Flyers say you're not in the room

The Flyers say “you’re not in the room…”

As one might imagine, it’s difficult to write about this team. To that extent, many of the same people I pillory who have to endure writing about this team full-time have my sympathy and my respect. On that matter.

It’s difficult to find new things to say with this absolute calamity of a hockey team. They’re a choreographed trainwreck. I told you how it’d happen all the way back in November.

I tried to warn you about the Flyers collapse

As the prior post in that thread said, I told everyone they were destined for a long losing streak right as they went on a long losing streak. This team is easier to read than a Dr. Seuss book, and the content isn’t nearly as entertaining as Cat in a Hat.

Now, there are some out there who’ll depict this section as indulging in schadenfreude.

It’s insulting because I’m not saying this for my health. I get no particular satisfaction out of seeing the wheels of the Flyers’ season fall off, again. For those who actually follow my content, you’ll understand that I’d much rather be talking about the skill and guile of players I like in a level of detail that is scarcely matched in this space.

Pieces like that are fewer and further between right now, because the Flyers are rarely putting players on the ice worth devoting that kind of energy and attention to.

I, for one, would like that to change. I don’t write those kinds of pieces when I don’t really believe in them. If the emotion isn’t there for me to lean into, then I don’t lean into it at all. Because I write from the understanding that the purpose of writing is to convey the truth in such a manner that it engages the reader, to the best of one’s ability.

I can’t do that without believing in the truth of whatever I’m putting out.

I used that DM as a little bit of salesmanship, but I link the post here because it raises a question: do you honestly believe that I can write like that without feeling something? Of course not.

So, no, I’m not engaging in schadenfreude. I take no joy in the Flyers’ present misery. Rather, I’m saying that I predicted it down to the finest detail so that people can understand that it was, in fact, predictable.

And since the crisis was predictable, it was preventable. They could’ve done things differently to ensure that we never ended up in this situation, and they didn’t. And I’m going to tell people that, because they need to know. They need to understand that THEIR misery was avoidable, and that the organization chose not to avoid the iceberg while captaining the Titanic.

They brought a lot of people along for the ride when they knew… or, at the very least, should’ve known… that the ship would crash. And there needs to be answers for that.

When something goes catastrophically wrong, it’s important to take note of how we got here so that we can avoid being here again. When we’re doing that, a particularly important voice in the discussion is whoever predicted the catastrophe before it occurred.

That’s how normal people think. That isn’t how people associated with the Flyers think, and it’s their erroneous thinking that leads them to crash the ship, time and time again.

Instead, the Flyers think in an incredibly insulated manner where only the insiders have any voice at all. And if you’re not “in the room,” then you simply don’t know. This kind of tact is taken from anyone even tangentially associated with the organization. Any level of “insider” will act as though an outsider’s insight is useless.

For instance, Bill Meltzer claims that coaches don’t influence a player’s shift lengths. By extension, he claims that Michkov getting 10 minutes in a nearly 65-minute affair is just because of how “out of shape” he is in February.

His substantiation for this claim? “Walk in the room,” and you’ll see that Michkov is the most exhausted!

And yet, here we have actual confirmation that the very thing I said was happening… happened exactly as I said it.

Tocchet pulled Michkov off the ice after a 13 second shift, a 26 second shift, a 3 second shift, and a 24 second shift.

Nobody ever said that Michkov will never cut a shift short himself. Sometimes, the prudent play is to get off the ice rather than risk being caught out there for another 30 seconds with no minimal gain. No NHL player is effective after about 45 seconds in most shifts.

But how does it affect someone’s average shift length when their coach pulls them after 3, 13, 26, and 24 seconds?

Better yet, if the coach is repeatedly making that decision when he has the power to, why wouldn’t I also believe that he’s imposing that restriction on the player if he wants to get shifts at all?

That’s simple, irrefutable logic. And rather than seek to determine whether that logic is actually fact, the Flyers take refuge in narrative.

“You aren’t in the room. You don’t see how exhausted he is.”

It’s the direct aftermath of an NHL game. Show me a player who isn’t exhausted, and chances are, I’ll show you someone who you don’t want on an NHL team.

But it doesn’t matter. “You aren’t in the room.”

You aren’t in the room, but we are in the room. And in that room, we’ve constructed a bevy of narratives to interpret the world in which we live. Just like everyone does in every room. But the Flyers’ narratives have an unfortunate habit of being diametrically opposed to reality.

For example, last season, the Flyers chose to believe that the historically bad goaltending that caused a bottom-5 finish in the standings were not actually the fault of the goaltenders themselves.

They constructed a narrative wherein they explained that Sam Ersson was actually good but beset on all sides by adverse circumstances. The defensive system made traffic impossible to navigate, the rush plays created breakdowns going back the other way, the backups weren’t good enough to push him… all reasons to explain his performance that have nothing to do with his ability.

His ability went unquestioned. Because “You aren’t in the room. You don’t see how hard he works. You don’t see his mental makeup. You don’t watch him backstage.”

Correct as far as it goes. I don’t watch any of those things.

But I did watch Sam Ersson give the team an .856 save percentage through 24 starts, and I can observe that this is actually a decrease from his historically awful season just last year.

The narrative borne of being “in the room” failed. Most narratives that the team creates for themselves fail. They’re often wrong. They place faith in those who won’t reward it and dismiss those with real talent.

They’re wrong because they put too much emphasis on narratives while they’re conducting analysis.

And then they take pride in the very reasons they’re so often wrong by excoriating you for not being “In the Room.”

In successful businesses, when things hit a downturn, it’s common for outside counsel to come in. There’s resistance from those on the inside. The outsider picks up mistakes, and the insider says, “Yes, but…”

In truth, the outsider is almost always correct because the outsider is using data, intuition, and logic while the insider is using accepted narrative.

The Flyers don’t disprove that phenomenon. They prove it beyond any reasonable doubt. Just look at the results.

And they’ll keep proving the folly of the insider incorrect so long as they remain so stridently beholden to it.

The beatings will continue just so long as the Flyers continue to only listen to those “In the Room.”

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