I think the benching also had to do with the opponent, Toronto has a trio of highly talented, fast forwards - the Flyers play a high tempo, high risk style, which exposes lack of speed at forward - made worse by playing slow D-men like Attard, Zamula and Ginning due to injury.
Couts is a slow center and may have to move to wing at some point as the league gets faster.
PC said after a while. We also forget that Couts is 31. Separating a good, home grown player from younger players and reducing any trade value is a great business model.
You can always trade a guy, but yeah, his contract, age and performance are all things that would lower the return long before this little mini soap opera. Plus he has NMC and obviously isn't going anywhere for a few years. By then one would hope he's a third or fourth line player trying to win a Cup with the Flyers, not a third or fourth line player who has to be traded somewhere for one last chance.
Either way, nobody's going to remember this happened.
Right.
Not sure why you say his NMC is keeping him here... He's obviously not happy.
He's a valuable player and a leader. What is sitting him supposed to accomplish?
Coots has struggled big time
First 31 games, he had 9 goals and 14 assists. Good start, especially coming off the injury years.
Since roughly mid-January when he missed several games, he has not been anywhere close to the same player.
Last 33 games, 2 goals and 11 assists
Captain or not, he has played like a bottom 6 center and Torts had moved him down accordingly and then scratched him for this game. It is a one game thing to get his attention, but also send a clear signal to the rest of the team to wake up and play better.
The team overall had been scuffling with the leading talents - Coots, Konecny, Ersson, Tippet, Farabee, Frost, Sanheim - not carrying their weight. Poehling and Hathaway had been our best performers for a while which is not good. They have started to wake up the last few games, but we do not have the depth or talent level overall to not get the maximum every game.
I do not blame Torts at all for this and he has allowed Coots and his agent to vent and save face. Fine, now shut up and play better. Help lead the team to the playoffs. Torts is the ultimate prove it to me coach. The status quo had to change; the team was sliding and starting to be ok with losing again. That is not acceptable and should never be acceptable.
To be fair, the team overachieved, then lost their starting goalie and four defensemen. Not too many teams could overcome that!
Yup, but seems perfectly reasonable for Torts to still coach like the games matter. And if the main point of the season is to put future Flyers through the crucible they are still getting the full experience! Doesn't mean his decision or his process was necessarily right, but we'll see. I don't think you can see Couts is an established veteran whose own experience, process and routines are impeccable, because he just missed two seasons and has only ever been part of this flawed organization. Torts is actually coaching him. They both need to figure it out.
Ok. My opinion is that these games don't matter. Torts has managed to ■■■■ off Frost and Coots. So young and old talented players. He'll probably be gone when the Flyers will be truly competitive and he only seems to annoy players for no reason.
While things went south quickly in Vancouver, Torts stayed 6-7 years at his other stops, and in CBJ, it was an incompetent GM that drove him out of town (who was recently fired). The idea that all his players hate him, just listen to Hartnell talk about him (amusement) or Martin St Louis (requested that Torts give the speech when he was inducted into TB HOF).
Some players don't like demanding coaches, others thrive.
Torts is actually better with a young team he can push, rather than veterans set in their ways (Hayes).
The problem with Couts is he simply doesn't fit the up tempo style Torts has installed, especially with a bunch of slow D-men who can't get back quickly. A move to wing is in his future once Briere adds a couple centers who can skate.
Listen, I've been wearing a Flyers 14 since 2012. But I think Couts could have been back in the line-up last night if he and his agent had reacted to it differently.
All coaches wear out their welcome "after a while." Those are the guys who got fired after 2-3 years, and even then it's not always the smart move (certainly never is when the Flyers do it, at least in terms of the next coach never being better).
It's already pretty clear that's not going to happen here. Torts wants to finish this rebuild even if he's not on the bench for the last chapters of the story. That could mean finishing out his contract, moving upstairs after next season, or possibly even getting an extension. He's as powerful in the team office as the GM and the President.
Torts is here to develop the talent and mold them into a cohesive & effective team that hates to lose. He is trying to build the talent and culture foundation for a Flyers era of winning. Not an easy task by any measure, but one he has successfully done before as a coach in TB which is the most similar situation to the Flyers from his track record.
I agree he will likely not be here when they start making runs at the Cup (if that ever happens again) because that requires a different type of coach.
He does not annoy players for no reason - read above again for his mandate as the coach. Development of talent works in different ways for different players, but the bottom line is universal: work hard, eliminate distractions, be open to coaching, play your role in the system and support your teammates.
Torts is here to identify the players the Flyers can win & grow with and which players do not fit. Everything he says and does (with some exceptions as any human being) is focused on that mission.
Think of it as basic training for the armed forces - to build skilled and cohesive units that will perform in the field and get the job done requires filtering. If one cannot perform or chooses not to, they will be replaced by someone who can and wants to. Hockey is not combat, but winning in hockey is extremely difficult and requires total buy-in by every player and coach to even have a chance.
Coots is a veteran and should understand not only how the league works and how hard winning is, but the steep mountain the Flyers face in building this new foundation and the importance of his role in that process. He knows why Torts was hired and what the mission is - he suffered bad injuries, has earned major respect for coming back and now is one of the leaders for this team. He is inspirational and a very good player; hopefully he can help guide this group into the playoffs.
There's situational issues, Couts wasn't a problem when they had Walker, Seeler and Risto on the defense - because they could get back on defense which means if Couts was pushing action in the O-zone, he could be a half second late and they'd be in position. Now you have three rookies with below average speed and two washed up veterans in your bottom four defense, and Couts' lack of speed is more evident.
There's also a mismatch in line construction, who do you put with Couts? Briere will address this in the summer.
But all of that is besides the point. Couts has to play better, and he has to play. Those are merely reasons why he has struggled and lost ice time. They are not the reasons he got scratched. And that needs to be resolved.
He got scratched b/c they were playing two fast teams that push the pace, and Laughton is faster at C (though with his own set of limitations). Cates played 4C in limited minutes, Couts could have done so. One of the funny things is the fan perception is that Deslauriers is slow, but Edge shows his top speed to be faster than Cates, Couts or Foerster - albeit in limited minutes, but he has been effective in those minutes.
Yeah but if that was really the reason - and it may well be - it should have been discussed - privately or publicly or both.
Torts did discuss his struggles with him, and part of that was the pace of the game.
I think Couts can still play at a high level, but you have to play him with the right players around him and/or in the right role.
Mark Stone has a similar skill set, and is an elite winger.
Kopitar (top speed 21.45 v 21.47 for Couts) is still an effective center at 36, but he's playing with Byfield (23.70) and Kempe (23.53) - two fast, talented wingers.
Flyers with a very nice win against the always classless Bruins. 1-0 lead with 10 minutes to go, give up the tying goal. Then Flyers score with 6 minutes to go, give up a horrible goal a minute later while they all watched on a 2-5 break. Then with 80 seconds to go a shocking goal and as usual the Bruins try and cheap shot players at the buzzer including a guy with his stick around the back of Laughton’s neck.
