Flyers Clown Culture

The Philadelphia Flyers Clown Culture

Picture a serious professional sports team in your mind’s eye. Imagine how they behave. Visualize how they go about their daily business.

Don’t picture the apex of professionalism. Don’t envision some unattainable standard of a team with a connsumate winning attitude.

Just picture the median serious sports team.

The Philadelphia Flyers are the total opposite of that in every way.

They are, in fact, the avatars of an unattainable standard. They’re as fundamentally unserious as a sports team could be.

What we’re witnessing is one of the most clownish “cultures” I’ve ever seen, either from afar or up close.

It’s rancid and comedically terrible and it starts from the top.

General Manager Daniel Briere seems blissfully unaware that his team is 3-12. He doesn’t appear to recognize that his team has scored under 2 goals a game for over 17.8% of the entire season. I doubt he even knows that his team’s defense is nearly as bad, surrendering goals at a bottom-10 rate.

Danny sits up in his little press box as if he’s getting paid to be a season ticket holder. He might vaguely hope they win every night, but with a product this boring? It’s more likely he’s sitting down and scrolling his phone.

But unlike the franchise’s actual season ticket holders, Danny isn’t coughing up his money to suffer this product. In fact, he’s getting paid to sit there with his placid demeanor and try to look in control.

What should Danny do, you might ask?

Well, we could hold him to unrealistic standards and ask him to make moves to improve his hockey team. It’s only been 4 years and all we’ve gotten is, “I tried but this team is stepping back like Houston Harden, boys.”

But why even bother asking for something so outlandish? He couldn’t do that in the summer so he definitely can’t now. It’s not within his range of outcomes.

So, he could start by firing the coach.

Forget the merits of firing the coach for just a second. It’s about the message. It’s about establishing that the first 15 games were completely unacceptable, and that you can’t “it’s a game of runs” out of your utterly pathetic play.

Right now, the Flyers seem intent on convincing themselves that everything is okay.

No, Trevor. It isn’t “a game of runs.”

Basketball is a game of runs. There are about 110 points scored in a median basketball game nowadays on each side. Those points come in bunches for both sides. Someone goes on a 10 point run and then the other side hits back with a 15 point run.

That’s basketball, and while nobody appreciates a good hoops reference with their hockey more than me, this is hockey and it most certainly isn’t a game of runs.

20% of a season isn’t a run.

I don’t mean to come down too hard on Trevor Zegras here. There’s some merit to what he said insofar as they still technically have time to climb out of this.

But what he said is characteristic of a team wide lack of urgency.

What he said implies that it’s normal to play so laughably pathetic for 15 games and that it happens every year, for every team.

But it isn’t normal. And it isn’t acceptable.

To anybody but the Flyers, that is.

Because nobody in this whole franchise is allowed to say that it’s unacceptable.

Sean Couturier tried. Now, I won’t lie, I’m very much over the team’s captain being a 4th liner played as a 2nd liner who calls out everyone else besides himself. That’s ridiculous in its own way. I said as much when he made those comments.

But my problems with that aside, at least he tried by calling the team soft too often.

Enter Rick Tocchet, who takes it upon himself to walk back those comments as much as he can. Because showing any level of frustration or urgency is unallowed.

The only thing or person we’re allowed to criticize is Matvei Michkov.

Now, I’m not entirely sure that Nick Seeler was calling out Michkov when he made his comments about a “me, me, me” attitude and “caring about the points instead of the crest.”

It’s only him and Zegras who are getting any points, so I don’t know who he thinks he’s calling out otherwise!

But if he wasn’t sniping at someone, then he was genuinely telling the worst offense in the league not to worry about scoring goals and producing points. Which is egregiously dumb.

Besides, I don’t really need to know if Seeler was talking about Michkov or not. Tocchet was talking about Michkov.

And that is the apotheosis of this Clown Culture.

Matvei Michkov is scoring—and this is frighteningly close to a literal measurement—all of the team’s goals.

He and Trevor Zegras are—by all appearances—the only two players on the roster who seem to know that scoring goals is a legal thing in hockey that you’re actually encouraged to do.

So, I frankly don’t give a damn if he overstayed a shift in overtime. I don’t give a damn if he was singlehandedly responsible for 1 of your 12 losses because I’d be much more concerned with the other 11.

And Tocchet shouldn’t give a damn, either. But the Flyers continue to perpetuate this Clown Culture.

The team’s captain went so far as to use a hockey slur and call his team soft.

So what does the Clown Culture do to address this, other than have Tocchet walk it back? Simple.

They send down Hunter McDonald. Obviously.

One of the only players who was unquestionably playing hard and bringing physicality. A player who was playing on the edge and giving you power-play opportunities by the sheer force of his menacing checks and hockey trolling. 

Power-play opportunities which have recently turned into Matvei Michkov goals at an alarming rate, mind you. Because the 1 kid we’re allowed to criticize in the Clown Culture is fixing the diabolically bad power-play.

We don’t need that on the team anymore. Hunter McDonald? We’re good. Cam York is here.

Cam York, who is trying every day to turn being useless into a professional sport of its own.

Cam York, who says that expecting his team not to lose 12 of 15 games is tantamount to expecting perfection.

Cam York, you see, is indisposable to the Culture. The Clown Culture, that is.

Perhaps Danny Briere… our paid season ticket holder ostensibly serving as a GM… might have traded this guy to combat the onvious complacency growing in his locker room. Alas, that was expecting too much.

Once again, expecting anything at all of Briere is clearly expecting too much.

Because it didn’t take trading Cam York to keep Hunter McDonald on the roster.

No, the solution was as obvious as waiving Simon Benoit.

Simon Benoit, who eminently deserves to see waivers and never should’ve been signed in the first place.

Now, Simon Benoit is not a participant in the Clown Culture. He just got here. He’s just not an NHL player on merit.

A serious sports team would’ve waived him if it came to that instead of sending Hunter McDonald back to Leigh High, but the Clown Culture? No chance.

The Clown Culture, in fact, will be dressing Simon Benoit against the Mammoth at 4:00PM on Sunday.

That would be egregious even if we could’ve kept both him and McDonald.

David Jiricek has been sitting for 5 games now despite not really doing anything to earn that treatment with as many injuries as the team has suffered on the back end.

But alas, David Jiricek did do something. He made mistakes while being a young player.

Now, making mistakes generally is fine. It’s almost encouraged. After all, Simon Benoit can and does make mistakes with impunity.

But making mistakes as a young player specifically? Unacceptable here in the Clown Culture.

Ah, hell, even not making many mistakes as a young player is unacceptable here in the Clown Culture.

Here, being a young player is unacceptable.

Cole Knuble, we’re sorry. You’re one of the few players on the roster who has shown any motor or compete at all.

But you’re going back to the Phantoms.

Travis Konecny has returned. Sure, he was the team’s worst player before he left on injury and his play was so bad that it inspired trade articles.

But that doesn’t matter.

You’re still going back to the Phantoms, kid.

Because we miss Konecny and Tippett. That, some argue here in the Clown Culture, is why we can’t win any hockey games.

Now, sure, we didn’t any games while they were here for 5 and 9 games respectively. But nevermind that.

They aren’t young players. They are established veterans, so that means they help.

If they were young players like David Jiricek? They’d have to earn their games played by raising their game. How do you raise your game without playing games? I have no idea. But Rick Tocchet says you can!

Maybe it has something to do with his… uh, pace of practice?

That’s what we’re crowning as a great achievement here in the Clown Culture.

The pace of one’s practice.

Somehow, all of this has happened in just the last few days.

Which could only happen in the Philadelphia Flyers’ Clown Culture.

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