Pickard who we got before the season because Neuvirth was injured can’t play well either. So every night we have a liability in net and then the defense doesn’t help either. People want to see Carter Hart play, but this is one of the worst decisions you can make right now by putting a rookie goalie into net and destroy his confidence and moral in the NHL because they won’t be able to feel comfortable and play.
Conclusion
So the Flyers need to go by one piece at a time and start changing this franchise around and that starts with new faces behind the bench coaching. Hit the restart button and hopefully bring life into this team with new leadership because right now we are a laughing-stock in the NHL of being always patient and settling for mediocrity. The PK needs a new coach and system to maybe perform better because its hard to win games when your PK can barely kill penalties and you are always playing from behind. Then finally it’s unfortunate, but the Flyers can’t risk hurting the development of Hart by putting him in net for this train wreck because it will ruin him. I see Hart playing only when we fix our defensive problems and when our offense can consistently produce and support our goal tending.
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