McCaffery: Flyers’ move for snarl not deserving of scorn

By Jack McCaffery jmccaffery@delcotimes.com

Building around a physical player like first-round pick Samuel Morin may not be conventional. But for the Flyers, that doesnt make it wrong. (Associated Press)

Even as he was making the comment, Paul Holmgren had to know what was next. The hockey Illuminati would retreat to their usual attack position. Its how the smug Flyers critics operate.

Holmgren was discussing Samuel Morin, his first-round draft choice, the 11th player selected overall, a 6-foot-6 defenseman with confidence and mobility and all-hours access to the penalty box. The topic was his willingness to fight. Its still in the rules, Holmgren said.

With that, the avalanche of clichs began stuck in the 70s typical Flyers bullies old stubborn. It is the default complaint of the whine-and-geez set, that the Flyers are unwilling to adapt to the modern game. And the chronic complainers always know they have the Flyers 38-year search for Stanley Cup III as a sturdy argument-clincher.

Even if the Flyers have tried every other way to win, too, since 1975, its just safer to accuse them of being obstinate. But they have tried big players and small, overpaid for goalies, changed coaches, changed styles, changed philosophies. The try plenty of solutions. Yet through it all, their most determined critics never recognize the irony --- the irony that it is them, not the Flyers, who are unwilling to recognize the obvious.

This, then, became obvious at the end of the 2012 season when the Flyers lost their last four playoff games to the Devils, then continued through a disturbing 2013 sprint: They were being punked. For nearly two years, their forwards had been shoved to the outside with ease, tossed there by more rugged opponents. They played 48 games last season; in 28, they scored two or fewer goals. There was not a 49th game because with the puck, they were soft. Its why they are about to invest in active 6-foot-4 centerman Vincent Lecavalier, for in their sport, there will always be something to the Chip Kelly bigger people beat up little people philosophy.

Thirty teams tried to win the Stanley Cup last season, almost all with a certified-correct 21st century plan. Look it up: Twenty-nine failed. So there is no money-back offering for a lack of ultimate success under those agendas, either. Its just that if the hockey-correct blueprint is followed, at least no one will make fun of it afterward. But that somewhere-in-the-middle reliance on a safe approach is nothing but the most direct path to eternal mediocrity.

In sports, there will always be more than one way to succeed. In baseball, it might be with pitching, or speed, or power. In football: Run or pass? Big lineup or small in basketball? So what is so horrifying about a hockey club with a go-big mentality?

Read the original:
McCaffery: Flyers’ move for snarl not deserving of scorn