On the Flyers and ‘The Culture’

Leave it to X to provide the spark for a piece that needs to be written but doesn’t really have a specific news item driving its necessity. The Flyers haven’t done any specific thing to motivate me to write about “the culture.”

Rather, everything they do is aimed at the specific and explicitly stated goal of fostering “the culture.”

Every move they make, every move they don’t make, it’s all based upon whether it would be a benefit or a detriment to “the culture.”

I’m not putting quotes around the phrase to be a smartass, either. I’m putting quotes around the phrase because “the culture,” as it stands, has a very noncommittal definition attached to it. It’s seemed to take on the standard of: you’ll know it when you see it.

People don’t really nail down a specific definition of “the culture,” but they demand your fealty to this concept that they refuse to demystify. And the Flyers media really don’t love to engage in nuanced discussions as far as the culture is concerned. The organization has a position, and the reporters take that position in public. If you disagree? The source of your disagreement will no longer be yours to decide.

You will have your position assigned to you. And it’ll be a simple position. Something that even these typically–but not always–unimpressive people can engage with.

An interesting clip of @KKurzNHL on @DailyFaceoff #letsgoflyers regarding trades and whatnot. pic.twitter.com/iDqUH5sBqX

— Adam S. (@shubbyshredds) January 18, 2025

Kevin Kurz, a beat reporter who covers the Flyers for The Athletic and certainly among the unimpressive people I alluded to, demonstrated this concept fantastically. When the conversation moved to Scott Laughton, and he was explaining why the Flyers have a religious zeal for keeping him, he had this to say:

“They’re really putting a premium on keeping that culture that they’ve established in tact. And, I know, that’s a big topic that some Flyers fans don’t like to hear about that. They think it’s all BS. I’m someone who believes in that. Just because, in San Jose, in particular, I saw Joe Pavelski leave that dressing room. And they bring in Evander Kane and Erik Karlsson, and everything went to hell.”

I’m not going to actually engage with his example because I don’t feel like litigating the history of the Sharks. I’m more concerned with the utterly simplistic terms in which he frames this argument. So simple even Kevin can get it, I guess.

Either you believe in the culture, or you don’t! Some fans think it’s all bullshit, but I BELIEVE! The culture isn’t a religion. We aren’t determining whether we have faith or not and just living on from there. How would I know whether to have faith in “the culture” or not? The only definition you provided is an oddly personal definition where some guys are superhero humans and then others are total dumpster fires.

I’ll fill in the parts that Kevin glossed over. First, we need to define “the culture.”

The culture is, quite simply, the interactions of a localized group of people on a broad scale. How do people interact with each other? How do they communicate? How do they think, and how do these things mesh with how the other members of the locker room communicate and think?

There is no singular Culture. It’s not a true/false question. There are many different cultures that can form within a subgroup as small as an NHL locker room.

Erik Karlsson might work just fine in some locker rooms. I don’t know why Kevin Kurz seems to think he’s the root of all evil. Evander Kane has what one might call a checkered history, but even he would probably function just fine in a number of NHL locker rooms.

Now, they might not function in the Sharks locker room. Perhaps both of those personalities were discordant with the group. When someone is in the group, but they aren’t “in” on the jokes and the lingo, when they comport themselves in a way that’s irredeemably different from the group, that creates tension between that person and the entire group.

The Sharks weren’t bad people, just as Erik Karlsson isn’t a bad person. They just may not have worked together.

Joe Pavelski worked with the group. Joe Pavelski was a key part of the group because he was such a long-tenured Shark, and an individual who’s universally respected. Yes, I can see where Pavelski would be a pillar of the culture that the Sharks built.

That doesn’t mean Joe Pavelski would be a pillar of every culture everywhere. Maybe he wouldn’t fit in with the Penguins while Sid and Geno were winning Cups. Geno was an absolute lunatic, and if you don’t get him, he’s an easy guy to feud with. If you weren’t brought up in the Penguins organization, fully cognizant of who Evgeni Malkin was, there was a decent chance that you and Geno would hate each other. Joe Pavelski could easily have been one of the many people who found himself in that situation, despite him being exalted as Commander Supreme of Culture in this example.

How does this pertain to the Flyers? Well, the Flyers do have a culture. I’m not a part of it, so I can’t tell you all of the inner workings. But they have one, because they have a group of individuals who all interact with each other in a certain way. From what I understand, it’s not a fractious culture. Ivan Provorov was beginning to create the presence of smaller cliques, and that led to his ouster. The same could be said of Kevin Hayes.

Two entirely different people, but they were indeed sent away on the basis of removing the fractious elements of the locker room. And neither one of them needs to be pilloried or have their character assassinated. They just didn’t fit with the group.

To the extent that the Flyers are seeking to create a group of people who all interact with each other in a healthy manner, that’s an obvious goal.

But here’s the problem. The Flyers don’t have a competitive team yet. In order to get there, they’re going to have to go out and find the pieces who form a competitive team.

Players of sufficient talent and of sufficient availability will be hard enough to find. You want to find players who are both sufficiently gifted and sufficiently available for acquisition and a positive fit in the locker room? You just filtered by another category for no reason, and now you have even fewer options to choose from. Perhaps, even, you don’t have any options at all.

After all, look at how many players have moved around this summer and the last trade deadline. Danny is sitting on his hands because he can’t close, but maybe he can’t close because there’s nothing to close. You’ve filtered by too many specifics, and now your pool of available moves is zero.

The truth is that, if you want to execute a real rebuild, you have to explode the culture. And you have to assemble a mass of talent that should work as a contender. If they don’t work together, then we can begin assessing the problems that have arisen on a cultural front.

If we have an Erik Karlsson who doesn’t work with our culture, we can find someone who does work of equal talent. Why? Because we have someone of extreme value to acquire that person. And there are other cultures in the NHL. Perhaps those teams are looking to dump off a Jack Eichel, because he isn’t working with their culture. But he’ll work with yours.

It’s not that culture isn’t real. Of course it’s real. Only a truly stupid person would think that the concept is “BS.”

But a culture is, by definition, fairly nebulous. A culture is the sum of human interactions within a subgroup. That can be either positive or negative, and you want it to be positive. But to win in sports, you need talent. Talent in sufficient concentration can even overcome a poor culture.

I wouldn’t suggest that the Flyers pursue such a path. However, I would suggest that they find the talent first. Then, see how that subgroup people interact with each other. Is it positive or negative? If it’s the latter, then you make a change. And you’ll know exactly what kind of change you need to make.

The culture is very real, but it can’t be your foundation. It can’t be your foundation because we don’t know what the culture is yet. We can’t know that until the actually good players are here, and we see how they interact.

That, I think, is the actual stance of people who don’t have any interest in listening to Kevin Kurz lecture them about “culture.” It isn’t that they don’t understand. It’s actually the opposite. Fans understand the topic more deeply than the person lecturing them.

And apparently, but also sadly, the organization who has staked their success on it.

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