Flyers Legend Keith Yandle is Retiring
One of the best to ever wear the orange and black:
After playing 1,109 games as well as setting a new Ironman record, Keith Yandle has announced his retirement from the NHL.
Congratulations on a great career! 👏 pic.twitter.com/0NGmfvM6eU
— NHL (@NHL) September 20, 2022
Yandle was horrendous for the Flyers this past season, but if we’re being honest with, the entire team was mostly dreck.
Back in April, when Yandle was scratched after breaking the ironman record, a lot of people flipped shit because they thought the Flyers were doing him dirty by disallowing him to hit 1,000 games. We did a fair and balanced journalism story about that titled “The Keith Yandle Story is the Perfect Example of How More Than One Thing Can Be True,” writing:
“A lot of the discourse here seems to surround the timing of the move. If they did this two months ago, there wasn’t a prospect worth calling up, so they’d be waiving him for another mediocre veteran to play, right? But instead of making him a healthy scratch, they could have just waived him this week when they had a few days off in a row, which may have be received better from a PR/optics perspective. They could have easily just said that it was time to get their defensive prospects on the ice.
This really is a case study in how things are not black and white. More than one thing can be true. The Flyers could have let Keith Yandle finish out this pointless shitburger of a season, as Jeremy Roenick suggests. I honestly don’t think Jeremy is wrong, because his take of “you’ve already come this far” is a valid one. But at the same time, Yandle was a net negative on the ice and these young prospects need NHL time, because it’s not about handing out games for charity, it’s about winning, especially when you haven’t done much of that over the past decade.
Anyway, let’s get it back to the Eagles. Congrats to Yandle on a long NHL career. 1,109 games is an incredible accomplishment. Former Pittsburgh Penguin and current slob Phil Kessel is gonna break Yandle’s record this year, but whatever, he can enjoy being #1 on the list for a little bit longer.