I got a phone call Monday from a high-ranking Comcast-Spectacor employee.

The individual spoke softly. Almost like you do about an hour after a heated argument, once you calm down.

And then, after a sigh, the person said, “These past five days have been really sobering for this company.”

The conversation went on from there, and the gist of it was that cumulatively, everything that went wrong from last Tuesday through the weekend was the tipping point – finally – for the company to make change.

The first shoe dropped Friday when the Flyers fired Chuck Fletcher after four-plus years of not getting the job done. While this was something that had to happen, and the organization recognized that long before last week, it was expedited because of last week.

Here’s the thing – it’s not the last shoe to drop, nor is it going to be the biggest. It was a big move sure, but there’s a lot more coming:

(DiMarco never sleeps. I need that guy’s energy. Great follow for Flyers news, by the way.)

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, let’s examine what “sobered” the organization.

  • Tuesday 2/28 – Chuck Fletcher speaks for the first time in nearly three months, and in the process, claims that rebuilding (although he refused to use that word) was the plan all along and one they have been “pretty clear about all year,” which, they never were. He also cited a stat claiming the Flyers were the fifth most-improved team by points percentage, which is as tone deaf a thing as he could have said.
  • Wednesday 3/1 – The Flyers host the New York Rangers and the predominance of the crowd in the Wells Fargo Center were New York Rangers fans. Adding to that embarrassment was a mistaken blackout of the game on multiple cable platforms, which, while not within the Flyers control, was an unnecessary gas can emptied on the raging Flyers fan fire.
  • Thursday 3/2 – The Flyers finally get attention on local sports talk radio (and this will go on throughout the weekend) but for all the wrong reasons. On 97.5 the Fanatic, long-time host Anthony Gargano screams for Comcast to sell the team.
  • Friday 3/3 – The trade deadline that wasn’t. The Flyers were never expecting it to be a really active deadline, but the optics of getting nothing for pending free agent James van Riemsdyk while many similar players were at least fetching mid-to-late round draft picks was, in a word, terrible.
  • Saturday 3/4 – The Flyers hold a season ticket holder town hall event, and Chuck Fletcher is lustily booed. Fans fire off lots of pointed, hurt, and angry questions to which Chuck has few answers.
  • Sunday 3/5 – As talk radio continues to lambaste the organization (special note to Glen Macnow who dedicated chunks of his show on Saturday with Mike Sielski and Sunday with Jody MacDonald), local news channels who have a Sunday sports show jump into the fray, dedicating large portions of their programming to burying the Flyers.

Dave Scott needed all of this to happen to finally eschew the advice of his advisors and get rid of Fletcher, but it shouldn’t have come to this. It shouldn’t have gotten to this point.

There was a thought of firing him as far back as December, especially after the December 4th dueling press conferences debacle between John Tortorella and Fletcher. Although Dave was close to pulling the trigger then, he listened to the advisors and kept Fletcher in place.

Even after the holidays, when it became apparent the Flyers weren’t going to be much better and the thought creeped in to make a change again, he didn’t. Then, he allowed a GM he had been considering firing for two months to handle the trade deadline – a trade deadline that was unlike any other, with big name players and assets being moved all over the place in the two weeks leading up to the deadline, while the Flyers were mostly idle.

If failing the deadline was the cherry on the sundae as far as what Scott needed to see, then why, WHY let Fletcher have to face season ticket holders Saturday? These are your most important patrons. A good PR move would have been to can him Friday night, and then take the stage yourself Saturday morning and say “we’ve heard you.” You were right. We needed change and we’re making that happen.

That was a swing and a miss.

However, to their credit, doing it Friday and not just waiting until the end of the season, was, at least, a line drive up the middle. An in-season move does show the fans that they are being heard, that waiting until after the season would not have had the same impact. Sometimes a little discomfort in the organization and a little public surprise is a good thing.

The artfully crafted statement from Dave Scott had some real important wording. Specifically this paragraph:

“Flyers fans deserve a better team than what they’ve seen on the ice over the past few seasons, and a clear plan to return this team to Stanley Cup contention. We know that this will be a multi-year process, and we are committed to doing it right, because we want to put this franchise on a path toward winning the Stanley Cup, period.”

Fans deserve “a clear plan.” And “this will be a multi-year process.”

Imagine the hoops that had to be jumped through to get that language approved.

Still, this brings us to the root of the problem, and maybe I’m burying the lede here, but this isn’t going to be the only change in responsibilities with the Flyers.

I’m surprised that Danny Briere has the title as “interim GM.” It might simply be so that they can have time for some due diligence, but from everything I’m told, Briere will be the GM going into the summer and next season.

As for the the fate of the assistant general managers, that’s a different story. There’s a chance Brent Flahr stays. From what I’m told, he and Briere are of the same mind on how to fix the Flyers – and that could include creative roster moves that would make even some of the team’s better players available in trades this summer. Yet, at the same time, Flahr has been connected at the hip with Fletcher for so long, that it might behoove the Flyers to just cut bait and go in a different direction.

As for Barry Hanrahan, he’s been a sacred cow of sorts in this organization, surviving every change the team has made. That might be coming to an end as the Flyers will look to completely overhaul their processes in the front office.

Will the “advisors” still be in their roles? That’s the biggest question, and the answer to that likely comes with if Scott will still be in his.

Scott, I’m told, will be given the opportunity to step away from this mess gracefully, likely looking at retiring some time after the season.

If that’s the case, and I should be clear, it’s not a guarantee at this point since things can’t ever be clear and clean cut with the Flyers, then the odds of guys like Bill Barber, Paul Holmgren, Dean Lombardi, and Bob Clarke remaining in their influential advisory rolls are slim. Do they also get to retire gracefully? Do they get the opportunity to keep some sort of emeritus title, but have no influence on organizational decisions? My guess is more the former (at least for Clarke and Holmgren, out of respect for their years of service), but time will tell there.

And if Scott chooses to walk off into the sunset, who would then oversee the Flyers hockey operations?

Cue Dan Hilferty’s walk-up music.

Without Scott there to protect the legacy folks, everyone in hockey operations should be shaking in their boots. Briere may be a former Flyer, but he has a certain way he wants to do things, and there are those from that never-before-penetrated inner circle who feel that his route to his position in the organization was non-traditional by Flyers standards.

In other words, he isn’t part of the network.

Some folks in the hockey operations department quietly sneered at this. They would put on a smiling public face, but behind the scenes, he was viewed more as an interloper. Or even a Trojan horse. It’s kind of ridiculous, really. But, when you have such a tight-nit network, it takes a lot to be initiated into it, even if you have the equity of a Briere, who was a fan favorite for the Flyers.

Since he didn’t follow the traditional path, coming instead from the business side of the operation first, and getting his management indoctrination from outside of the circle, he could never be fully initiated.

It’s like Henry and Jimmy in Goodfellas – they could always be associates and good soldiers, but never be initiated because they weren’t Italian.

Yeah, like that.

But, Briere is his own man, with his own idea of how to move this forward, and while he believes in what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer, he knows you can get to that same outcome without necessarily following the “Flyer way.”

If given the opportunity to do it that way, Briere will have a better chance of success.

But, he won’t do it alone.

As the Flyers pointed out in their statement, they aren’t going to give him both titles of President and General Manager and will look to hire a President of Hockey Operations to work with Briere.

It will be an outside hire, but by that I mean outside the current organization. You always have to leave the door cracked that someone gets the job with some tangential connection to the Flyers – just because that does happen across sports, not just with the Philadelphia hockey club.

All that to be said, nobody involved with the Flyers hockey side of things, except Tortorella and Briere, should feel comfortable in their current job.

Not one player. Not one staffer. Not one front office member. No one.

And, finally, for Philadelphia, that’s a good thing.

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