Barring a miracle turnaround, Mike Yeo will forever be linked with Scott Gordon. Both were interim coaches who finished off bad seasons and then handed off the gig to someone else.

The refreshing thing about both men is that they are open and honest.

Yeo has repeatedly talked about how the Flyers play tight, or abandon structure at the first sign of trouble.

While Saturday’s game was a little different in the sense that after yet another slow start and after falling behind yet again, the Flyers actually played well for a while, found their game, and took the lead in the third period, they still lost themselves at the worst possible time, and blew the game, losing their seventh straight to the New York Rangers, 3-2.

This time, the words of the day from Yeo were “nervous” and “nerves.”

On the slow start (they went 10:52 without a shot on goal) –

“I think that for the most part we look like a team that was a little bit nervous. I think that we had the right mindset first shift we come out then we make a mistake and next thing you know it’s coming back at us and we’re on our heels a little bit.”

On giving up the eventual game-winning goal –

“To me, it goes a little bit towards what we were saying about how we need to play with confidence and that’s with the puck and that’s also without the puck. In defensive situations you have to know that when you’re the pressure guy, you can pressure hard. Whenever you’re doing in your particular job, you should have confidence that you can do that and trust that everybody else is going to do theirs. I just thought that we looked a little bit– let’s just say I don’t think we looked strong enough in that particular shift, whether that was nerves or whatever the case was.”

Here’s the thing – you can understand the concept of being nervous if you have a young team. It’s part of the growth process, right?

But this isn’t a young team. In fact, of the 18 skaters in the lineup for the Flyers, only Joel Farabee, Travis Konecny, Jackson Cates, Morgan Frost and Cam York are under 25 years old, and Konecny’s been around long enough that he really shouldn’t even be lumped in with this group.

So, why are the Flyers nervous, or dealing with nerves at critical junctures of a hockey game?

Well, let’s ask the veteran players….

Wait… what? None were available after the game?

That’s right. The only players the Flyers made available to the media afterwards were York, who scored his first NHL goal, and Carter Hart, who was the losing goaltender.

That’s it.

Where was any representative of the leadership group? Any one of them? Not just the guys with letters on their sweaters, although it would be nice to hear from them too, but really, any player whose been around the block a bit.

Last week we heard from Justin Braun and he talked about failings in leadership in the locker room with Claude Giroux, Ivan Provorov and Sean Couturier all out of the lineup. He intimated that the remaining “leaders” didn’t quite step up to fill their shoes.

But two of those guys are back now, and they’re incommmunicado?

No bueno.

Maybe the players didn’t want to speak. Maybe they feel like they’re out of answers after a 10-game losing streak has now begat another seven-game losing streak. But shame on them for not holding themselves or their teammates accountable for allowing the apple to rot inside-out.

But from my perspective, this one has to fall on coaches and management. You can’t shield your team from the harsh spotlight of being asked what the hell is wrong with the team.

If players are declining to meet with the media after the game, the coaching staff needs to step in and say something.

Update: The players that were made available were based on requests from the media. Normally, a member of the Flyers staff walks through the press box in the third period and asks the writers who they would like to speak with post game. This didn’t happen Saturday because that Flyers staff member was out sick. Instead, an email was sent to eight writers (I wasn’t included because it was only sent to the list of writers who attend daily practices in Voorhees) and only one player was requested – York. The Flyers added Hart to give the media another alternative. While I  still believe the Flyers should have added a veteran player as well, the media not requesting anyone other than York after the team had a third period implosion to lose their seventh straight game is nothing short of a swing and a miss as well. OK… back to the story. 

Not that there’s much of a coaching staff left. Yeo is the interim coach and his two assistants are really a glorified video coach and a player development guy (it’s really kind of embarrassing that the Flyers have let that go on that long as well. How they can be playing without real assistant coaches is a bit of a crime.)

And if the coaches don’t say anything to the players, than the general manager needs to hold their feet to the fire – but that doesn’t seem to be happening either.

And if the GM won’t step in, then shouldn’t the representative of ownership be tossing tables sending a clear message to the team?

Instead, all we get are crickets…

That’s why this season is quickly careening toward “worst season ever” status. Oh, there’s more actual talent on this team than there was in 2006-07. And this team has a better record through 37 games than that squad did, but that’s what makes what we’re witnessing even worse.

At least that collection of piss poor hockey players were being held accountable for their bad play and were forced to discuss it. From their best players, who talked publicly ad nauseam – like Mike Knuble and Simon Gagne – all the way down to the dregs of the team like Niko Dimatrakos and Mike York.

They didn’t run and hide from their failings like their modern day compatriots.

Maybe the current team feels it can get away with it because of how much apathy has set in around this franchise. Hell, the Wells Fargo Center last night sounded like an Eagles road game in Los Angeles, where they really don’t care about football no matter how many teams you put there.

And to think, there’s 45 more games of this. Forty. Freaking. Five.

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