In the time warp where the Flyers permanently reside, Ed Snider is still 40, his team wins Stanley Cups with its fists and – above all – there is no such thing as a shootout. That’s why, nine years after the NHL installed its tiebreaker system, the Flyers are still terrible at it.
No, that’s not entirely accurate. They would have to improve to be terrible at it. The Flyers are 27-53 since the shootouts began, worst in the NHL. Already this season, they are 0-2, a grim reality accepted with a smile by the team.
This is how behind-the-times the Flyers are: Last week, after the first of back-to-back shootout losses, coach Craig Berube was openly joking about the current state of his one-on-one shooters. He thought it was comical that Jeff Hextall, the 19-year-old son of GM Ron Hextall, had stoned the team during shootout drills.
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“I guess we’d better wins some games in regulation,” Berube said.
It is no secret that the Flyers organization, from chairman Snider on down, has contempt for what they derisively call the “skills competition” – so much so that they see no reason to get better shooters or better goaltenders, or to develop the skills of the players they already have. Instead, they just accept the fact that they will lose a majority of the games tied after the five-minute overtime.
The big debate last year at this time was over the culture of the Flyers, the stuck-in-the-past organization run by an 81-year-old man still adjusting to the 21st century. Well, the tiebreaker in that argument should be painfully obvious by now. It’s the shootout.
Idle thoughts
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