Last week, Jakub Voráček announced his official retirement from the National Hockey League, a decision that seems to have been made for him as a result of lingering concussion issues. Voráček scored 806 career points in 1058 games, including 604 in 727 games as a Philadelphia Flyer.
Two years ago when he was traded back to the Columbus Blue Jackets for Cam Atkinson, Voráček finished his Flyers career tenth in franchise history in points, fifth in assists, and is in the top 10 in at least seven other categories.
Voráček was one of the faces of Flyers hockey in the 2010s—he was consistently among the team’s top scorers (and consistently one of the top scoring wingers in the NHL), one of the team’s highest paid players, and was given the Bobby Clarke Trophy for the team’s most valuable player in 2013 and again in 2015.
Under the leadership of Claude Giroux and Jake Voráček—a top five scoring pair of their generation—the Flyers didn’t win anything. Voráček’s career in Philadelphia started with one of the most exciting playoff series in recent Flyers memory in 2012 when they beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in six games before losing to the Devils in the second round. That series was one of the highest scoring in NHL history and really re-sparked that Flyers-Penguins rivalry, with the teams racking up a combined 308 penalties in minutes. Voráček had 7 points in the series, was at the center of a skirmish that started with Sidney Crosby poking his glove away from him and ended with a line brawl, and scrapped with Evgeni Malkin after James Neal took a run at Giroux.
Philadelphia then alternated playoff appearances for the rest of Voráček’s tenure: miss in 2013, a first round loss in 2014, miss in 2015, first round loss in 2016, miss in 2017, first round loss in 2018, miss in 2019, a second round loss in 2020, and finally a miss in 2021. As the highest-paid and most talented players on the team, Giroux and Voráček took a lot of the heat for the ups-and-downs of the franchise. Were they good enough to win? To be the top guys on a cup-winning team? Or were they second tier guys?
Over the course of his Flyers career, Voráček was the fourth-highest scoring right winger in the NHL and the 15th-highest scoring player overall. For the 2010s decade, Giroux was 4th in the NHL in points and Voráček was 18th. It doesn’t seem like a recipe for mediocrity. Especially considering the pairs of teammates they share company with on that list: Patrick Kane (1st) and Jonathon Toews (16th), Sidney Crosby (2nd) and Evgeni Malkin (6th), and Alexander Ovechkin (3rd) and Nicklas Backstrom (10th).
We don’t need to rehash the many front office failings of the Philadelphia Flyers of the 2010s, but I don’t think we would ever settle on “giving Giroux and Voráček $8M per year was a huge mistake.” Goaltending, defenders, depth scoring, a consistent head coach—any of these things would be higher on that list. Hopefully, we’ll look back on these two careers in 30 years and they won’t be defined by a lack of success.
Voráček was emblematic of these Flyers teams in many ways: he was driven but often questioned, played well but often failed, creative but often stifled. But in many ways, Voráček was also emblematic of Philadelphians and specifically Flyers fans, too. He was sarcastic, joyous, angry, frustrated, funny, playful, vocal. He wanted so badly to win and he was enraged when he didn’t; he partied hard and often took to Twitter to blast anyone from random nobodies to Inquirer columnists; he loved Bruce Springsteen.
It is my opinion that because of this messiness, this passion, this personality, that there was no better fit than Jake Voráček and the Philadelphia Flyers. Maybe it’s because hockey is fourth-billed in the city, but I don’t think Voráček ever reached the heights of fan favoritism that he deserved. Someone who just spat from the hip all the time, who engaged with fans in person and in social media, who could attempt a pass that no one else would have even thought to try and look like a mastermind once and a fool the next but never change his playing style.
Voráček played and lived in Philadelphia with a wide-open heart, allowing us all in on his joys, his thoughts, his ecstasy, and, most important, his deepest vulnerabilities. Which is one of the things so often lacking from our public understanding of professional athletes and especially hockey players. They are stoic and guarded and when they do show some personality it’s of the frat-bro jokester variety. Nobody is so unabashedly shooting back at the haters on social media because it would make them look insecure. Sure there are exceptions to all of this, it’s just that Voráček fits squarely among them. This open-heartedness made him more than just another hockey player, he reminded us that this was a man under the pads. When he was pricked, he bled; when he was tickled, he laughed; when he was wronged, he sought revenge; and when he was harmed, he faltered. To falter is human. Jake Voráček reminded us day in and day out that some hockey players are humans, too. And for that, I will keep him in my heart a while.
