Flyers Grounded in Dark Times

Midway through the 2022-2023 season and the Flyers boast an abysmal 17-23-6 record, grounded at the bottom of the league standings in 28th place. "We all knew going into this season, it was a rebuilding year for us." GM Wolf said. However it doesn't make seeing the losses pile up week to week any better. "This is an extremely tough market to sell a rebuild to, the fans don't expect anything less than making the playoffs every year, as they shouldn't. But in order to revive this franchise back to glory, this longer than anticipated rebuild is necessary. It is tough, even for me. I want to win just as much as the next Flyer faithful. But I can't flip this roster over overnight, we're forced to be patient here if we want to do this the right way."

It has been dark times in Philadelphia for quite some time, even before Wolf's tenure began, but at least when new management took over, there was a glimmer of hope, a light at the end of the tunnel if you will that wasn't there prior. The Flyers, under this management, has a direction. "Some rebuilds take longer than others, unfortunately ours here cannot be fast tracked. We didn't have the veteran assets necessary to trade in order to recoup futures. There wasn't much in the way of talent, or a prospect cupboard to speak of." Wolf admitted. But over a year now into Wolf's tenure, the narrative has changed. "When there's no building blocks in place, the only thing you can do is wait. It takes time for the draft picks to mature, to accumulate prospects." And that's what the Flyers have been doing..  accumulating picks, slowly building through the draft. "We do have some great players at the top of our line-up as well, but I don't believe in a full on tear down. Filip Forsberg and Tomas Hertl are still young enough to build around, and it's important to build a winning culture, and you can't do that if don't have those types of leaders leading the way. Without them, we'd be completely directionless. Newly acquired Forsberg and Hertl have bought in to what we are doing here and when you have your best players embracing the rebuild, it is going to be all the more rewarding when we come out on the other end of it together." 

Alas, another season will come and go in Philly this year, a season that won't be a very memorable one to write about in the TUFHL history books. But there is hope.. new prospects in the system such as Dylan Guenther and Shane Wright, as well as a plethora of heavy loaded contracts coming off the books. This off-season the Flyers will have plenty of options this time to kick things into a new gear. There will be talented reinforcements entering the Flyers ranks soon, which will introduce a new era, and a new identity to the team. Something it's lacked since as long as we can remember in the TUFHL. But soon... the Flyers will be taking flight.