Former Flyers Forward Alexandre Daigle Subject of Amazon Documentary
By Scott Cole
Amazon Prime struck gold this past summer doing a documentary on beloved Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce…although truth be told his brother dating Taylor Swift probably helped boost those numbers up quite a bit. With the success of this film, Amazon is doing another documentary about another Philadelphia athlete; this time a member of the Flyers.
No, it’s not Claude Giroux who was a longtime captain here. Nope, it’s not about Jaromir Jagr who, in his effort to seemingly play for every team in the Eastern Conference, had a season stopover here. It’s also not one of the Broad Street Bullies, although there are lots of great documentaries on those teams.
It’s about the immortal, the legendary, the controversial Alexandre Daigle. That’s right, according to reports, Amazon is doing a story on one of the greatest draft busts in NHL history. How bad was Daigle? Let’s just say he makes some of the recent draft pick busts by Philly, such as Nolan Patrick and Sam Morin, seem great in comparison. Why? Patrick and Morin had injuries that you could make excuses for. There was no excuse for Daigle except for his motivation.
Daigle was billed to be the next big star in the NHL. He had that combination of speed and scoring abilities that would light the NHL world up. This was two years after Eric Lindros was hyped up as “The Next One” and NHL GMs and coaches were salivating for the chance to get Daigle. The Ottawa Senators, it was accused, deliberately tanked in order to get him. In fact, the modern NHL draft lottery was started, in part, to prevent these sort of shenanigans again.
Daigle would be given a big NHL contract and then….poof! He scored 18 goals in his rookie season, good for sixth amongst rookies. The rookie goal scoring leader that year, 1993-94, was Mikael Renberg, who had scored 38. Also scoring more, as a rookie that year, were: Jason Arnott, Bryan Smolinski, Daigle’s teammate Alexei Yashin, and Derek Plante.
He never really seemed to find his scoring touch and was criticized often for his lack of motivation on the ice. After a poor decision to joke about a bomb on an airplane, his time in Ottawa was doomed. He was traded to the Flyers in the 1997-98 season for Václav Prospal and Pat Falloon. Prospal ended up having a great career in Ottawa and Tampa. Daigle….not so much.
He would play in 68 total games in Philadelphia across two seasons. Daigle scored just 12 goals with 19 assists. Those are not stats worthy of a former first round pick in his sixth and seventh year in the pros.
What I can’t wait to see in this documentary is the the part about his time with the Flyers. Not that it was spectacular, because it wasn’t. Nope, there were many rumors floating around during that time about his interactions with Bobby Clarke. One that I remember seeing back then was that Clarke threw his bags off the team bus, kicked him off, and refused to let him practice with the team. Clarke is kind of feisty, so while those rumors sound a bit extreme, because it is Clarke, it can be somewhat believable.
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The documentary, “Chosen One: Alexandre Daigle”, will come out sometime in 2024.