Alexei Kolosov

The Alexei Kolosov Saga Has A New Chapter

I like to be honest about these things, so I won’t bury the lede here: I was wrong about Alexei Kolosov situation here in Philadelphia.

I thought the Alexei Kolosov saga had reached a conclusion, and we were merely waiting out the days before the announcement of the bitter ending. I thought it was over. I was wrong.

Alexei Kolosov now flying to Philadelphia

Instead, Alexei Kolosov is flying over to Philly and will take part in the remainder of training camp. Yeah, that was unexpected. Another plot twist. Of course, it shouldn’t be too unexpected. The number one rule of following the Flyers is to expect bullshit.

Oh, you thought I’d say “expect the unexpected?”

No, the Flyers go beyond that. They simply can’t do anything like normal people. Now, I’m forced to confront a possibility that seems truly impossible. We must consider a possibility… perhaps even a likelihood… that Danny CLOSED!

I didn’t think it was possible. I didn’t think it was real. I didn’t think Danny could close his door. And while we may learn something crazy like Matvei Michkov picked up the phone and closed the deal on Danny’s behalf… until we do… I have to say: I was wrong.

Of course, there is another angle that we must mention.

My powers of dumping on players and executives until they do what I want purely to spite me? MIDSEASON FORM!

Okay, now that we’ve had some fun dunking on me and redeeming me just a little… let’s get down to the serious points. Of which, there are 2.

  1. The Org Deserves Credit Here.

I was hard on the organization for how they handled this. And optically, it was becoming an undeniable problem. You can’t have this many personal disputes with your prospects in this much of an abbreviated window because… eventually… the common denominator becomes you.

The org… be it Danny, Jonesy, Hilferty, or some combination thereof… stepped up here and didn’t let a bad story become a disaster. You don’t have to like how Kolosov behaved, more on that later, in order to understand that you have to be able to deal with difficult people.

We can talk all livelong day about professional athletes needing to be professional, and that’s valid. But the executives who assemble a team for just as much money with more replaceable skills also need to be professional. Sometimes, being professional means rising above a cranky employee and getting business done.

It seems as if the Flyers reached some kind of arrangement with Alexei Kolosov, though we don’t yet know the specifics.

It seems as if there is an agreement that he will be loaned back to the KHL if he really just can’t do it here, provided that he gives the AHL a chance.

Good. That’s a reasonable solution, and the organization deserves credit for reaching this point. You don’t need to champion Kolosov’s behavior to take a step back, and say the Flyers… whatever they did on the way to this point… handled the ending professionally and adeptly. We reached a positive destination.

2. Kolosov acted like a brat.

He did. There’s no pretending as if he did not. He was childish, temperamental, and entitled.

I thought it was important that the organization show some aptitude in navigating tumultuous waters, and that they prove they can work with people who don’t make working with them as easy as humanly possible. So, I hammered them in the build-up to this, but this was never to act as if Kolosov handled this situation perfectly or well or even acceptably. He did not handle this in any of those ways.

Belarusian media made no secret of how much contempt they had for Kolosov’s handling of this situation, and they were completely correct.

In truth, the Flyers probably could have held the line here without making any kind of agreement. Kolosov didn’t have much in the way of leverage, and he wasn’t really in a position to force the organization’s hand like William was. This wasn’t a strategic hold-out.

Rather, this seemed to be like evidence of a damaged relationship. And my assumption is that the agreement they made was an olive branch designed to repair that relationship. Perhaps I’m wrong, but that’s certainly how it looks from my point of view.

And to be clear, my saying that there was a facture in the relationship does not accuse either party of fracturing it. It could be mutually done, or it could have been entirely the fault of Kolosov. Or entirely the fault of the Flyers, even. I don’t know.

I don’t need to know. The situation was handled.

Now that it’s been handled, we can take a step back and talk about how much of a brat Kolosov behaved like. The stand he took was petulant and difficult to comprehend from the outside. It was the actions of a brat.

And now that he’s here, we should watch for any future indications of entitled behavior that can interfere with his play. The Flyers’ front office coated themselves in glory for a change with the way they… yes… closed.

But Kolosov? He coated himself in a vat of shit for how he behaved.

“Attitude problems,” the hoax that people wielded against Matvei Michkov, are now a very real concern for Alexei Kolosov. Maybe this was a one-time episode born of unique circumstances. Or maybe it’s a foreshadowing of the type of person he is, and the type of person he’ll continue to be.

We’re going to find out.

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