The Philadelphia Flyers 2020-21 season didn't prove out as expected, as a playoff birth wasn't achieved.
Philadelphia Flyers President and General Manager Chuck Fletcher and Head Coach Alain Vigneault met with the media today. I did not attend today's presser, but am providing this information for Insight reader's reference. The follow transcript is provided courtesy of Flyers media relations staff:
Can you go into the reason behind the slide this season?
AV: I think I have a couple of theories. After starting the season where we got of results-wise to a good start, mainly due and a lot due to we had some real solid goaltending. Our team started to play better. Our goaltending slipped a little bit. COVID hit us and after COVID, all we basically did was play games and not practice. I think this group because we’ve got veteran players, just a small group of players in that middle age frame of 27-28 and a lot of younger players. Those younger players when the game slips a little bit were not quite executing the way we need to have success. You have to practice and we didn’t have any practice time. I’m not saying that’s the reason. A lot of things happened, but I’m going to need some time to reflect on it. But I do think that played a part in our game slipping and our season going the way it did.
Your number one priority is probably looking for a right-handed defenseman. What would you say your number two priority is in the offseason?
CF: I think we have quite a few priorities. Looking outside the organization certainly we could upgrade everywhere, up front, defense. Certainly we’re going to have to take a look at our situation in goal, which has kind of been a constant struggle here for years. We have different areas we have to look at. We also need a lot of our young players to be better. I would say with the exception of Joel Farabee that the majority of our players plateaued or took a step back this year. That’s a big concern for me. Since 2014, this franchise has put a lot of time and effort into drafting and developing young players. Frankly, for us to take a step forward, we’re going to need that group of players to take on a bigger role, play better, and help us win games. We’re going to have to look outside the organization, but certainly it’s difficult to replace the whole team. You’re going to need your young players to take a step and be better. They have a big summer ahead of them. Hopefully as things normalize, this offseason hopefully it’s easier for many of these young players to skate, train and prepare more normally than maybe they were able to do last offseason. We’re hopefully that we’ll see an energized group of players come training camp.
When a team goes into a slide like that, someone has to step up and try to salvage the season. Because that didn’t happen, does that give you concern about the mix of players in the locker room and that no one was able to halt that for you guys?
CF: I think that’s something we’ll take a look at. I don’t know that I’m sitting here questioning our leadership. I thought our leaders played hard this year. If you look at the last couple months, nobody played harder than Claude Giroux. Sean Couturier played really hard on his line, carried our team early in the season. Jake Voracek led our team in scoring again, or tied for the lead. A lot of these players that have been here a while I thought did their part. Hockey’s a team sport. Twenty players on the ice. I don’t know that one guy giving a speech in a dressing room or doing something can turn a season around. We had tough March, there’s no question. We had 17 games in that month. I’ve never been on a team that played 17 games in a month. I think I’ve been on a team that played 16 maybe once. Typically you’re playing 15 games a month, so it was tough. There wasn’t a lot of time to reset. A lot of other teams went through it. It was probably a harder time to go through when you’re struggling, you don’t have much time to practice or reset as AV mentioned. To me, I’m not sure leadership is the first thing I’m looking in this group, but we’ll take some time over the next few weeks here to look at every angle. Find a way to plug the holes we need to plug.
Alain, did this season cause you to think about not coming back next year?
AV: I came to Philly to win a Stanley Cup. I told Chuck last week or the week before when we were officially eliminated that I sort of felt like I’ve let everyone down here, from him to ownership to our fans to our players. Just after the start that we had, got the team playing better, and then like I mentioned goaltending, COVID and no practice time. I wasn’t able to put the ship back on track. I’m going to need some time obviously on a personal level to reflect on the season. Like the rest of society, it’s our first pandemic that we go through. There’s obviously some things reflecting on that we might want to change how I handled and how I did things. On a personal level, I’m going to need some time to get the emotion out of the way and analyze this properly. Another thing I did say to Chuck because talking about our young players and Joel Farabee taking strides. The difference between Joel Farabee, an American who stayed in the States and was able to train, and our Canadian players, all the ones that went back to Canada. G had a good year. More experience. Coots, in my estimation, had a good year but didn’t have a Coots-type season like he had with me last year. If I look at all the other players that went to Canada, they struggled. Whether its’ because of lack of training possibilities, lack of skating possibilities. One of my questions when meeting with the players this afternoon is what are you doing this summer. If things stay the way they are right now in Canada, they’re going to have to make some adjustments to their summer plans. This is just our team. I can’t reflect throughout the rest of the NHL, but our team, the Canadian players that went back to Canada had a challenging time.
What does the coaching staff leave you with when you see the young players take a step back like this?
CF: That’s why, to be honest with you, I’m happy we have this experienced coaching staff. AV, Mike Therrien, Mike Yeo and Ian Laperriere, they’ve seen a lot of different scenarios during their time in the league. I’m fully confident that they’ll have the best approach on how to bring these players back. Some of it has to fall on the players. It’s up to the players to be prepared to come into camp next year. As AV alluded to, a couple of those kids that did go back to Canada, I remember speaking to them in October and November, they were having a hard time getting ice time. They were having a hard time, gyms were shut down. Some of them had some adjustments to make and were having a tough time doing the training they normally do. Our expectation is that they will be able to find a better path to train this offseason. Certainly there’s some personal responsibility for every one of us in terms of how we perform and how we do our job. Having a veteran coaching staff gives me comfort that we’re going to find the right solutions to get these players back to where we need to get them to.
You’ve mentioned about doing things differently based on things you learned this year. Is there a silver lining that since you didn’t have the practice time that you learned about the way the players process the game and how they need to be coached?
AV: There’s no doubt that knowing your players more is beneficial. You know what makes them tick. You know what can help them and what’s not going to help them. At the end of the day, what I need, Chuck can’t give me. Society can give me though. I need a normal season. I need people to go out and get vaccinated, so that we can have a normal season next year. I’ve been here two years and we haven’t had one of those. I want guys coming into camp, having trained in a normal way in the summer. I want to go through a normal camp. I want to go through a normal season that’s 82 games worth. I want to go through normal playoffs where you play in front of your fans. You feel the energy. You feel the passion. You go on the road, tight knit group. You try and win on the road. Chuck can’t give me a normal season, but society can if we do our part. Hopefully we can all get there for next year.
If you had to pinpoint the most glaring hole on the roster, what would it be? Do you think you can address it during the offseason?
CF: We’ll certainly try. We’re going to take time here over the next month to meet with our group. We’ll analyze everything between now and then. We’ll have good meetings. Look, we finished 31st in the league in goals against. I’d say the last 15, 16 years for this franchise, we’ve had a tough time keeping the puck out of our net consistently. Since I’ve been here, we were 27th in the league defensively, I believe, my first year. Last year, we climbed to 7th and this year we fell to 31st. It’s clear that when you give up the number of chances and the number of goals we did this year, you’re going to have a tough time winning hockey games. We need to improve our ability to keep the puck out of the net and everything that goes with that is what we’ll look to do this offseason.
Where do you see the improvements that Carter Hart needs? How is he medically?
CF: The second part, I believe he’s fine. He’s been on the ice a few days. I think he’s basically back to full health. In terms of the first part, I’m not a goalie coach or a goalie expert. I don’t know that that’s for me to speak to. I think Carter’s no different than a lot of 22 year-old individuals. Every walk of life, whether you are in college, working or in sports, he’s a young man that’s finding his way. We’ve asked a lot out of Carter. He’s a precocious talent. He’s climbed the ladder very quickly. This year didn’t go the way he had hoped, the way we had all hoped, but there’s a lot of talent there. I think our expectations is that Carter will make the adjustments necessary and come back, be the goalie we all want him to be and that he expects to be. He’s a top-end talent. It’s a tough league, but he’ll make the adjustments he has to make and he’ll return to form.
How much did the goals against average accumulate over time weigh down the offense?
AV: There’s no doubt it was a very challenging season in the aspect that we were chasing most of the games. At the end of the day, that’s on me, it’s on team preparation. The players have their responsibility also in the sense that they have to get in themselves in the right mental state to go out there and be able to execute and make the right plays. Our starts made it very challenging. Always chasing the game is a challenge. When you score the first goal, I think the percentage of you winning that game are over or close to 75 percent. In all aspects our offense sort of dried up towards the end there. Our defense as much as we improved from the beginning, we weren’t giving up as many shots or scoring chances. We just had a hard time keeping the puck out of our net as a team and then our offense dried up. At the end of the day, it led to the season that we had.
Why do you feel like you will be able to make the changes needed this offseason when you haven’t been able to make them in the past?
CF: Well, we’ll see. We’ll have to look at a few different areas to improve, but I anticipate there being some players available. We’ll have to go out and see if we can add the right player. Certainly last offseason, we looked at a lot of different options. Some cases didn’t break the way we’d hoped and in some cases it wasn’t the perfect fit for the type of player we were looking for. We’re going to have to be creative and find a way to improve where we can.
Can you give a medical update on the players? Also, do you know which players are going to the World Championships?
CF: I really don’t know on either as of right now. Our players will continue doing their medicals later on today and doing some imaging today and tomorrow. We’ll have a better answer on that with respect to offseason surgeries probably over the next few days. I don’t have a full update yet on the World Championships. I know some players were still mulling things over as the season came to an end. Hopefully we’ll have a better idea on that too as we meet with the players over the next day or two.
Is Nolan Patrick’s season a product of being away from the game for a year and not being able to get into a rhythm? Also, is it a concern that his tentativeness will be tough to overcome down the road?
CF: I think on a positive front, Nolan was able to physically get through this season. After missing the 18, 19, 20 months, whatever it was of not playing, I think it’s a positive that he was able to complete the season. He took some big hits. He played. From that standpoint, that’s something he can build off of. He wasn’t fully cleared to play until just prior to camp. He’s one of those players that I’m not sure had a normal offseason. Personally, I believe there’s another level to his conditioning and strength he can get to as he can train. I think he wasn’t skating the same, particularly in back to back games. You could see a drop-off in his skating. I do think there’s some things that could be improved just by being healthy and having a normal summer. I think we’ll have a better feel where Nolan’s at into next year. Our expectation is that he has a great summer, gets a little stronger, and gets a little more explosive. Comes into camp in a type of condition that he wasn’t able to achieve this year. That in turn will allow him to play the game in a higher level.
What did you see from Nolan this year? Was he worried about getting hit in the head?
AV: I didn’t know Nolan from before. He didn’t play last year. The only thing that I can really say is that there’s no doubt that he had a challenging year. Positively, like Chuck mentioned, was the fact that he was able to play the whole year. Hopefully with a season under his belt and a normal summer of conditioning, training and skating, he comes back next year. He’s a good player for us. This year there’s no doubt was very challenging.
How differently do you assess this season compared to a normal season with all the situations due to COVID?
CF: It was really challenging. Maybe some teams handled it better than we did. I think of the 28, 29 players that were around our team this year, counting the players on the taxi squad, 20 players over the course of the last five or six months had COVID. We got hit pretty hard at various times. Some players seemed to come back stronger. I give Giroux a lot of credit, Voracek. Some of these guys came back and seemed to get better. Other players seemed to struggle. Other players got hit in November and December right before camp, which wasn’t ideal for coming into a shortened camp in top shape. Every team had to deal with it. We did the best we could. On a personal level, I will not be tired of living the protocols every day. They were necessary but it seemed like we spent an awful lot of time making sure that we were following protocols and doing things right, trying to keep people safe and healthy versus managing your team. It was necessary. It was so important that we played hockey this year. It was great from a league standpoint that we were able to play hockey. There were definitely a lot of challenges.
What is your level in confidence with Carter Hart being the guy going forward? Should he be one of the Canadians that need to stay state-side in the offseason?
AV: My level of confidence in Carter is very high. He’s a good young man. He probably went through the first time in his life, his career, adversity. You have to go through adversity to get better and to grow. He’s gone through that. He’s playing the toughest position in hockey. He’d only played a small sample, a couple of games his first year, twenty-some what. A lot of those games, meaningless in the sense that the team was out. Last year, played and had a good season. He was real good at home, improved on the road, then we went into the bubble. He played well for us there. This year, he got off to a good start and then it became challenging. He faced some adversity. I think that adversity is good. It’s going to make him better. He’s still a very young player playing a real tough position. With the right mindset, the right attitude and the right work ethic moving forward, he’s got all the capabilities to become a real solid goaltender. Now he’s got to go out and prove it.
Are you saying that if we don’t have normal conditions for next season that you won’t be back? Or are you saying that if there are normal conditions, you definitely will be back?
AV: No, I came to Philly to win a Cup. I believe that last year we took positive strides. Its’ not always on the upswing. There’s ups and downs to win a Cup. You just look throughout history, the Tampa Bays and the Washington. To get to the ultimate goal, there’s some struggles and there’s some adversity. We’re going through some. It’s going to make us better. It’s going to make our group better. I haven’t changed my mind that I can accomplish my goal. We can all accomplish our goal because Chuck has the same goal I have. Ownership has the same goal. Our fans have the same goal. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and that’s what were going to do. We’re going to take a little down time here. This has been a challenging year. We’ll get right back at it here in the next little while and make sure we’re better next year. I’m just stating that I’d like to coach the Flyers in a normal year. With everything going on in the world, I don’t want to make it sound like I’m complaining because it’s been hard on everyone. I would really enjoy coaching the Flyers in a normal year and in a normal setting.
In training camp, you said that making the playoffs was non-negotiable. How much does that bother you that you didn’t make playoffs?
AV: There’s no doubt that it’s very hard to take. Like I mentioned, I feel like I’ve let people down. I’m going to regroup, analyze and come back better next year. It didn’t go the way we anticipated. It’s adversity. If adversity can help Carter Hart become better, adversity can help Alain Vigneault get better. Adversity can help the Flyers get better. Maybe the Flyers have been through a lot of that in the last little while, but it’s our job, Chuck and I, to get these players to play up to their full potential. That’s what we’re going to do starting next year.
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(On a personal note - I've been credentialed since 2011. The Flyers media relations staff has been and remains first class. My thanks to everyone for their consistent professionalism.)
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