Black Sunday: Overreaction Or Overdue?
“Black Sunday” has come and gone and even though the firing of now former head coach Ken Hitchcock wasn’t terribly surprising given the Flyers history with coaching changes, oh yeah, and that horrid 1-6-1 start to the season, I’d be lying if I didn’t say the sudden resignation of supposed general manager for life Bob Clarke didn’t absolutely floor me.
I struggled with the news initially, thinking about it through every painful moment of yet another Eagles heartbreak and I just couldn’t decide if changing both the general manager and the coach 8 games into the season are decisions that were overdue or simply a terrible over reaction.
If you think about it, the conclusion of over reaction isn’t really a difficult one to come to. The skeptic in me can’t help but think that if the Flyers had lost to Buffalo last Tuesday by, say, 3 goals instead of 8 and/or the game wasn’t broadcast on national television then everybody in the organization’s egos aren’t bruised and none of the events that unfolded Sunday morning would have happened at all.
On the flip side of said events is the question of whether or not they were, in fact, overdue.
It’s no secret that Hitchcock’s relationship with his players is strained at times, to say the least. Dating back to his days in Dallas, he has been characterized as a difficult and demanding coach. Of course, he brought a Stanley Cup to Big D and it’s amazing how a championship will allow people to overlook a coach’s supposed shortcomings. Ah but as the shine dulled from his ring, those shortcomings were brought back into the light and he was sent packing. The Cup, as we all know, didn’t make it’s way back to Broad Street and it seemed that Hitch was having increasing trouble implementing his system amongst so many young players.
As for Clarke, I’m fairly confident that I could find twice as many people who follow this team that have called for Clarke’s head than haven’t in the past decade. The general consensus has been that the game has passed Clarke by and he is out of touch with today’s high salaried players.
So which is it? Overreaction or overdue?
In my opinion, it’s actually both.
Clarke’s resignation was overdue, but I didn’t feel that way until after Sunday’s press conference. You see, I’m not one of those people who feel Clarke’s career as general manager is comparable to the character Mush in A Bronx Tale. In fact, I’d be hard pressed to come up with a truly bad trade Clarke has made for the Flyers. The only one that comes to mind is Michal Handzus for Kyle Calder and we’re only 8 games into that transaction, so in the words of Matt Damon in Dogma, “time’s gonna tell on that one.”
With all that being said, when Clarke says things like he had “lost the zest for the job dating back to the end of last season” and “I didn’t want to make the decisions anymore that a general manager needs to make” then yes, his decision to resign is overdue.
Hitchcock’s firing, on the other hand, was, in my opinion, an unabashed over reaction. Is it possible that Ed Snider’s embarrassment over the Buffalo game boiled over to where we ended up Sunday?
A humiliating defeat for the whole league to see coupled with the little birdie who whispered in Snider’s ear that the players had begun to “tune out” Hitchcock, a claim by the way the former head coach called unfair, adds up to an emphatic yes in my book.
I realize the old adage that you can’t fire the players is just about the truest statement in sports, however, a coach with Hitchcock’s pedigree probably deserved a better fate.
Regardless of my opinions, we have now reached the genesis of the Paul Holmgren/John Stevens era.
The promotion of Holmgren, Clarke’s right hand man and someone who has worked under the former GM for the last 10 years, cements the fact that the stepping down of Clarke was entirely his own doing. Unfortunately for Homer, it seems he’ll have to prove himself worthy of the general managers chair over the next 5 months in order for Mr. Snider to lift the “interim” tag from his new title.
Apparently, Stevens won’t have to worry about such things as Snider made it crystal clear that he is the head coach, period. Stevens, a very successful minor league coach who led the Phantoms to a Calder Cup championship just 2 seasons ago, is only one month into his first coaching job at the NHL level but with 11 players on the current Flyers roster who played under him with the Phantoms, Snider is banking on his familiarity to outweigh his inexperience.
Time will indeed tell whether or not these were the right moves to make, but one thing is absolutely certain, October 22, 2006 is a date that will live in Flyers infamy. That’s the day that the face of the franchise walked off into the sunset…and another coach got pushed out the door.
For the record, there was no truth to the rumor that Bill Barber was there waiting to give Hitch a ride home.
Contact Mike Bergen with questions or comments at mikeb@phillysportsline.com
Mike Bergen is the Flyers Beat writer for http://www.phillysportsline.com
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Tags: Bobby Clark, Ed Snyder, Ken Hitchcock, Philadelphia Flyers