Philly board is hilarious. A couple fans are mad at Gauthier but a bunch of posters have taken Gauthier scorning them and used it as an excuse to criticize their organization. You would think it would be something that galvanizes the fanbase but no, lol
I will explain why we feel that way.
The Flyers employed Chuck Fletcher as GM from 2018 until 2023. During that time, they ran through 4 coaches.
In the summer of 2022, they drafted Cutter Gauthier 5th overall. That same summer, their ownership—the Flyers make up most of a Comcast subsidiary called "Comcast Spectacor"—decided they didn't trust their GM, Fletcher, enough to hire the next coach.
Rather than fire their GM, Comcast Spectacor decided to bring in an outside, non-hockey consulting firm to find them a coach. They landed on John Tortorella, at that point out of the league and talking wild dinosaur shit as a bad ESPN personality.
That corporate ownership loved the brash, throwback personality of the coach so much that they have centered most of their marketing around him since he was hired.
Fletcher's incompetence laid so bare, he was finally fired this past spring and replaced with an interim GM, a former player who had been personally mentored by the then-CEO of Comcast Spectacor. Later, that CEO announced her retirement and was replaced by a local health insurance executive with no hockey knowledge.
Devoid of a President and longterm GM, it came down again to the cable company and the health insurance executive to direct the next moves. People who don't know shit about hockey. The only person still there was the brash loudmouth coach.
The corporate ownership promised they'd conduct an exhaustive search for a new President and GM, but were so enamored with that coach that their hiring was
contingent on the candidates committing to keep that coach.
Having limited their talent pool to literally no one with a spine or a vision of their own, they ended up keeping the interim GM who the corporation had groomed in-house and then hiring their own color commentator as President.
The new CEO went so far as saying he envisioned a shared power structure between Jones, Briere, and Tortorella. Used the word "triumvirate."
John Tortorella is the most powerful person in the Flyers' organization. Briere has already had multiple trades either forced (see: Hayes, Kevin) or blocked (see: Laughton, Scott) based on Torts' preferences. Because the cable people think Tortorella is the foremost hockey genius and should have that right.
This isn't run like a professional sports franchise. It's something else. It's run like, well, a standard shitty cable company: complacency, nepotism, fealty, marketing. Shouting words like "CULTURE" and "IDENTITY" along with your PowerPoint to bosses who have no idea how winning teams actually win.
In terms of long-term outlook and organizational competence, there's cause for concern on a player's behalf. Even if Gauthier is the most entitled little prick on earth and could've handled himself better, this is a red flag for a legacy team that fashions itself an appealing destination.
If, as reported, the tension with Gauthier starts because the GM doesn't have the power to guarantee the #5 overall pick icetime if he signs a contract, then everything above is exactly the problem.
