No, this is exactly it. The quotes in that Sporting Tribune article kinda confirm what I think anyone who follows the Flyers with a critical eye has seen.
The Flyers have been mismanaged for a while. That's not really a debate. They hired two consecutive bad GMs, ran through coaches, put a shitty product on the ice, and emptied out one of the most consistently-full arenas in the league. You can look at it any way you want, but they have gone from one of the premier names in the sport to just another shitty team, and that's the result of bad decisions made by the people who run both the hockey operations and the business itself.
And to fix this mess, you'd think that a team would look to hire externally. But instead they hired right from their own existing corporate structure, a former player turned business protege and their own color commentator. Doesn't smack of "innovative, forward-thinking organization" really.
Cutter likely saw some of that in action—Fletcher's laughable final Trade Deadline and firing happened the week before BC's season ended, at the time he would've been discussing signing a pro deal. He'd have talked to two very different GMs in the course of a couple weeks.
I think there are enough tidbits out there to safely assume something wasn't aligning: Perhaps an agreement from the Fletcher side he'd sign that became irrelevant when Briere was suddenly the GM, maybe the rookie GM did make things tricky on himself trying to play moneyball, whatever it was. As Cutter himself said, it wasn't just one thing, so I'm guessing he perceived some dysfunction in all that and got to wondering about whether he wanted to begin his career working for management he didn't have faith in.
The coordinated and concerted messaging from the Flyers is obnoxious and unprofessional. It's also narrative control. Jones was hired as team President to sell "The New Era of Orange" to a very angry and alienated fanbase. It's working: They're in playoff position and people are returning to the arena.
Even if the dysfunction was left over from the previous administration and the relationship with Gauthier is just extremely unfortunate fallout from problems they have since resolved, they are not ever going to acknowledge that—or no-comment their way to speculation that they're still quite dysfunctional (which it's safe to assume they are, at least to an extent).
Instead, they chose to go on the offensive instantly to try to generate a galvanizing moment for their fanbase. Philly sports fans respond well to people saying they hate them, so the Flyers decided to portray Gauthier's decision as some slight to the city/franchise/fanbase by repeatedly shouting "He didn't want to be A FLYER!"
And it's working, at least locally. They were able to turn a kid saying "I don't have confidence in this franchise" into a rallying cry for the toxic, drooling masses—the ones who produce profits for them—to the point that some are sending death threats. I mean, it is a business, and they did play this pretty well. But how that behavior will reflect within the business of hockey? If other players or agents will have second thoughts about dealing with them, they'll have earned it.
