Briere and Jonesy have had several missteps since they took over the keys to the Flyers kingdom.
-- They leaked out trades last summer before they happened. One was blocked by Torey Krug and it became known that Sanheim was part of the deal.
-- They totally butchered the Cutter Gauthier contract negotiations and he then wanted nothing to do with the organization and forced a trade where Philly took less back on the dollar. I can't remember in my lifetime an occasion where an American born player wanted out of the Flyers organization.
-- They were in a playoff spot all season and then collapsed at the end (lost two late season games to the Habs in regulation time) leaving them in no man's land with no playoff revenue and no chance to win the draft lottery.
-- I'm willing to bet Washington hockey ops were doing fist pumps underneath the draft table when Philly left Ryan Leonard there for them.
-- There was also a lot of scuttlebutt from a Flyers reporter that the Flyers tried to trade Gauthier to the Habs for the #5 pick so they could select Reinbacher. Not sure if this rumour/report is true but a lot of info has leaked from that organization under the Briere/Jonesy regime.
HugGo haven't done anything to not be given the benefit of the doubt over current Flyers regime.
Yep and the contract thing on Michkov was just the PR way of going about leaking why they didn't go in that direction because they knew the noise around him in the fan base.
They're not going to be 'shitting bricks' about this news. They passed on Matvei Michkov the hockey player and how he fits into their build. They didn't pass on him because of the contract.
If you followed the discourse around the non selection after the draft, you can see the contract was never their issue, it was all about the player, the man and the fit.
They made their selection based on Reinbacher being the highest value to their team in the pursuit of the cup. If Michkov had 1 year or no years left on his KHL contract at the draft, people need to understand that they still weren't going to be picking him.
Gorton made sure they didn't want to revisit it but that room from the draft video was emphatic that Michkov wasn't the offensive talent at such a premium level they could ignore everything else. Why do people not understand when they talked about Reinbacher being a part of the culture they are building, that they were also letting people know that Michkov wouldn't be a culture fit.
It's funny that when discussing Michkov up to the draft and trying to tell people based on all the noise around the Habs organization to say they wouldn't pick him, those people who wanted Michkov desperately kept coping and saying it was a smokescreen and that if anyone knew the most about Michkov it'd be Bobrov because of his dad's affiliation with the organization. Yet, when the character concerns come up and the Habs allude to it, it's fabricated and character assassination.
