Struggling Flyers miss Snider’s passion
Do you miss Ed Snider yet? How about now?
The best, most committed owner in modern Philadelphia sports history, twice a world champion, his Flyers having reached the NHL’s Super Bowl eight times in 36 years, a spend-the-money, insult-the-refs, demand-effort embodiment of everything his fan base ever craved, has been dead for five years.
Since then, the Flyers have won one playoff series, twice have missed the postseason, and this year have unloaded a 1718 record, which includes four losses in overtime.
The Flyers barely defend, don’t develop young players, lost the other night to a team on an 18-game losing streak, no longer fight, might have two “star” players, can’t generate half-aconversation on talk radio, and still owe their head coach more than $15 million.
All together now: Cul-ture-change … cul-ture-change … cul-ture-change.
No, the Flyers weren’t much better in Snider’s final years than they have been under, um, under, um, under that other guy now in charge. The difference was that while Snider was the sentry dog, the kind of hockey the Flyers have come to play would not have been tolerated.
Anything remains possible this season, with the Flyers a nice winning streak away from squeezing into playoff contention. Chuck Fletcher has shown
an eye for talent. Alain Vigneault is a splendid communicator and decorated head coach with plenty of Snider’s characteristics. He makes changes that can be unpopular and he doesn’t care who complains.
Fletcher doesn’t deserve to be fired.
Vigneault doesn’t deserve to be fired.
Both, though, could use a public reminder from the executive level that sloppy play and chronic mediocrity is not to be tolerated, not in that organization, not this year, not ever.
Do you miss Ed Snider yet?
How about now?
*** Paperweights always make for great gifts.
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Doug Pederson quit on a game, his players were ready to quit on him, and within days of one of the most disturbing losses in Eagles history, Doug Pederson was out of work. It had to be that way. Anything else would have meant clubhouse revolt.
Yet for some warped reason, Pederson’s decision to not try his best to win a Week 17 game against visiting Washington was excused by many as a noble, franchise-dictated effort to preserve the all-important No. 6 overall pick in the next draft.
That was nonsense then.
Recently, it was exposed as a lie.
That’s because the Eagles showed just how committed they were to that pick … by trading it away for lower picks. With that, the history gained context. The Eagles never were married to that No. 6 pick. So why would they have encouraged their head coach to compromise the franchise’s dignity, expose it to immediate national-television criticism from respected pro-football analysts, and humiliate players who were trying to win for a pick they didn’t necessarily value?
They didn’t.
Doug Pederson was in charge of that game on that night in that quarter in that situation, and he whisked away the professional obligation to win.
That’s what happened, no matter how the apologists in and around the NewsControl Compound were quick to soften the reality.
That’s why the Eagles were right to try another coach to try to win with draft picks they wanted, not the one they were so quick to trade away.
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I don’t get why “spring break” has to turn into some kind of all-night, drunken mob scene.
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Right in the middle of a season, just when the serious playoff-position races were about to grow heated, Joel Embiid has missed 10 games with a bruised knee.
In that time, the Sixers fell from first place to second in the Eastern Conference.
It’s never going to change.
It’s not.
It’s what the franchise accepted when it drafted an injured player. It’s what it approved by allowing Embiid to sit for two years before playing an NBA game. It’s what the Sixers experience every single year … frustration with Embiid’s durability.
Embiid, it is being whispered, is about healthy and should play Saturday night against visiting Minnesota. The Sixers, losers of two of their last three, need the boost.
Next year, and any year they depend on Embiid, they’ll need a similar one.
***
If you ask me, nothing completes the curb appeal of a home better than halfa-ton of solar panels on a roof.
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Bryce Harper struck out to end the ninth inning in the Phillies’ opener … and for that, he would receive a boxscore boost. That’s because he would begin the 10th inning on second base, as per baseball’s idiotic new extra-inning rules, and wind up scoring the winning run.
A crisis? Hardly. Warped? Of course. Runs scored should be a reflection of excellence, not an accounting quirk.
• The NCAA Tournament is two games from completion, and it sure would be heartwarming if Houston coach Kelvin Sampson were to finally be rewarded with a championship. The poor fellow never had that chance at Indiana, where he was found to have committed so many recruiting violations that he had to serve a five-year show-cause ban from coaching any NCAA program.
In a tournament that included Rick Pitino, Jim Boeheim, Bill Self, Roy Williams among other pillars of fair play, may this be Coach Sampson’s longdelayed One Shining Moment.
• As the college basketball season closes, let’s take a look at the scoreboard since Temple and Saint Joseph’s absolutely had to run off Fran Dunphy and Phil Martelli.
In two years without two of the most accomplished and genuinely decent coaches in Big 5 history, the Owls and Hawks have gone a combined 2978, and were 9-25 this season.
Print that on a rollout.
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They are planning a remake of “Friends.” Tell me I’m dreaming.