I really can't argue with what he says. The bottom line is that they are doing what they said. That's why a lot of us are unhappy. Because that doesn't seem like a winning strategy.
Well, they made a stink about rebuilding, only to go one foot in the water. But they've been upfront about not having a fire sale, so you're not wrong.
Charlie calling it a feature and not a bug doesn't make a lick of sense when people are complaining about the
feature. We all
know this is consistent with their plan. The feature, not bug shit just sounds clever in its dismissiveness. The fact Tortorella is weeding out the players (including making things irreparably toxic) and co-designing his vision of a contender, with serious personnel say as a member of this *gag* triumvirate, is our major problem with the feature. It's also the easy part. Wake me up when they need to make an actual player/timeline judgment call that hurts.
He also oversimplifies or ignores the idea that they're not really rebuilding rebuilding. Certainly, assets aren't going out, but it's closer to status quo (aside from culture) than he is letting on, especially as other veterans are returning from injury offsetting on-ice value losses. And I'm scoffing at him calling Provorov a "No. 1 prime-age 1 D-man" when there isn't a chance in hell that's how HE evaluates him. But it makes it sound more aggressive. And most #7 picks don't make the NHL full-time before their D+3 anyway. Just look at the recent classes for that range: Gauthier(!), Holtz, Quinn, Rossi, Perfetti, Eklund, Clarke, Guenther, Seider, Zegras, etc. Again, it just makes the Flyers sound super invested in a patient rebuild -- which I'd argue their internal 3 year timeline refutes -- when really it's
maybe waiting an extra year. And we already have talk about finding a way to get Michkov here earlier.
I think it's absolutely fair game to criticize a franchise that has never undergone a rebuild in its history on the merits of whether or not they're truly all-in on a rebuild.
