WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Philadelphia Flyers‘ play on the ice Wednesday night against the Washington Capitals was largely drab, dull, and uneventful. Another loss in a month full of drab, dull, and uneventful losses.
The interviews in the wake of said 5-2 loss, however? Had the game been as interesting as those, perhaps Sean Couturier wouldn’t have had to drop one of the most dreaded tags in all of hockey for a player or team during his postgame availability.
Soft.
“At times this year we’re soft, I would say,” Couturier said. “Not hard on battles. Lose battles easily. It’s one thing to make mistakes and not win a battle, but if you’re in there trying hard and stuff, that’s different.”
No player wants to be tagged as “soft.” It runs counter to the entire mythology of the game of hockey, built around hard work, self-sacrifice, blood, sweat and tears. If an NHL player is truly soft, then he’s worthy of scorn, not the admiration that comes with making the best league in the world. And if an entire team is soft, then winning anything meaningful is out of the question. They’re just a name on the schedule, a speed bump for teams that do actually understand what it takes to reach the top.
For the team’s captain to break out that particular word — even while softening it with the “at times” qualifier — about his own team? Things must be about as ugly as it gets in Flyers World.
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1 Comment
etcz
Agree with Charlie, tons of theories for why this team is playing like a shell. But it’s concerning that Tocchet (last year) and now Coots and Seeler (though not specifically) keep finding ways to de-value their most significant piece for the future in Michkov. The core of what they’re saying isn’t wrong – play a team game, battle aggressively and win – but saying players are “more worried about points’ on a team where 3 people are providing them… and basically no one else, comes off as both damning and blind. Everyone has aspects they need to clean up to turn it around. All that talk about the Flyers were becoming a “destination” for their “culture”… yet players don’t want to come, the culture is in shambles, and their most productive player keeps getting dumped on. I wonder why stars don’t want to come…