There are two things I want to talk about after the Flyers’ 3-2 shootout loss to the Islanders on Thursday that now has them six points out of the final playoff spot with 17 games to play.

One of them is about tilting at windmills – the Flyers continued quest and belief that they can still make the playoffs.

The other is more concerning, and is the one I want to address first, as it bears far more weight and can have a greater impact than some ill-fated charge that would make General Pickett blush at Gettysburg.

The more concerning one is the way coach Alain Vigneault answers questions about young goalie Carter Hart.

There’s no doubt that goaltending has been one of the coach’s great frustrations in this misbegotten season. And to his credit, Vigneault pulled no punches about it when it became apparent that the issues weren’t just the defense in front of the goalies, but the goalies themselves as well.

Carter Hart was supposed to be so much better than he’s been this season, where he’s ranked at the bottom of the NHL in almost every measurable goaltending statistic.

He was certainly fighting it for a while. He was definitely beaten down. He even said it himself that he needed to find it within himself to get back to playing the game he loves the way he knows how.

This wasn’t just some arbitrary narrative the coach was trying to pass off to the public. We saw it. The organization saw it. Hell, Carter saw it himself.

And there were a lot of internal discussions about how to rectify it. Should they just shut down Hart for the season in terms of playing games and just have him work on his game in practice? Should they bring in another veteran to share time with Brian Elliott as they tried to stay in the playoff race while Hart figures it out away from the spotlight?

The latter was something they strongly considered, but GM Chuck Fletcher and his team were split on whether or not that would be a good idea, and ultimately passed on that decision.

What Hart needed was a simple reset. The Flyers gave him a week off. Elliott played. Hart worked.

And this is where things started to go awry.

Of course Vigneault was consistently asked about Hart and his progress. But rather than embrace his young goalie, and offer public words of encouragement, something that comes out of the more modern coaches playbook – hug them when they are down, and push their buttons when they are close to being back to their best – Vigneault instead kept poking the bear.

He talked about Hart needing to work harder. He talked about Hart needing get through this, intimating this is not the time to feel sorry for oneself. He continued to put the pressure on the franchise goalie to figure it out and do so quickly.

It’s an old-school coaching tactic. If you’ve ever seen the movie Miracle it’s the same thing Herb Brooks did with Jim Craig throughout the process of getting ready for the Olympics. Or when he challenged Rob McClanahan to not be a wuss and play through his leg contusion.

There’s no doubt those players – and likely their teammates – were pissed at Brooks when that was happening, but it was a motivational tool that ended up working.

Locally, think about how much Phillies players hated Dallas Green, and yet banded together to win a World Series with him as the skipper. Think about Ken Hitchcock, who used to play mind games with his players all the time, whether it was using us in the media as the vehicle to deliver the negative stories, or it was making them practice on holidays even after playing their asses off and winning the night before.

There’s no doubt that this approach can work, but the coach needs to read the room before he employs it. And here’s where I don’t think Vigneault has read the Flyers room correctly.

Because I think they despise him for it.

He’s not the first coach the players don’t like, nor will be the last. Coaches aren’t hired to come in and make friends with the players. It’s why John Stevens, an excellent hockey mind and really good assistant coach, has never been able to make it as a head coach at the highest level.

Some guys just aren’t cut out to be the hammer. Vigneault is. Like this quote after he pulled Hart because “I didn’t think he played well” after allowing three first period goals in a game against the Sabres in mid-March:

“I believe he has to battle a little bit harder in goal at this time. I’m confident that he’ll work with (goalie coach) Kim (Dillabaugh) and try and get his game where it needs to be so that our team will have a chance in every game.”

But where Vigneault may have pushed the envelope with his assessment of Hart a little too far, is in his last three starts, all of which have been varying degrees of good.

In the 4-2 loss to Boston Tuesday, a game in which Hart played well, but didn’t make the spectacular stop to save the game on Brad Marchand’s shorthanded goal, rather than say he sees progress with Hart’s return, Vigneault continued to be stoic about Hart.

“Carter’s a young goaltender playing a real tough position and he’s trying his best.”

Then, after Thursday’s shootout loss to the Islanders, where Hart looked superb, especially after New York built an early 2-0 lead, Vigneault still wouldn’t give him much credit.

At first he dismissed the notion of Hart’s progression by qualifying that Hart didn’t face too many shots. Granted he was only credited with 21 saves, but it’s not like he only saw 13 shots the entire game. Here was the entire quote:

“He didn’t get a lot of work, but he had a couple of big saves to make and he did make them.”

That’s it. Now, in a normal season, you wouldn’t make much of a short answer. They happen sometimes in press conferences. But in this year, when he’s had so much more to say about the goalie in the negative, it’s hard to just dismiss this as a quick answer.

It’s so much more than that.

The Flyers aren’t quitting. It’s obvious by their play in the last four games, even if it still amounts to missing the playoffs, this team hasn’t thrown in the towel.

But there’s a sense that they aren’t too fond of how Vigneault is pushing Hart. It’s no secret that AV had Hall of Fame goalies in Vancouver (Roberto Luongo) and New York (Henrik Lundqvist), which allowed for his systems to flourish, and he wants to push Hart to reach that echelon while still coaching the team.

Maybe there’s a different way to do it. Maybe the team needs to hear more positivity about a young goalie whose work ethic has never waned, even during his unexpected struggles this season. Hart works as hard at his craft as anyone in the sport, and remained diligent even during the roughest patch of his hockey life.

Because when you flash back to Shayne Gostisbehere’s quote about how the team is playing in front of their goalies, it now jumps out at you as it being a way to defend Hart (and to a lesser extent Elliott) and shoulder some blame, since Vigneault is the anti-Andy Reid in his press conferences and hardly ever – if at all – falls on the sword for his players.

“It’s straight not good enough right now. We’re letting guys fucking absolutely beat us up in front of the net and it makes our goaltenders look like absolute shit and it’s not fair. We have to be better as a team.”

That was a refreshingly honest statement from Ghost, but also probably an example of how sometimes shouldering responsibility is better received in the locker room than cold and vapid responses.

Some might say the 2021 athlete needs to grow a pair if they can’t handle criticism by the coach. And I tend to agree. But at the same time, the modern day athlete doesn’t just need to adjust to the old school coach. Sometimes the old school coach needs to coalesce a little bit and adjust to the modern day athlete too.

Photo Credit: Dennis Schneidler-USA TODAY Sports

On believing it’s not over

The Flyers played their four consecutive best games of the season in the last six days. You know what they have to show for it? A record of 1-1-2.

That either indicates that they just aren’t a very good team, or, is an indicator of the fact that they probably wouldn’t have felt too bad about a 1-1-2 stretch in April, especially the way they are playing, if they hadn’t completely messed the bed in March.

They know it. We know it. But they just don’t want to talk about March anymore.

When The Athletic’s Charlie O’Connor went to ask a good question after the game, but led it off by referencing the month of hockey that was lost somewhere in the third ring of hell, Vigneault immediately shut him down:

“Charlie, Charlie. If you want to talk to me about tonight’s game, I’ve got no issues, but going back to the month of March? I’m not doing that.”

The thing is, they just had to be mediocre in March and we wouldn’t be sitting in the position we’re in right now talking about them as the biggest disappointment in the NHL this season. It’s fair to see the team is playing well now, even with three losses in four games, and that it wouldn’t raise the level of desperation following each game if they had just been a little bit better in March.

Seriously. Win two more games in March, and Saturday’s game is for a playoff spot. Win three more games in March and you are in playoff position. It’s all really simple.

But now, the only way for the Flyers to make the playoffs – and it’s the longest of long shots – is they’re going to have to go on an extended winning streak.

The thing is, they still believe they can.

I asked Jake Voracek about this very thing after the game. And here’s what he said:

“You have to believe, right? We all do. Yes, I agree with you that we’ve been playing well but if you are playing well you still have to find ways to win games. I’d rather play like sh- … I’d rather play bad and still win this game tonight. That’s what we were doing at the beginning of the year. And even though we’ve played better lately, we haven’t been able to find that one extra goal or difference-making play to get us two points. There isn’t much time left to do that but we have to find a way and it starts on Saturday.”

Earlier Jake answered a question saying the team knows it needs to win “five or six in a row.”

The Flyers’ longest winning streak this season is four games. The last time they won “five or six” straight was just before the season was paused in March, 2020 for the pandemic, when the Flyers had a nine-game winning streak.

Do they have it in them? Maybe later this month when they play six-straight games against teams behind them in the standings (two vs. the Rangers and four vs. the Devils) but now? Boston, Buffalo, Washington, Pittsburgh, Washington again and the Islanders in the next six?

That’s a tall task. And very unlikely to happen. But hey, they believe in themselves, for whatever that’s worth at this point.

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