Photo Credit: Zack Hill
Last season wasn’t easy for anyone in the Flyers organization, to include the fans. Flyers’ General Manager Chuck Fletcher has previously been on record saying that last season “Took years off his life.”
The organization wanted more leadership, more veteran presence, and lastly become tougher to play against thus getting off to faster starts this coming season. Enter Cam Atkinson, Nate Thompson, Ryan Ellis, Rasmus Ristolainen, Keith Yandle, and Martin Jones.
Fletcher once again sticks up for his players, as he takes accountability for last season’s debacle once again:
“I think we have more veteran leadership than back to last off-season. This falls on me, as I mentioned before. Matt Niskanen retired. We let Nate Thompson go, or we didn’t re-sign Nate Thompson or Tyler Pitlick. We lost some players that are kind of low maintenance, high character veteran players and we replaced them with some younger players. Last year, when things started to go awry and we lost our way a little bit, we didn’t have what I thought was maybe enough veteran leadership, enough players that could maybe help the younger players get through that situation. You throw the pandemic on top of it and the protocols. It was just a lot of situations none of us had been through. I thought we were maybe a little bit too young to get through it. This year, when you look at our group, I think we’re more of a veteran team than what we were last year. I think we have players that have had a lot of different experiences in this league. I think we’re a deeper team. I think our defense in particular has been upgraded. Time will tell. Summer is great and the offseason is great. You make your moves, and you try to improve yourself on paper. Now, camp starts before we get into the games, but the games will start soon enough. We’ll find out if we made the appropriate.” – Chuck Fletcher
Of course, it wasn’t all Fletcher’s fault for not replacing Matt Niskanen appropriately, or letting the likes of Tyler Pitlick/Nate Thompson walk either. He gave younger players every opportunity to grab that specific position by the bull horns. Unfortunately, the young Philippe Myers, Nolan Patrick, and Nicolas Aube-Kubel missed the mark, as did the young Carter Hart. Hart has manned up himself, and admitted he needs to play better. There is little reason to doubt Hart, and he is excited for the season.
There are no excuses for this upcoming season, “Again, we didn’t make the playoffs this year unfortunately,” said Fletcher. “We have no excuses. Our NHL players were relatively healthy at the end of the year. They’ve had a full off-season to train. To my eyes, they look like they’ve taken advantage of that longer window. Our young guys with a few exceptions, obviously with guys that had off-season surgery or unfortunately a young man like Zayde Wisdom who got banged up this summer. With a few exceptions, everybody looks 100% ready to go.”
The key word is accountability. At least Fletcher has taken accountability after last season’s debacle or failure. Fletcher has refaced this organization player wise, now it’s up to the players to perform. What will happen this year is anyone’s guess, but it should be a fun season of Flyers hockey nonetheless.
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