Flyers are not cursed. They are inept, incompetent, dysfunctional, and disorganized.
What was once a top organization in all of sports is not arguably the worst.
This is the point that needs to be understood. It's not a series of random misfortunes: It's a badly-run company that lacks vision and prioritizes loyalty and cliches over a measured modern approach.
It starts at the very top. The arrogance, hubris, and irrationality all started with Ed Snider. But he also combined that with a singular vision and a standard of expectations. After he stepped back and later passed, the only things that survived were the arrogance, hubris, and irrationality.
Today they're just a massive corporate asset, adjacent to a much-maligned cable company, with no clear leadership. Run exactly like a shitty media company—a mess of middle-management. They have an amorphous blob of bosses: The asshole coach who shouldn't even have a seat at the table; a rookie GM who was reared in management by the last set of corporate stooges; a doofy ex-player and broadcaster seemingly hired for his talent at selling bullshit narratives; and a random health insurance executive pretending to know what he's talking about. Do you think this tangle of idiots won't just devolve into a backstabbing fiasco?
The Cutter situation is the perfect illustration of who they are and what they think of their fans. By most reporting, it was a matter of bad communication and differences on ELC signing date that emerged in the transition period from their last terrible GM to their current probably-terrible GM. The player himself said it wasn't one thing, but a series of things he saw that made him to decide he didn't want to play in the organization for the sake of his career. Mismanagement!
Instead of looking at that situation and going, "well, we should learn from this," they instead elect to weaponize their media channels and try to make a marketing moment by...sending that entire management structure out there to call a 19-year-old kid a dick. Maybe he is, but it's well-reported that his problems were with how they did business, not with the city of Philadelphia or the color orange. When in sports have you EVER seen a show like the one they put on the night he was traded? That alone should have had people raising alarms.
If delaying his ELC cost him over $1m in potential career earnings, he has every right to be pissed off and want out. If that's me, you're not smoothing shit over with a f***ing John LeClair meet 'n greet. But there are enough, frankly, idiots in our ranks who will not think critically and eat that up. And they have. So there you go: They don't think of you as a critical fan who deserves great hockey talent to watch and enjoy. If they did that, they'd have to modernize how they did business. Instead, they'd rather treat you like a mark and lie to you to get you riled up and galvanized, while they work in the background on their MASTER PLAN of building the 1999 Dallas Stars or some shit.
It's frankly disgusting conduct that will not play out well for them in the long run. But it's what they are. They're a massive marketing operation that just so happens to have a shitty hockey team attached to it. All they know how to do is burn bridges and sell dreams.
They need to be sold.
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