It Is Downright Criminal How The Philadelphia Flyers Are Handling This Dave Hakstol Situation Right Now
As you may recall from yesterday, the word was out that the Flyers have finally decided to fire Dave Hakstol after 4 bland years that could best be described as “mehhh pretty fucking uneventful, borderline disastrous by the end”. A couple of highly respected, ultra credible Flyers writers had it like myself…
Dave Isaac had it…
A whole bunch of other people had it. It was one of those situations where there was way, wayyyyyy too much smoke for there to not be any fire. The only issue, however, is that the Flyers didn’t have the scoop themselves.
Now here’s what I’m starting to fear happened–I truly believe that the Flyers had the decision in place to fire Hakstol and bring in Quenneville. The only issue is that the Flyers waited way too damn long to officially announce the Hakstol firing, and word got out before they could break the story themselves. Now the issue with that is that Joel Quenneville is a man of honor and integrity. And with the news coming out before the Flyers made it official themselves, Quenneville probably didn’t enjoy that it got out that he had talked about accepting another man’s job that wasn’t officially vacant at the time. So when the word started to get out on Friday night into Saturday and then Dave Isaac’s report on Sunday, he probably realized that the Flyers organization is way too dysfunctional with too many leaks and now he got cold feet about it.
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This could have been a pivotal moment in Philadelphia Flyers’ history but the way the team handled this entire situation has been damn near criminal and the dysfunction of this organization has now come back to fuck them in the ass. And it’s at a point now where you have no other choice but to feel horrible for Dave Hakstol.
Now I feel like I’m forced to say this every time I write about Hak. I will never have a bad thing to say about Dave Hakstol off the ice. From everything I’ve seen, he’s probably a great father and husband and overall guy in general away from the rink. I’m sure he’s nice as could be and a guy who you’d want to have as your friend because you know you can count on him. Dave Hakstol as a human being is great. But this is the National Hockey League, and the NHL is a business. So sometimes you need to put everybody’s precious little feelings aside and make decisions based on business rather than personal feelings. Which is why it has been long overdue that the Flyers fire Dave Hakstol and never have him coach another game here again. The issue, however, is that without Quenneville accepting the job right away, the Flyers probably now have cold feet about firing Hakstol all together. They probably don’t trust anybody else in the organization right now to take over as an interim head coach while they try to find the next guy. So if Dave Hakstol is forced to stay here and still coach in the meantime? Well that is a bullshit fucking move by Dave Scott and the Flyers organization because Dave Hakstol doesn’t deserve that. Say what you want about the guy as a coach but he shouldn’t have to still just stand there and work for this team when he fully knows that the decision was made to fire him already. Granted, the way that Dave Hakstol handles the time between now and when he inevitably gets fired will definitely help him land another job in the league sooner rather than later. I think a lot of hockey people have a ton of respect for Hak to begin with and you have to respect a man who will still coach for a team even though he knows he already has one foot out the door.
But the Flyers are now setting this up to be the ugliest moment in franchise history. Because trust me, if Dave Hakstol is behind the bench for the Flyers tomorrow night at the Wells Fargo Center, that building will be absolute chaos. It will be the most hostile hometown crowd environment the league has ever seen. And the Flyers’ management will have absolutely nobody to blame for that besides themselves. Hakstol doesn’t deserve that. The team doesn’t deserve that. But because the management of this team is so royally fucked, they gave the fans no other choice but to ruin this team tomorrow night against Detroit.
Is there a chance that Dave Hakstol still gets fired today and we can all avoid that hell that would be raised on Tuesday night? Of course. But the Flyers need to make that decision right now. Not this afternoon. Not an hour from now. I mean that decision needs to be made right now. And once the decision has been made, everybody involved with that organization should still feel a deep, deep amount of shame for all the shit they’ve created here and the good people who are getting fucked over because of it.