Flyers General Manager Chuck Fletcher is only in his second week on the job and one thing has likely become abundantly clear to him – he needs to break up the way his team is constructed.

Quite simply, the Flyers are broken.

Repeated and excessive inconsistency is a fundamental flaw that likely has more to do with the makeup of the roster and how those pieces fit together than the systems they are playing.

That’s not to absolve the coaching staff for the sins of their players, or their former general manager. No, they need to own the fact that they can’t find a way to maximize what potential there is on the roster.

But these players need to take ownership for themselves. They can’t be fragile. They can’t “play scared” as Jake Voracek said after a recent game. They can’t crack under pressure. They can’t lose track of their fundamentals and have it blow up on them game after game after game.

There was no reason the Flyers should have lost to Calgary Wednesday, and yet they did, 6-5 in overtime, allowing two goals in the final 1:08 of regulation and the game-winner in the first minute of the extra session.

The frustration for fans is understandable. The Flyers are a team who is equally adept at overcoming a two-goal deficit as it is blowing a two-goal lead.

There is skill and talent on this team; it just doesn’t mesh. Maybe it’s because despite that skill, this team is not collectively smart.

How so?

I’ll explain after the jump:

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If you’ve been down to the Wells Fargo Center for a Flyers game this season, or if you have a discerning eye when watching or streaming the game, you may have noticed more empty seats than usual for Flyers hockey.

Of course, it depends these days on game time, which troubles me personally, because I don’t know when Philadelphia crowds became the late-arriving, early-leaving type, but the fact still remains that hundred of seats go unused every game.

There have been a lot of people putting photos out of Flyers games where attendance has looked bad. I’ve been guilty of this myself once:

This is what hockey arenas look like in New Jersey, Brooklyn, Phoenix and Florida. NOT Philadelphia. And yet… #EmptySeatsEverywhere pic.twitter.com/BPUb5hfvkG

— AntSanPhilly (@AntSanPhilly) November 28, 2018

And to be fair. this was taken early in the game. The place did fill up some after I took this photo, but it was a Tuesday night, and it was against Ottawa, so it didn’t get that much more full.

Still, there are more empty seats at games now than ever before. Even during 2006-07, which many agree was the worst season in Flyers franchise history, the attendance was, on average, about 100 people more than it has been so far this season.

And there is no doubt, that if this trend continues through the second half of the season, that that Flyers will experience the smallest average attendance in the history of the Wells Fargo Center.

That’s not good. But it also needs to be examined relatively.

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New Flyers General Manager Chuck Fletcher was introduced to the media today.

He spoke for 25 minutes and the question about Dave Hakstol finally came at the 21:14 mark of the press conference.

Said Fletcher on the coaching staff:

They’re our coaches, the coaches of the Philadelphia Flyers. I spent time with Hak yesterday and again this morning, talked to him about what we want to do for the upcoming road trip and which players we’re going to bring on the trip. He’ll get tired of me. I’m around after every game, I’m around every morning. I like to have coffee with the coaches and just get a sense of what they wanna do each day.

I think you have to give people a chance to show how they’re going to work with you, and it’s easy to have opinions on the outside, but I think when you’re talking about making a decision on the future of a coaching staff, I think you’d better have a little bit more specific information than what I have right now.

I want it to work. I want it to be successful with this group. It’s not a threat or anything, but as I’ve said, if we don’t have the solutions in house, we’ll look outside. There’s no timetable for any of that other than we’re just trying to get better. We want to make the playoffs this year. We want to win a Stanley Cup as soon as we can. Every decision we make will be towards that goal. Right now we’re just starting.

I think that’s what we expected. Paul Holmgren and Dave Scott could have axed Hakstol along with Ron Hextall, but they’re leaving the decision up to Fletcher, who looks like he’s going to give Hak a shot to prove himself.

Thoughts?

Press conference video after the jump:

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