Flyers are latest club to offer public a peek behind the curtain
NHL Network show will feature team at training camp as it prepares to start season
When National Hockey League officials approached the Philadelphia Flyers about appearing on their latest behind-the-scenes show, they faced almost no resistance.
“There weren’t many reservations,” general manager Chuck Fletcher said. “There really aren’t any negatives as far as I’m concerned.”
The Flyers will be featured on NHL Network’s second season of “Behind the Glass” that gives a peek behind the curtain to training camp, exhibition games and the regular-season opener in Europe. In previous decades or even years, it might’ve been hard to persuade a prominent hockey team to open its doors to all the cameras, but it’s becoming far more acceptable in a sport typically predicated on secrecy.
“I can see maybe people who haven’t done it before maybe being hesitant about it,” said New Jersey Devils general manager Ray Shero, whose team was the subject of the show last season. “You’re not exactly going to sit down to tell state secrets, but at the same time there’s going to be some open dialogue and I think that’s really good.”
HBO’s two iterations of “Road to the Winter Classic” may have more closely matched “Hard Knocks,” which shows viewers an uncensored version of an National Football League training camp. The Washington Capitals’ eight-game losing streak in late 2010 became a prominent part of the first show.
NHL chief content officer and executive vice-president Steve Mayer pointed out that hockey pre-season is different from football, where players are outright released if they don’t make the team. Cameras last year tracked Devils personnel grading players after games and deciding on final roster spots, and that same access will be available inside the Flyers’ conference rooms.
“I don’t know if I’d want this in the first round, in a playoff series or something like that, but training camp, it’s positive,” Fletcher said. “That time of the year, there’s not a lot of criticism. Some players obviously perform better than others. But the play kind of dictates what decisions you make anyway.”
Shero recalls Matt Cooke being upset in 2010 when HBO showed Pittsburgh coaches grading his game performance a two on a scale of one to five, but said he got over it. Shero’s biggest concern on “Behind the Glass” was making sure comments about opposing teams and players didn’t make it on the air.
Fletcher was a Devils adviser a year ago, which led to his support of letting NHL Network in for new coach Alain Vigneault’s first Flyers camp.
“They’re not going to show your systems and show things that might be sensitive,” Fletcher said.
“It ends up being more of the personal interactions and showcasing the players on the bubble trying to make the team and showcasing a couple of the star players and how they get ready and showing the coach speaking to the team. I think they do a very good job of showing real, legitimate, behind-the-scenes material,” he added.