Today on Daily Faceoff Live, Steven Ellis and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss the Philadelphia Flyers firing of president and general manager Chuck Fletcher and why the timing was right.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Earlier this morning the Philadelphia Flyers made the announcement that Chuck Fletcher is gone as gm of the team. He was hired back in 2018 and there is a laundry list of errors and fumbles in my opinion. We’re going to break them all down to kick this thing off. You look at the trades he made, and none of them stand out as overwhelmingly positive. You got Ryan Ellis for Nolan Patrick, which didn’t really work out, attaching a second-round pick to get rid of Shayne Gostisbehere and he turned his career around as soon as he left Philadelphia, giving up a first and a second-round pick with Robert Hagg for Rasmus Ristolainen, well that one didn’t work out either. There just was never really a situation where it felt like Fletcher had this team on the right track Steven.
Steven Ellis: He was just kind of the beacon of mediocrity. Obviously, it wasn’t just the trade deadline, it is interesting that they fired him basically a week after a very unsuccessful trade deadline. They couldn’t get anything for James van Riemsdyk and there were reports that they were looking for just a third or fourth-round pick and you’re telling me you couldn’t get that for JVR? I don’t get that. This is a group where you look back a couple of years ago at the playoff run in the bubble and I thought maybe there were some signs that the team could take some next steps and see what they could do. They just were never able to do that with the talent they have and I think this has got to be one of the most underachieving teams based on the talent level. It doesn’t seem to matter what they did or what they were doing, it just wasn’t working out and he wasn’t doing enough to address the team. They’ve got a mediocre prospect pool, you look at their on-ice product and it seems everyone is underwhelming and it doesn’t matter who the coach is. It’s a situation where I’m not surprised they made the change. It’s good that they’ll be starting off fresh heading into the draft and into the summer but man, that was just a ticking time bomb after last week and he just didn’t do anything at the deadline. There were quotes that came out saying he was using an app to help make trades and you know people were making jokes that he was playing NHL 23 to figure this out and some of the moves he made I just don’t get it. It’s a shame that Ellis didn’t work out, he’s a good player and it made a lot of sense, but a terrible era for the Flyers.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Yeah and it really feels like this had been coming for a while when you consider how many moves were fumbled by him in this Flyers front office and we rattled off some. You look at some of the contracts now in that system, those might be a little bit difficult to get rid of now.
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