Alain Vigneault will be back as Flyers coach. I think.

It took three questions, and no direct answer, but after a lot of conversation, a plan for soul searching, and some clarification on comments, it seems like, mostly, that Vigneault will be back in charge when training camp begins in September.

Probably.

If my writing seems clunky and confusing, you should have seen the press conference. That’s not a knock on GM Chuck Fletcher, who answered questions honestly, Vigneault, who poured his heart and soul into his answers, or even Chairman Dave Scott, who was in and out of the presser faster than the babysitter’s boyfriend when your car pulls up.

It’s just that the answers we got were all over the place:

The team is good, but we need major changes. There were plenty of reasons things went wrong, but there are no excuses. We believe in our management team and coaching staff, but it’s imperative that we get it right this summer.

And, of course, AV wants to coach the Flyers and win a Stanley Cup, but also needs a little time to reflect and needs society to help him stay committed to coaching.

It was, certainly, a Philadelphia sports press conference, because, as we all know, they are always memorable in this city, and never dull.

Let’s break it all down, but let’s start with the coach and his desire to continue:

1. Yes, no, maybe

The press conference really started to get interesting with a direct question from Associated Press reporter Dan Gelston. He put the question out to Vigneault bluntly –

Did this season make you think about not coming back next year?

The coach then fidgeted in his seat and gave a gloriously long answer that gave some good insight, but didn’t quite answer the question:

“I came to Philly to win a Stanley Cup. I told Chuck last week or the week before when we were officially eliminated that I sort of felt like I’ve let everyone down here, from him to ownership to our fans to our players. Just after the start that we had, got the team playing better, and then like I mentioned goaltending, COVID and no practice time. I wasn’t able to put the ship back on track. I’m going to need some time obviously on a personal level to reflect on the season. Like the rest of society, it’s our first pandemic that we go through. There’s obviously some things reflecting on that we might want to change how I handled and how I did things. On a personal level, I’m going to need some time to get the emotion out of the way and analyze this properly.”

That’s just the first part of the answer. There’s more to come, but at this point, we’re thinking, “Wow, AV is going to step away. The season just bothered him beyond anything else and he was not happy with himself, or the result. And he feels he needs to step aside because it was too much for him.”

Then he pivoted:

“Another thing I did say to Chuck… talking about our young players (like) Joel Farabee taking strides. The difference between Joel Farabee, an American who stayed in the States and was able to train, and our Canadian players, all the ones that went back to Canada. (Claude Giroux) had a good year. (But he’s) more experienced. (Sean Couturier), in my estimation, had a good year but didn’t have a Coots-type season like he had with me last year. If I look at all the other players that went to Canada, they struggled. Whether its’ because of lack of training possibilities, lack of skating possibilities. One of my questions when meeting with the players this afternoon is, ‘What are you doing this summer?’  If things stay the way they are right now in Canada, they’re going to have to make some adjustments to their summer plans. This is just our team. I can’t reflect throughout the rest of the NHL, but our team, the Canadian players that went back to Canada had a challenging time.”

OK… so, what frustrated Vigneault right from the jump is that his Canadian players were not ready physically to start the season because of struggles they had with training in Canada because of the COVID lockdown there.

The easy response to that is to say, B.S. (as Kevin Kinkead did earlier), because other teams have Canadian players who turned out just fine after training in Canada.

And while that is a fair point, the message Vigneault was going for here was more about young players who maybe weren’t as resourceful as others in Canada for their off-season training. For example, Couturier talked about how he has a home gym and was training there while he paid to rent out an entire rink so he could skate by himself. Meanwhile, Travis Konecny said he was working out in his garage and had a hard time finding ice time in Canada.

And to put a little more emphasis on Vigneault’s point, the only Canadian-born players in the NHL under the age of 25 who averaged at least a point per game and played in at least half of their teams games this year were Edmonton’s Connor MacDavid, who is an otherworldly mega talent with a ridiculous 102 points this season in 54 games, Toronto’s Mitch Marner (20-47-67 in 54 games), and Colorado defensive wunderkind Cale Makar (8-35-43, in 42 games).

The next closest was the Islanders Matthew Barzal (45 points in 55 games). No other Canadian player under 25 in the NHL outscored any of the Flyers players. So, maybe there’s some credence to what Vigneault had to say in that regard.

But, would the coach be back?

I followed up with the next question, basically asking him if there were some things he learned about himself and coaching players in 2021 that might be different because he had to use different tactics because of COVID.

Again, we got a soulful answer:

“There’s no doubt that knowing your players more is beneficial. You know what makes them tick. You know what can help them and what’s not going to help them. At the end of the day, what I need, Chuck can’t give me. Society can give me, though. I need a normal season. I need people to go out and get vaccinated, so that we can have a normal season next year.  I’ve been here two years and we haven’t had one of those. I want guys coming into camp, having trained in a normal way in the summer. I want to go through a normal camp. I want to go through a normal season that’s 82 games worth. I want to go through normal playoffs where you play in front of your fans. You feel the energy. You feel the passion. You go on the road, tight knit group. You try and win on the road. Chuck can’t give me a normal season, but society can if we do our part. Hopefully we can all get there for next year.”

OK, so we’re getting closer to an answer. It’s still not definitive if AV is coming back, but it sounds like there might be some conditions to his return. The big one being normalcy. The pandemic and all the protocols really got the best of AV. I’m pretty sure that if we weren’t moving in the right direction with vaccinations and getting back to a normal schedule and routine, and there was doubt about the start of the 2021-22 season, AV would have cashed in his chips.

But, the prospect of returning to normal. Of being able to follow a traditional hockey schedule and not one squeezed into the calendar like an extra week’s worth of clothes into an overnight bag, kept hope alive for the Flyers coach. He could still be back for a third season.

Call me crazy, but at this point I still wasn’t sure.

So, I had to try it one more time. and just before the end of the presser I asked AV for clarity on his returning to coach the Flyers. And here’s what he said:

“I came to Philly to win a Cup. I believe that last year we took positive strides. Its’ not always on the upswing. There’s ups and downs to win a Cup. You just look throughout history, the Tampa Bays and the Washington. To get to the ultimate goal, there’s some struggles and there’s some adversity. We’re going through some. It’s going to make us better. It’s going to make our group better.

“I haven’t changed my mind that I can accomplish my goal. We can all accomplish our goal because Chuck has the same goal I have. Ownership has the same goal. Our fans have the same goal. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and that’s what were going to do. We’re going to take a little down time here. This has been a challenging year. We’ll get right back at it here in the next little while and make sure we’re better next year. I’m just stating that I’d like to coach the Flyers in a normal year. With everything going on in the world, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m complaining because it’s been hard on everyone. I would really enjoy coaching the Flyers in a normal year and in a normal setting.”

That bolded part is the closest thing to “Yeah, I’ll be back,” which are four words that would have saved us this entire breakdown of his answers.

Don’t get me wrong. we appreciate what he’s saying. He is an open and honest coach. A straight-shooter, in our biz. And it’s because of that we often give him the benefit of the doubt and we don’t feel like we’re being played by a media manipulator.

But it’s also safe to say that this season nearly broke him. The Flyers nearly made the seventh-winningest coach in the history of the sport walk away. That’s pretty fascinating. And telling. Telling that we need a wholesale change which brings us to:

2. You’re up, Chuck

The clock on Chuck Fletcher to turn the Flyers into a regular contender has officially been started. It started with the final horn Monday. It’s going to run until the start of next season. The ticking of the clock will be louder than usual. The brightness of the clock will be on high, even shooting a spotlight the GM’s way.

This Flyers team played an unacceptable style. There are issues inside the locker room that need to be fleshed out. Like, if Americans had an advantage over Canadians in training last offseason, as evidenced by the seasons of Farabee and James van Riemsdyk, what was Kevin Hayes’ excuse?

When I asked Claude Giroux if young players need to be coached differently today than in the past – needing more hands-on instruction than just be shown some video and fix it themselves. That they basically need their hand held at the highest level of the sport, he didn’t disagree:

“That’s definitely a good question. You might be right, but who really knows. We’ve had some times we’d touch up on video and we’d go out there and get the job done the right way, and sometimes we didn’t. I think sometimes it’s better to go through it on the ice rather than on video.  But it’s a good question.”

Thanks Claude.

Seriously, when Giroux says, “that’s a good question,” that’s usually his way of letting you know you are spot on with something. He rarely takes it beyond that, and often gives a pretty straightforward, cliched response afterward, but at least you know if you are on the right track with your assessment or not.

This time, he added in that I “might be right.”

I heard the jackpot bells going off as if I just spun triple 7s on the five dollar slots.

What does it mean? It means maybe there is a disconnect between the coaches and some of the younger players. Or, that the Flyers’ younger players are missing that next level of hockey sense to interpret what the coaches are trying to convey. Or it could just be, hockey players are creatures of habit and only respond to creating the right muscle memory.

Whatever it means, it means the mix was wrong with the Flyers, and it’s on Chuck now to fix that. He’s got a little time, but not a lot. There’s the expansion draft, and the rookie draft, and free agency, But in about 10 weeks, the ride will be over and what will the Flyers look like then? Chuck? –

“I think we have quite a few priorities. Looking outside the organization certainly we could upgrade everywhere, up front, defense. Certainly we’re going to have to take a look at our situation in goal, which has kind of been a constant struggle here for years. We have different areas we have to look at.”

Wait just one flipping minute. I thought this team was closer to contending than we thought? I did read that in the Inquirer from Scott last week, right? We don’t need this huge turnover, and yet here’s Chuck telling us as the season ended that wholesale changes are in the offing with priorities at forward, defense AND goaltending. Woah!

“We also need a lot of our young players to be better. I would say with the exception of Farabee that the majority of our players plateaued or took a step back this year. That’s a big concern for me. Since 2014, this franchise has put a lot of time and effort into drafting and developing young players. Frankly, for us to take a step forward, we’re going to need that group of players to take on a bigger role, play better, and help us win games.”

While this isn’t quite as passionate as Ed Snider’s “The whole damn team stinks,” in October of 2006, it’s pretty damning language from a GM who doesn’t often put a lot of pressure on the players. And he continued to do so:

“We’re going to have to look outside the organization, but certainly it’s difficult to replace the whole team. You’re going to need your young players to take a step and be better. They have a big summer ahead of them. Hopefully as things normalize, this offseason hopefully it’s easier for many of these young players to skate, train and prepare more normally than maybe they were able to do last offseason. We’re hopefully that we’ll see an energized group of players come training camp.”

We all are, Chuck. What that energized group of players looks like though, is all up to you.

3. Great Scott!

Dave Scott’s availability was just weird. He came on, made a huge opening statement, answered five questions all about the team on the ice, giving basically the same answers he gave in his Inquirer interview last week, and then was done.

From what I’ve been told, this was a miscommunication. That Scott didn’t request to peace out after just five questions, with about 20 reporters on the call, but rather that it was planned administratively.

But still, not a good look.

Knowing how many reporters were on the line, Scott could have offered to take more questions, and we would have gladly obliged by firing them his way. So, yeah, he could have been more engaging. But, he was told that he was being limited to 10 minutes and a handful of questions.

Problem is, that wasn’t communicated to the media, so we were all just left there, mouth agape, with our virtual zoom hands in the air, finding it completely unconscionable that Scott would bail so quickly.

The organization apologized for the snafu, and I was told by a spokesperson that there would be an attempt to get Dave again soon, which would be fine. My questions are still written down. But they, too, are on the clock with this because if we don’t get Scott again soon, it’ll only play further into the belief that the organization has a disconnect with it’s fans and this city.

As I explained to someone in the organization, sports in Philadelphia is religion. The passion here is different than any other place and in any other walk of life that might also have a need for a press conference. It’s just different here. Hope they learned that now.

4. ‘I was working my nuts off’

Carter Hart was the biggest story of the failed season. He had numbers that were unexpectedly horrible, ranking at the bottom of the NHL.

Carter was facing adversity for the first time in his career, and because of COVID restrictions, he was doing it alone.

“It was a little difficult when you live alone,” he said. “You just go back and forth from the rink to your apartment. It got a little bit better at the end of the year, as guys would invite me over for dinners and that make a huge difference.”

He was playing better in April before a knee injury ended his season. No matter what the Flyers do this offseason, next season, as Carter Hart goes, so will the team.

“I’m looking forward to having a clean slate next year,” he said. “We all are. We’re all going to be better next year. I know it.”

Hart is confident that will be the case because he plans to train hard and practice harder this offseason, something that never changes in his approach to hockey.

“It just starts in practice,” he said. “Practice like you play. (In April) I was working my nuts off in practice and off the ice and was feeling a lot better in my game.”

Silver lining in a miserable season? Do the Flyers buy it? Or, do they look to acquire another goalie to challenge Carter a little more? Time will tell where Fletcher, Vigneault, et al. are with Hart and other players on this team.

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