2024-25 Roster Thread #2: Midseasonnar

[Ghosts Beer]

No, I discredit things that aren't supported by credible sources and the facts. The character concerns are in the same pot as the migraine issue. Branded top secret, written in code and redacted and kept from the public. All so well known that nobody knew about it. So well known in the hockey community that a top prospect in the draft had a character issue that nobody reported it. Got it.

Except the concerns were reported in a public article before the draft, even if tons of people didn't read it.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Couts, Laughton - Holmgren
TK, Farabee, Frost, Cates, Sanheim, Zamula, Ersson, Fedotov - Hextall (5 yrs)
Tippett, Foerster, Brink, Risto, York, Seeler - Fletcher (4 yrs)
Michkov, Poehling, Hathaway, Drysdale - Briere (2 yrs)

Exactly

 

[freakydallas13]

All the stranger because when it comes to the roster, most of its strongest points are courtesy of Hextall. It's a weird place to put blame when it comes to roster construction.

When it comes to how players are handled, that's a different matter and it's where he remains a persistent begoateed tumor in the ointment.

There are almost assuredly scouts who, when Hextall drafted Konecny or Sanheim, wanted the team to draft someone else. Most likely someone else worse. Was Hextall over ruling those scouts and taking the team's current best players a franchise saving decision? If you think him over ruling scouts to take Patrick was franchise crippling, the your answer pretty much has to be "yes".

 

[deadhead]

Exactly

It's more a function of the length and timing of his tenure than anything else.

Hextall ran the 2014-2018 drafts, they're 24-28 years old now.
Yet despite (8) 1sts and (6) 2nds, TK and Sanheim are the only 1st tier players, Frost, Cates and Farabee the only other top 9/top 4 players. [you can throw in Provorov b/c we got a good return]

Fletcher also added 5 top 9/top 4 players, plus Andrae.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

There are almost assuredly scouts who, when Hextall drafted Konecny or Sanheim, wanted the team to draft someone else. Most likely someone else worse. Was Hextall over ruling those scouts and taking the team's current best players a franchise saving decision? I you think him over ruling scouts to take Patrick was franchise crippling, the your answer pretty much has to be "yes".

Well, there was one report that Hextall overruled his scouts' recommendation by taking Sanheim over Pastrnak.

If so, that was obviously another huge mistake by Hextall.

But that's not nearly as well-sourced as the Heiskanen/Makar over Patrick reports.

We have no idea if Hextall followed his scouts, overruled his scouts, or went with the front office consensus on Konecny. All conjecture. Ultimately, Hextall gets credit for that pick, because he was GM. Just like he gets blame for the Patrick pick, especially amid multiple reports that his scouts wanted either Heiskanen or Makar over Patrick at 2.

Anyway, I'm not going to keep repeating myself. But there's no point in hiring your organization's own scouting staff if the goal is to follow the general consensus.

The goal is to take the best player, not to follow the consensus. That when Hextall overruled his scouts to take Patrick he was aligning with the consensus is not a defense. He made a mistake following the consensus when his scouts had it right. He had it wrong. And it hurt the organization. End of story.

 

[Hollywood Cannon]

Dan Silver tweeting something out is a report now? Come on.

 

[Beef Invictus]

It's more a function of the length and timing of his tenure than anything else.

Hextall ran the 2014-2018 drafts, they're 24-28 years old now.
Yet despite (8) 1sts and (6) 2nds, TK and Sanheim are the only 1st tier players, Frost, Cates and Farabee the only other top 9/top 4 players. [you can throw in Provorov b/c we got a good return]

Fletcher also added 5 top 9/top 4 players, plus Andrae.

So my point stands

 

[JojoTheWhale]

Dan Silver tweeting something out is a report now? Come on.

Any pillow in a storm.

 

[MJL66]

Except the concerns were reported in a public article before the draft, even if tons of people didn't read it.

The fact that it wasn't reported for a player was a consensus top 2 pick by reliable and well resourced sources such as McKenzie, Dreger, LeBrun, Friedman, etc should tell you all you need to know. You will never get it. I'm just posting for the humor of it now on this.

 

[freakydallas13]

Well, there was one report that Hextall overruled his scouts' recommendation by taking Sanheim over Pastrnak.

If so, that was obviously another huge mistake by Hextall.

But that's not nearly as well-sourced as the Heiskanen/Makar over Patrick reports.

We have no idea if Hextall followed his scouts, overruled his scouts, or went with the front office consensus on Konecny. All conjecture. Ultimately, Hextall gets credit for that pick, because he was GM. Just like he gets blame for the Patrick pick, especially amid multiple reports that his scouts wanted either Heiskanen or Makar over Patrick at 2.

Anyway, I'm not going to keep repeating myself. But there's no point in hiring your organization's own scouting staff if the goal is to follow the general consensus.

The goal is to take the best player, not to follow the consensus. That when Hextall overruled his scouts to take Patrick he was aligning with the consensus is not a defense. He made a mistake following the consensus when his scouts had it right. He had it wrong. And it hurt the organization. End of story.

Of course there aren't reports about the scouts wanting someone else but the GM overruling them when the GM was right. Those scouts are still with the team, who would release those reports? Clarke isn't going to go on the local radio show and start saying "Yeah there were a couple scouts who wanted Nick Merkley (or whoever) instead of Konecny, but thankfully Hextall over ruled them". That literally never happens, in any NHL organization (teams don't usually come out and blast their former GMs for bad draft picks either, so make your own conclusions on why the Flyers do that and other teams generally don't). Has a team ever come out and blasted their scouts like that? Can you see the Flyers doing that, when those same scouts still work for this organization? Of course not, that's insane. They aren't going to put targets on the back of scouts currently drafting for this team. They don't release that information publicly. Except this one time they did. This lone instance. Why don't they do this every year, for every draft pick?

Another thing that bugs me about this "the scouts wanted Makar" BS is we have no idea who "the scouts" is. It could have been one or two scouts. It could have been 5. It could have been all of them. For all we know, half the scouts could have agreed with Hextall and also been advocating for Patrick. All of them save for a single scout could have agreed with Hextall, we have no way of knowing which scouts exactly said what. It's all just conjecture. Why haven't we heard from the scouts directly? Put some quotes out there. Get names associated with which scout thought what. Let's hear it all, they want to tell you what Hextall chose, why aren't they giving us details on the scouts? There was probably video of them deliberating, if it was so damning and has Hextall overruling every scout who was banging the table for Makar or whoever, why not release it?

The answer is there were probably scouts saying other stupid things that we would laugh at based on hindsight. There are probably tons of dumb things RIGHT NOW they throw out and push for that never see the light of day, many of which are because the GM over ruled them. Are you going to die on the cross and vindicate Hextall for the good choices we don't even know about? Seems unlikely, you only care about this one "franchise crippling" decision he made, and don't want to discuss how many other decision makers in this organization make "franchise crippling" decisions every day/every draft pick/every choice in general, or how he could have made equally "franchise saving" decisions by overruling a scout who wanted to draft some scrub instead of Sanheim/Konecny/Farabee etc.

 

[MJL66]

If people aren't implying Patrick at 2 was nearly unanimous, then I have no idea why they're arguing with me.

They're arguing with you because you don't know the difference between unanimous and a consensus

 

[MJL66]

Bill Meltzer, who I trust implicitly stated that there was not a consensus pick among the scouts but that the scouts as a whole. Favored a defenseman, Heiskanen or Makar over Patrick. Clarke had an agenda in that interview and was looking to vilify Hextall and protect his "boy" Fletcher.

 

[JojoTheWhale]

Am I the last one to hear that there was lingering anger toward Hextall from Clarke over the 2006 draft? I have no memory of this being brought up, but I’m sure others do.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Am I the last one to hear that there was lingering anger toward Hextall from Clarke over the 2006 draft? I have no memory of this being brought up, but I’m sure others do.

Ooooh I forgot about that. Yeah, I have vague memory of Clarke rumored at being enraged that Hextall betrayed them in some damned way. He had just left to join the Kings and supposedly was a Great Betrayer with Flyers info and rankings. As if he wasn't some new outsider walking into a well-worn process at that point.

The usual "Clarke is a small and shitty person" stuff.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

The fact that it wasn't reported for a player was a consensus top 2 pick by reliable and well resourced sources such as McKenzie, Dreger, LeBrun, Friedman, etc should tell you all you need to know. You will never get it. I'm just posting for the humor of it now on this.

So the whispers about Patrick ‘s character that were apparently circulating inside the hockey community couldn’t be legit because they weren’t widely reported publicly?

Is that really your stance?

Really?

Have you ever, for example, followed college football?

Are you aware of the lengths schools & boosters go to protect their stars?

To conceal character issues & trouble the stars get into?

It’s a tale as old as sports, covering up for your star players.

Nolan Patrick’s family is ROYALTY in Manitoba. You don’t think the community, the Brandon Wheat Kings, & Brandon’s alumni network, would go to great lengths to keep character-related problems quiet? To take care of their own?

Very naive if you don’t think so.

The fact that there were apparently concerns about Patrick’s character inside hockey circles certainly is not discredited simply because these concerns weren’t blasted publicly.

 

[deadhead]

Every GM screws up, even the top guys, Zito traded (2) 1sts, a 3rd and 4th and Tippett to rent Giroux and Chariot to get swept in the 2nd rd.

That's why you judge a GM for the sum total of their moves, not nitpick one move to death.

Hextall's biggest flaw was bad drafting in the 1st and 2nd rds after he did a good job of accumulating picks, and bad timing, if you're rebuilding, rebuild, don't start, stop for two years, then trade a top 6 forward in his prime for draft picks, then sign JVR for 5x7. Incoherent strategy.

Fletcher's biggest flaw was going all in with a mediocre roster, then not having the balls to tell Scott and Comcast the game was up after 2020-21. Instead, he doubled down, and even at the end couldn't give up the fantasy that he could turn it around by trading for Risto, then extending him and trading for TDA.

Briere will be judged how he uses his stockpile of picks, including what he gets for Risto and Laughton. He's got a young team starting to play at a high level, he needs to augment the talent he has, and be patient. Keep building the talent base and wait for one of the young goalies to emerge. We won't know if this works out until 2027-28, because it'll take that long to know what we have from the 2023-2025 drafts.

 

[Ghosts Beer]

They're arguing with you because you don't know the difference between unanimous and a consensus

Apparently they think going with the consensus is an absolute defense.

I certainly do not.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Ooooh I forgot about that. Yeah, I have vague memory of Clarke rumored at being enraged that Hextall betrayed them in some damned way. He had just left to join the Kings and supposedly was a Great Betrayer with Flyers info and rankings. As if he wasn't some new outsider walking into a well-worn process at that point.

The usual "Clarke is a small and shitty person" stuff.

Oh man I bet this experience did a ton to shape why the Franchise went with a Clarke fool they could trust in Fletcher, and then went to such lengths (Including, potentially, resurrecting an ECHL franchise just to train a GM) to groom Briere and keep it all internal and trusted. You just know Clarke never forgave Hextall and on top of the exclusion of alumni, made him deem that Hextall was always a traitor and never truly a part of the "family."

It explains so goddamned much about how they've worked. Fits really, really neatly. What a tidy set of coincidences that fit the characters involved and actions taken.

 

[Beef Invictus]

Every GM screws up, even the top guys, Zito traded (2) 1sts, a 3rd and 4th and Tippett to rent Giroux and Chariot to get swept in the 2nd rd.

That's why you judge a GM for the sum total of their moves, not nitpick one move to death.

Hextall's biggest flaw was bad drafting in the 1st and 2nd rds after he did a good job of accumulating picks, and bad timing, if you're rebuilding, rebuild, don't start, stop for two years, then trade a top 6 forward in his prime for draft picks, then sign JVR for 5x7. Incoherent strategy.

Fletcher's biggest flaw was going all in with a mediocre roster, then not having the balls to tell Scott and Comcast the game was up after 2020-21. Instead, he doubled down, and even at the end couldn't give up the fantasy that he could turn it around by trading for Risto, then extending him and trading for TDA.

Briere will be judged how he uses his stockpile of picks, including what he gets for Risto and Laughton. He's got a young team starting to play at a high level, he needs to augment the talent he has, and be patient. Keep building the talent base and wait for one of the young goalies to emerge. We won't know if this works out until 2027-28, because it'll take that long to know what we have from the 2023-2025 drafts.

We do that and you say none of those moves matter.

 

[MJL66]

So the whispers about Patrick ‘s character that were apparently circulating inside the hockey community couldn’t be legit because they weren’t widely reported publicly?

Is that really your stance?

Really?

Have you ever, for example, followed college football?

Are you aware of the lengths schools & boosters go to protect their stars?

To conceal character issues & trouble the stars get into?

It’s a tale as old as sports, covering up for your star players.

Nolan Patrick’s family is ROYALTY in Manitoba. You don’t think the community, the Brandon Wheat Kings, & Brandon’s alumni network, would go to great lengths to keep character-related problems quiet? To take care of their own?

Very naive if you don’t think so.

The fact that there were apparently concerns about Patrick’s character inside hockey circles certainly is not discredited simply because these concerns weren’t blasted publicly.

No, my stance is that there were no whispers circulating inside the hockey community. If there was, it would've been reported by numerous credible sources. Your remaining comments here are unintelligent. Credible reporters are not going to be swayed off of the story by the anecdotal reasons you list. As if it was the mafia or something. LOL

 

[bennysflyers16]

Well, there was one report that Hextall overruled his scouts' recommendation by taking Sanheim over Pastrnak.

If so, that was obviously another huge mistake by Hextall.

But that's not nearly as well-sourced as the Heiskanen/Makar over Patrick reports.

We have no idea if Hextall followed his scouts, overruled his scouts, or went with the front office consensus on Konecny. All conjecture. Ultimately, Hextall gets credit for that pick, because he was GM. Just like he gets blame for the Patrick pick, especially amid multiple reports that his scouts wanted either Heiskanen or Makar over Patrick at 2.

Anyway, I'm not going to keep repeating myself. But there's no point in hiring your organization's own scouting staff if the goal is to follow the general consensus.

The goal is to take the best player, not to follow the consensus. That when Hextall overruled his scouts to take Patrick he was aligning with the consensus is not a defense. He made a mistake following the consensus when his scouts had it right. He had it wrong. And it hurt the organization. End of story.

Well they sure as shit didn't do that the last 2 drafts, same as it ever was.

And both those picks are looking to be not top line talent once again.

 

[MJL66]

Every GM screws up, even the top guys, Zito traded (2) 1sts, a 3rd and 4th and Tippett to rent Giroux and Chariot to get swept in the 2nd rd.

That's why you judge a GM for the sum total of their moves, not nitpick one move to death.

Hextall's biggest flaw was bad drafting in the 1st and 2nd rds after he did a good job of accumulating picks, and bad timing, if you're rebuilding, rebuild, don't start, stop for two years, then trade a top 6 forward in his prime for draft picks, then sign JVR for 5x7. Incoherent strategy.

Fletcher's biggest flaw was going all in with a mediocre roster, then not having the balls to tell Scott and Comcast the game was up after 2020-21. Instead, he doubled down, and even at the end couldn't give up the fantasy that he could turn it around by trading for Risto, then extending him and trading for TDA.

Briere will be judged how he uses his stockpile of picks, including what he gets for Risto and Laughton. He's got a young team starting to play at a high level, he needs to augment the talent he has, and be patient. Keep building the talent base and wait for one of the young goalies to emerge. We won't know if this works out until 2027-28, because it'll take that long to know what we have from the 2023-2025 drafts.

Hextall drafted 6 legitimate NHL players from the 2nd round on in his tenure here. That's pretty good. He hit on 5 out of 8 first round picks. Including the current teams best defenseman and forward. Last years best goalie.
As far as the comments on Fletcher's biggest flaw. It doesn't seem as though you understand how this franchise works. Hextall had just been fired because upper management lost patience. Fletcher was hired with mandate to escalate. I'm not defending him because he was awful but to criticize him for not having the balls to tell them the game went up is not reasonable.
The Flyers now are not playing at a high level. They're a bottom 10 team in the league and they have regressed from last season.

 

[trostol]

I'm kinda amazed this is still going on lol

 

[Magua]

I could not agree more about treating consensus rankings with healthy skepticism, even for top 3 picks. But if you didn't have that opinion before the draft -- and, in fact, slobbered over the consensus -- then maybe don't lecture others. The great irony is posters here regularly go against consensus (with much success) and get shouted down by those same people with, "You think you know more than professionals?!"

Dan Silver tweeting something out is a report now? Come on.

Put some respect on his name.

Any pillow in a storm.

Second-Team NHL Quarter Century.

First-Team All-Pillow.

 

[deadhead]

Hextall drafted 6 legitimate NHL players from the 2nd round on in his tenure here. That's pretty good. He hit on 5 out of 8 first round picks. Including the current teams best defenseman and forward. Last years best goalie.
As far as the comments on Fletcher's biggest flaw. It doesn't seem as though you understand how this franchise works. Hextall had just been fired because upper management lost patience. Fletcher was hired with mandate to escalate. I'm not defending him because he was awful but to criticize him for not having the balls to tell them the game went up is not reasonable.
The Flyers now are not playing at a high level. They're a bottom 10 team in the league and they have regressed from last season.

If they had average, not great, just league average, they'd have made the POs last year and they'd be in the POs this season.
So far, in 44 games, they have given up 29 more goals than xGA.
With league average goaltending, they'd probably have 48-50 points, close to a tie with TB and ahead of Ottawa.

It doesn't make them a SC contender, you still want to get to a 105 point level from 90-95.
But it would better reflect the actual talent on this roster.

Now from a rebuilding vantage point, that isn't a bad thing, #12 last year and probably #10-12 this season unless Ersson goes on a goalie "heater."