[O’Connor] « … il n’y a rien de mal à ne pas humilier les vétérans en les mettant au banc dès le départ. »
—
upcan845
@Flyers de Philadelphie
[O’Connor] « … il n’y a rien de mal à ne pas humilier les vétérans en les mettant au banc dès le départ. »
—
upcan845
10 Comments
Of course, the Flyers could have simply not signed these vets that clog up that lineup. Now we are being forced to play them over deserving kids out of fear of « humiliating » them.
The Flyers should not be run as a charity to veterans. Especially veterans who have no service or history with the Flyers.
Full tweet since OP decided to only post part of it:
[Looking at QTs, I think people are overreacting a bit to the « vets will play in G1 over some kids » thing.
It speaks to the lack of trust between the org & (especially) online fans that has built up.
But nothing wrong w/not humiliating vets by benching them right off the bat.](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1711769954406527410?s=20)
Follow up tweet:
[Obviously, you want them to prioritize the playing time of kids who can be part of the future over veterans who won’t be.
And if if two weeks into the year, Emil Andrae is still benched and Tyson Foerster has gotten one game, I’ll be critical.
But not over this.](https://twitter.com/charlieo_conn/status/1711770533446959451)
OP is definitely one of the ones Charlie is taking about.
No issue with this, we’re not in a “win now” mode or anything. The kids have all season to get playing time
What’s humiliating is this franchise thinks its owes professional players anything other than the wage they are paid.
If as a vet you are beaten out by a prospect, then maybe you should look at your own game and work out why you can’t make the team.
I swear, the rot in this organisation runs so deep.
I don’t take issue with Foerster and Andrae not being in night one. They didn’t definitively outplay the guys who will be in the top-9 or top-6 spots in the lineup respectively, which I think you need to do to make an NHL team night one.
I take issue with the fact that (especially on forward) they barely made an attempt at all to clear a feasible path for the kids, especially when they could have almost certainly gotten positive value for some of the guys who will be in the lineup night one over the course of this past offseason. You need to earn your way, but the opportunity needs to be realistic too…
Two main things:
First, Charlie is the one talking about anybody being humiliated. Not the org. The Flyers have not said they’re playing vets to avoid humiliating them. Charlie made that up.
Second, the value of playing these vets is to showcase them (hopefully at least some of them) to trade at the deadline. Which will help the rebuild AND make space for the youngsters to come up behind them.
I also would not attempt to make the case that guys like Tippett, Farabee, or Sanheim are the experienced vets who will guide rookie development. Coots, sure. But he’s coming off two years of no games.
This tweet is lame. Feels like he’s trying to generate controversy.
I have zero issues with this. The lineup is almost entirely young players as is. Forester and Andrae haven’t fully outplayed anyone in the current lineup. Andrae in particular clearly needs AHL time to adjust to NA Hockey but had a good enough camp to warrant some time with the NHL staff and a cup of tea’s worth of NHL gameplay. Forester isn’t being sat in place of vets. We just flat out have too many good young players in the top 9 and playing him as a 4th liner is stupid when he’s a top 9 sniper. He’ll rotate with Brink and whoever is struggling will end up getting top 6 minutes in the AHL until injuries/TDL. Wait what are people mad about again?
I understand criticizing lineup decisions on a nightly basis when your team is trying to win. Used to drive me nuts when Hakstol would bench guys like Ghost, Sanheim, and Konecny because those were exactly the types of players who needed to grow into their roles in the regular season. Let them make mistakes in December so they’ve learned and gotten better by April.
I just can’t get myself worked up over nightly lineup decisions during a rebuild. This is a “big picture” process. It’s going to take *years* for these games to mean anything. A guy like Foerster being scratched in Game 1 won’t mean very much to me if he winds up playing 60-70 games over the course of the year.
If Foerster, or Brink, or Andrae, or whomever just end up in the press box most nights rather than getting real ice time in the NHL or AHL, that’s a totally different story. But that won’t be seen for a couple weeks or months (and in Andrae’s case, I suspect he’s just up here until Risto gets the all-clear and then Andrae goes back to Lehigh anyway).
It’s going to be a long, grueling rebuild if we’re all going to go nuts anytime that one of the mid-30s vets gets a roster spot over one of the early 20s guys.
Can we have just 1 day where we’re not fighting with each other over things the organization does.
Anybody have a link to the actual press conference