There have been some slow starts in the Flyers’ 60-year history but, from a won-loss standpoint, none quite like this.
The No. 1 question that keeps getting asked: Given last season’s strong finish, why is this happening?
And the No. 2: How do things get turned around?
Hockey Hall of Fame’s Bob Clarke and long-time standout goaltender Brian Boucher both were asked these questions and their answers were similar. First, the sluggish getaway is not all that surprising, given the youth of this outfit.
Second, the only way to get out of such a slump is to stick together.
“To me, the players are trying but it looks from the outside from where I sit, it’s a team and all the players have to play together,” said Clarke, a senior advisor to the Flyers, in a telephone interview from his home in Florida. “They know that. They’ll get it.”
Clarke, who started playing for the Flyers at age 20 back in 1969, sees a 19-year-old like Porter Martone and observes the game can come at you real quickly once other teams start to make adjustments.
The only way to make readjustments is to go through the experience, which the young Flyers are in the process of right now. That’s when they have to rely on each other for that mental and emotional strength.
“It (team camaraderie) has always been that way but (now) it’s harder to get,” Clarke pointed out. “In fairness to today’s players, they’re bringing them in so young and in many cases they’ve got a lot of young players on the same team who haven’t been in the league very long.
“They get fighting for their own survival. It’s always been hard but it’s harder now to get everybody to pull on the same rope, for the same reason at the same time. It’s the coach’s biggest job.”
Boucher, now a television analyst working alongside longtime play-by-play man Jim Jackson, also believes in a circle-the-wagons mentality in situations like this.
“It looks disconnected at times,” Boucher said. “Certain shifts they don’t win early on and by the time they get the puck, it’s time for a change. And when you do that, you don’t set up the next line for success. It makes it hard to get momentum going in the right direction.
“Why it’s happening, that’s the puzzling question. Maybe they weren’t ready at the start of the season. That can be the case. Once that happens and you realize you’re in it, now if you’ve lost confidence, then you start to grip it and that’s a whole other problem.”
Like Clarke, Boucher believes the players will eventually figure it out and rediscover the closeness which worked so well last season.
“Right now they’re working through it,” Boucher said. “I think the only way they’re going to get through this is sticking together, working hard, understanding the mistakes they’ve made, learn from those mistakes and try to be a more cohesive, connected group.
“If they can do that, start putting shifts together, perhaps they can start getting some results.”
Boucher went through some tests of his own back in the 1999-2000 season as a rookie. The Flyers made it all the way to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals that year. Boucher played his part, going 20-10-3 with a 1.91 goals-against average in the regular season and 11-7 with a 2.03 GAA in the playoffs.
That team had some “togetherness” issues but still managed to get within a game of the Stanley Cup Finals.
He’s hoping the current Flyers team can find the same answers.
““I thought they had a good start to the season last year,” Boucher said. “It got away from them for about six weeks around January. Put them in a tough spot. Expectations, where do they come from? Do they come from the outside? Do they come internally? I think they come from a little bit of both.
“I think these players tasted the playoffs last year and they’d be foolish not to want to have that again. But sometimes when you’re a young group, it can be hard to handle that success and handle expectations. It’s all part of the learning curve and I think that’s what they’re in right now.”
Boucher says some of it just comes down to wanting the puck longer.
“It’s execution to make plays, make passes clean so they can get out of their zone,” he said. “That’s one thing that’s been troubling. The other part has been to at least extend zone time. Not killing plays, extending D-zone time, not killing plays quick enough. By the time you do get the puck, you don’t have the gas to go for offense.
I really feel like it comes down to playing a little harder. Winning those 50-50 pucks. If you come up with 70 percent of the 50-50s, you’re going to have the puck and be able to play the game you want to play. It just hasn’t played out that way so far this year.”
In Boucher’s opinion, it’s been disappointing the players haven’t responded to a coach who showed a lot of faith in them last season.
“Sure it’s disappointing,” he said. “Everybody understands there’s going to be ups and downs in a season. You hate to have it happen right off the hop because I think the enthusiasm that’s carried through summer, the fans are excited for what they saw last year. Anybody who’s been around the game a long time knows these spells happen throughout the course of a season. They happen on day one or they happen in January. How you get through it, that’s the key thing.
“I have faith in this coaching staff. They’re working hard at it to figure out solutions. The players are learning on the fly and when you’re a young group, that’s what you have to do. If you get a win, what that does for your confidence, then you stop gripping it as much as you are, things start going in the other direction.”
Clarke was captain of the Flyers’ only two Stanley Cups (1974, 1975) and knows what it takes to be successful, especially with a young team.
“I’m sure the coaches know and they’ll get this group back together as a team,” he said. “Everybody playing their best, everybody playing their hardest.”
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