Quick Hits: April 8, 2019
1) General manager Chuck Fletcher and interim head coach Scott Gordon will meet with the media on Monday morning at the Skate Zone in Voorhees. The scheduled start time is 11:30 a.m. EDT.
2) On Sunday, various Flyers players met with the media after their exit interviews with Fletcher: James van Riemsdyk, Ivan Provorov, Carter Hart, Shayne Gostisbehere, Sean Couturier, Claude Giroux, Cam Talbot, Travis Sanheim, Nolan Patrick, Brian Elliott, and Jakub Voracek. For a synopsis of the areas the players feel the team needs to improve on the ice next season, click here. For a collection of quotes from each session, click here.
3) A host of players, both after Saturday's season finale against Carolina and the next afternoon in their Exit Day interviews, lobbied on behalf of the well-liked Gordon being retained as head coach. They also voiced their own individual desire to remain with the team, regardless of the decision on the next coach. My own view, quite frankly, is that talk is cheap. There was an opportunity to play for another and rally around the coach down the stretch, but the Flyers showed an undeniable inability to beat playoff-bound teams. After elimination, the competitiveness level dropped off a cliff in the final four games. Meaningless games or not, that is unacceptable. Eliminated teams such as the Rangers competed right to the end of the schedule better than the Flyers did.
4) Over his months as interim head coach, Scott Gordon gradually implemented a series of systemic changes; some of which worked better than others. Overall, he did a good job of explicitly diagnosing issues the team had to fix -- for example, breakouts, weak-side winger responsibilities, taking pucks to instead of away from the net -- and also in laying out what needed to be done in order to correct them, both through extensive video and heart-of-the-matter drills at practice. However, the on-ice execution remained inconsistent.
Gordon's biggest strength is his communication. He is very straightforward in leaving no doubt about what he thinks needs to be done. He is also quite detail-oriented (when he gets rolling on a topic, he gives lots and lots detail to explain his views but he can also boil things down to their essence). Beyond that, as Shayne Gostisbehere noted on Sunday, "Gordo" is just a regular guy with a great sense of humor.
The choice of head coach is Chuck Fletcher's decision to make. Even with Joel Quenneville having been hired by the Florida Panthers, the odds still seem stacked against Gordon returning to the Flyers as their head coach. Whether the next coach will be Alain Vigneault or Todd McLellan or Bruce Boudreau (if available) or Guy Boucher or Sheldon Keefe or any of the other names that get bandied around remains to be seen. Whatever he decides, Fletcher cannot drag it out. That is not only for the sake of his team but also out of fairness to Gordon.
If Gordon's tenure winds up having lasted basically a half-season as interim head coach, his main contribution will have been the faith he showed in expanding the roles of Travis Sanheim and Oskar Lindblom from what they were under Dave Hakstol as well as giving Philippe Myers an extended stretch within the blueline starting group down the stretch.
Lastly, if Gordon is not back as Flyers head coach, he may be given his choice among various other roles in the organization that may be available if he would be agreeable to it. He signed a multi-year contract extension last year, so it has at least one year left to run. Whether an alternative role would be a return to the Phantoms job or an NHL assistant coach or on the development side of coaching, there are plenty of ways he could stay aboard in some capacity if the Flyers go in another direction for head coach next season.
5) Joel Quenneville was hired by the Florida Panthers barely 24 hours after the season ended and less than 24 hours after the team dismissed Bob Boughner. Reportedly, the Flyers were among the teams who asked the Chicago Blackhawks for permission to talk to Quenneville. However, what is crystal clear now is that Quenneville had his heart set on Florida and reuniting with Dale Tallon. When that's the case, there's nothing the other suitor teams could have done to change his mind. It's also clear that Florida, which is expected to heavily pursue Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky as unrestricted free agents this summer, intends to spend money this summer. It's another team in the East that Fletcher has to compete with this offseason.