Twenty (Not So Bold) Predictions for the 2022-2023 Flyers: Part 3

Gritty Spawns Emerge this Season

I don’t know If it will be the Wife, oops sorry, the Life Partner of Gritty, a Gritty Kiddy, or Gritty’s super hero alter ego, but get ready.  On every failing sitcom, as they were desperately bilking the last dollars from advertisers and fans, the “go to” gimmick was to bring in the cute kid. Which sitcom is failing more than the Flyers?  Answer: None more failing. Smell the Glove!!

Be it Family Ties, Growing pains, Friends, or The Office, when the baby shows up, it is the end. Phred Phanatic anyone? After years of failing at ice hockey Comcast may fall back and rerun its greatest hockey success of the last decade, Gritty. So look for the organization to go to the stuffed animal well again.  We will get to endure the drama and humor of a set of deranged looking muppets as the team struggles.  Enjoy!

Chuck Fletcher Is Fired This Season (Parlay, Fired By Christmas)

Flyers fans will get the sweet relief of a Chuck Fletcher firing, but it will be a little like when Thor chopped of the head of Thanos. The deed will be done, and it will feel good, for a few seconds at least, but then all there is to reflect on the carnage and the question how this happened. Much like most of the Flyers moves, this is all about signaling.  It is symbolic, the damage is done and the crowing about how they are going to fix it starting today matters little.

Just like the inflation we all feel today, maybe it would have been better to look at the problem, even consider it as a possibility, rather than find enough spin and excuses to ignore it. Fletcher has already sent this organization back to 2015 and firing him won’t fix it. I would say that the timing does not matter, but with the Flyers almost surely being sellers at the deadline, we need someone who can get good returns for whatever the team tries to pawn at the deadline. One five game losing streak will be end of Fletcher and the first sign of a rebuild-apocolypse.

The “by Christmas” part of the prediction is tricky.  With any new coach, but moreso with Tortorella, there is a bumpy break down period when the team struggles and as the coach implements his style in strategy. Positive developments in this period are slow to show in the standings. In a vacuum it would be reasonable to give Fletcher and Tortorella another 18 months to see if the coach and the players get results. We are not in a vacuum.

Fletcher is mounting his third attempt to improve the Flyers, with the results diminishing in each successive attempt. He finds the team in arguably worse condition than when he took command. The writing has been on the wall since Danny Briere was named assitant to the General Manager and it appears the organization is looking for the first good excuse to jettison Chuck. I belive it will come early, as a byproduct of Tortorella gaining control of the team and what ever losing streak that coincides with it.