Ousting John Stevens: Too soon, or a necessary decision?

Funny you mentioned Seravalli’s piece. I just wrote a FanPost slamming it. I really don’t like him.

The “mystery player” has to be someone who’s been here a while – long enough to comfortably refer to Stevens as “Johnny” and smart enough to understand that “his systems work.” My money is on Timonen. He seems to be the kind of guy who says and does the right things but has no actual solutions to problems such as these. He spoke similarly during the early- and late-season struggles last year.

That said, I wonder what the problems are right now, specifically because there are “a lot” of them. If this player is referring to mechanics and game play, that’s one thing. But if there is serious discontent in the locker room between players, then that is something which can only be addressed through trades.

While I do believe that we need to be a more disaplined team and stevens is not the right coach for us, I always wonder why richie gets no blame for the struggles this team has with hustle. I get he feeling I’m gonna get slammed, but does anybody else feel as though richards isn’t the captain we hoped hed be?

Too early for this talk, while I definitely fault stevens for a lot of the things that plague this team, its not all on him.

For one, Injuries have hurt our consistency and chemistry. Beyond that, I think were beginning to see the areas of the game where some of our guys need work. Carter is a phenomenal offensive talent but he is a very one dimensional player. He uses his speed to go north-south then he uncorks that lethal shot while flying up the wing. Other teams know this and they defend him accordingly. I will say that Carter has improved his overall game this year, but he still needs work. Giroux burst onto the scene last season using his raw skill to rack up points. Now that teams know who he is they prepare for him a little more thoroughly. It’s easy to forget that Ray Emery is still getting into the swing of things after spending 2 seasons away from the league.

The bottom line is, its not even December 1. Ive always felt that you cant make a serious assessment of a team until january-february. Firing Stevens may be necessary as the season rolls on, but its way to early to take drastic action. tahts one nice thing about hockey, its never really too late to fire the coach.

I do however agree with many of the above posters that certain things have continued to plague this team since Stevens got here and at a certain point you realize that people simply wont change (andy reid still hasnt figured out how to manage the clock after 10+ years). were not at that point with stevens yet, but its coming.

While the inconsistency has certainly been an issue for as long as Stevens has been coach, it really has very little to do with why he has to go.

There are a handful of reasons why Stevens is an ineffective coach, but the biggest one is lack of improvement in problem areas. The last three years, the most frustrating thing about watching the Flyers is that as a team, we have no ability to pass out of our offensive zone. 90% of the time whoever has the puck waits far too long until a backchecking forward has descended on them, and then tries to force a pass through that forward, inevitably turning the puck over. The other 10% of the time is spent blindly flinging pucks or trying to force a clear down the boards. It is painful to me that after all this time Stevens hasn’t worked with his players to design fast breakout schemes, or at least educate his forwards that when trying to break out of the offensive zone, it’s not a good idea to bunch up in the neutral zone.

If an utter inability to pass out of our defensive zone is our biggest problem, then backing up at the blue line is our second. I can’t remember the last time I saw a team not wearing orange and black consistently give up their own blue line to streaking forwards, but the Flyers have done nothing but for years and years now. It’s really sad to think that if Chris Pronger stood up at the blue line and forced the puck carrier to a quick decision, that every single time he would get skated around, creating a 2 on 1 in our defensive zone. But this must be John Stevens mindset, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Flyers defenseman not skate all the way down below the faceoff circle before thinking to challenge the opposition. And allowing teams all the space that the Flyers defensemen do has cost us countless shots/chances/goals against.

Since I’ve already rambled on way too much, I’ll say that this is a partial list of small things that our team does way too much, that consistently hurt us, that coaches are supposed to work with their players on, helping them get better. Other problems including our inability to EVER carry the puck into the offensive zone, our defensemen being way too lax about opposition players camped out in our slot, our players getting caught entirely too often wildly out of position (most easily noteable when there are three or four Flyers on one side of the ice, covering one small zone, allowing for opposition players to sneak in behind us really really easily. and yes, this happens a lot.). And that’s not to mention the problems that he has directly created himself over the years, such as a goalie controversey every year of his own doing because he decides to start the hot backup in 9 games out of 10 for a month, and all the players that have wound up in “his doghouse” over the years who have completely not earned it, and even if they have, why is he calling them out in front of the media like that? Who does that serve?

There are things that Stevens has done right this year that I’ve liked (the 3:22 of pulled-goalie time, the skating drills on an off night, the demotion of Syvret), but that doesn’t take away from all the fundamental things that he is not teaching this team, and the total lack of effective “schemes” that he puts out there. I have believed for two years now, and continue to believe, that this team is a better team with a real coach behind the bench, but that without serious public backlash, he’ll never leave the bench, because he’s real tight knit with Holmgren and Clarke and all of them.