Not sure what’s going on with Flyers Twitter recently. First, we had a blog’s Twitter account post 10+ hours of porn and feet pictures, and now we’ve got Jake Voracek sniping Charlie O’Connor on social media.

For context, this stems from a Voracek vs. Cam Atkinson argument, specifically how the trade affected the Flyers’ power play last season. It’s COC vs. “Greck the Third” –

 

Look, I don’t know anything about xG play-driving via the RAPM model and I didn’t watch any Columbus games last year. The only Blue Jackets I can name besides Jake are Oliver Bjorkstrand and Patrik Laine.

However, I do know that Voracek was a polarizing player during his time in Philly. Seemed like everybody had an opinion about his style. And when the Atkinson trade took place, most people seemed to be on board because the Flyers were spinning their wheels and needed to shake things up. Ultimately, you’d probably say the trade was a wash, a rare win/win type of thing with two big salaries moving in the opposite direction.

Voracek is and always has been a great facilitator. He led Columbus in points this past season while only scoring six goals, which is like the most Voracek thing of all time. Atkinson was second on the Flyers with 23 goals and looked especially good early in the year before it all went to shit.

Charlie talks about “rapid decline,” which certainly is going to be subjective. In a vacuum, 62 points at age 32 is pretty damn good, even if 25 of those were on the power play. He actually finished 11th in the league in power play assists, so there’s layers to the game here. You can formulate whatever opinion you want based on what you think is important.

From a general observational standpoint, Charlie is a very analytics-focused guy. Some people put a lot of stock in numbers and some put very little stock in that. As a basketball/football/soccer guy, I get the sense that data is less accepted in hockey compared to other sports. Maybe Ant and/or Russ wanna chime in here at some point and add some credibility to the Voracek topic, because I don’t know what else to write. I just always get a kick out of Voracek chiming in on Twitter. What’s he gonna do next? Call someone a “weasel” who writes “fucking shit?”