(Stick tap to The Onion and the great DGB).  

Scene:  June 30, Flyers Headquarters, Press Conference.  In an alternate universe.

Homer:  Well, I’ve asked you all here today to discuss the events of the last week or so.  In particular, I want to deal with some rumors that I have been lying to players about my plans for the team and how I plan to structure it in the future.  I’ve decided that we all need to start with a clean slate, and there will no more lies.  From here on, you can trust me to not hold anything at all back.  I’ll give you the whole truth. So ask away.

Reporter:  So, Paul, why did you trade Carter and Richards?  And had you been planning this for a while, or did this just come up?

Homer:  We’ve been planning on trading them for 2 years or more.

Reporter (shocked): Paul, when I asked if you were planning this for “awhile” I meant for a few months.  Two years?  That was before the Cup Final in 2010? What gives? So you completely lied to Carter about him being part of the team’s future?

Homer:  (Sadly) Yes, it’s true.  I feel terrible about this.  That Cup Final really confused us all.   Our plan was in place until Boucher and Leighton played way over their heads.  Olli Jokinen!  Can’t depend even on the Rangers.  I guess especially the Rangers.

Reporter (now confused himself):  But if the run to the Cup Final interfered with your ultimate plan, what exactly was that plan?

Homer:  It evolved starting with the draft in 2006. 

Reporter: You mean when Claude Giroux was picked? 

Homer:  That’s right.  We had our man until those pesky Rangers picked him.  We were forced to pick someone whose name none of us could even pronounce. 

Reporter:   Clarke famously stumbled over Giroux’s name.

Homer: Right.  And really, that pick was completely random, a guess.  But soon, we saw how great Claude could really be.  And finally it started to dawn on us, our selection of players was entirely wrong.  We needed a different strategy.

Reporter:  You mean draft more French-speaking players like Giroux and Gagne?

Homer: No.

Reporter: Drafting more players who have strong reputation in juniors?

Homer: No.

Reporter: Relying more on your scouts to help you make the pick?

Homer: Are you kidding? Absolutely not!

Reporter:   I’m stumped.  What’s your strategy Paul?

Homer: We realized that we needed to acquire players who had names that North American English speakers could not spell and could not pronounce. 

Reporter:  Huh?

Homer:  See, it was genius.  We had no idea who this Giroux guy was, just grabbed some guy off the street, and wham-o!  NHL superstar!  And none of us, management, fans, reporters, none of us could spell his name, and for awhile we didn’t know how to pronounce it either.  I mean, what do you do with that X anyway?   It’s completely redundant (Although, I’ve noticed a serious increase in the number of fans we seem to have in Louisiana,  the Geaux Flyers Club).  So, we created our own secret formula:  get rid of as many players whose names you can pronounce as you can and add players who frustrate your paper’s copy editors. 

Reporter (wildly checking his phone to see if he can halt whatever version of the paper is currently being planned to wait for this story):  This is um, interesting.  Can you explain how you went about this?

Homer:  Well, the first big test was the draft of 2008.  We knew what we had in Claude.  And we found out we were going to get the number 2 pick in the draft.  We were very nervous about this.  It was very tense in the war room.  But, finally, thankfully, the Hawks gave us a big favor, and drafted Patrick Kane!

Reporter: Excuse me?

Homer: So we could draft James van Riemsdyk! Now, we did not want to get into any prejudices about anyone or any country or ethnic group.  So here was van Riemsdyk, from right up the road here in Jersey, and here was someone no one had any hope for ever spelling his name right!  And we are so proud of how JVR is turning out!   I still don’t know whether the “v” is capitalized or not. 

Reporter: (impatiently) So what does this have to do with Carter and Richards?

Homer: Well, if we were going to implement this strategy, we can’t keep someone like Carter…I mean, there was a President named Carter (wasn’t there??).  And almost all of us have had some co-worker or acquaintance named Richards.  So everybody knows how to spell those names.  We knew we would eventually have to get rid of them.

Reporter: But you did not trade them right away?

Homer:  No, we had to do some interim trading and rearranging of the roster.   You know, getting players like Leino, Versteeg, calling up Gustafsson (with those 2 Ss).  And our favorite undrafted free agent acquisition, Mike Testwuide!

Reporter: Hmmmm…so Snider’s decree that you get Bryzgalov was based on his unusual name?

Homer:  No, no, of course not.   I did mess up in choosing a goalie at first…I mean, who knew that “emery” was the right way to spell “emery board” and that that  university in Atlanta got it wrong! What a disaster.  But by last year, we had two promising players in goal…really, shouldn’t his name really be pronounced “Butcher”?  I mean, he’s from Rhode Island, that’s what you’d expect he would be called there.  And then that Bob-something guy.    But don’t get me wrong.  Ed wanted an upgrade.  Most of the fans just called them “Bob” and “Boosh” and didn’t bother spelling or pronouncing their real names anymore.  It was time for a change.  Ed just didn’t say I had to sign Bryzgalov in particular.  Of course there was one deal that he ordered over my objections.

Reporter:  Really, Paul.  Want to come clean on that one?

Homer:  Getting Pronger.

Reporter:  What?  You’re saying that you lied about wanting Pronger?

Homer:  Why would I want to trade Sbisa and Lupul for that guy?  Fantastically complicated names.  I never did learn how to pronounce either of their names.  I mean, Pronger’s not a typical name but it’s pretty easy to spell for most people.  But Chris has really been great, better than I anticipated (thanks Ed!), and as a result, we focused on getting bapmuns.

Reporter: Wait, what? “Bapmuns?”

Homer:  Right, sorry.  That’s our internal acronym/numeric developed by our crack advanced statistics guys.  “Best Available Player * Most Unusual Name.”  You want to maximize that numeric in all transactions.   There is no one else like Pronger, so his number is high without an unusual name.  Of course, if we could, forget "Bing" Crosby, we’d go after Stamkos in a heartbeat.

Reporter:  OK, I can’t miss deadline on this. Paul, cut to the chase.  Tell me about the Carter and Richards trades.

Homer:  Yes, great trades. .  It was hard turning down that trade for Evander Kane that Atlanta, I mean Winnipeg, offered us – did you catch that funny piece where they said that THEY turned down that deal?  Ha! –but we’re sure glad, given the low BAPMUN created by his last name, that we did.  Because we love Schenn.  I still don’t know if his name is pronounced “Shane” or “Shen” or even “Sheen” but whichever way it is it will be sure to be misspelled and mispronounced by thousands of fans!  Simmonds was just a throw-in, although having that “d” gave him a bit of panache. 

Reporter:  Uh-huh.  So what happened with Carter?

Homer (eyes lighting up):  We really cleaned up on that one, huh!  We knew that Voracek would be an impossible name, with those weird accents or umlauts or whatever they are, I don’t even know where those things are on my keyboard. His first name’s no picnic either.  But the real surprise was Couturier dropping to us.  What a find!  We can expect years of mispronouncing and misspelling on that one.  Hall of Fame BAPMUN credentials!  And then we found Noebels and Suellentrop, really a great day in Flyers history! 

Reporter:  Last question, Homer.  What can we expect in the future?

Homer:  Well, our stats guys had me read that great piece by Todd the Fox the other day – have you seen it yet? – where he assesses our need for a shutdown UFA center.  So I’m going to try to see what I can do to get Handzus or Goc.   But first, I have to figure out a way to package Read and Cousins for a future draft choice – after all, those draft choices have always been my first priority.

Clearly, after the Boston series, most of us felt, “Hmmm, something needs to be fixed”.  The trick part, was, what?  I was originally going to post a fanpost looking at the possible changes the Flyers might make, and how the cap made the options the Flyers had mutually exclusive.  I was actually thinking about as many as 5 different posts looking at

(1) Injuries

(2) Goaltending

(3) Power-play performance

(4) Exhaustion

(5) Leadership

Unfortunately, work interfered with my doing these fanposts right after the playoffs.  But some of the posts were more or less going to write themselves.  The injuries one would have been the easiest.  If Pronger, Versteeg and others were hurt, it would explain a lot.  But that is also the one that is the copout, since no team is fully “healthy” going into the playoffs.  That also meant not many changes in 2011-12, except at worst maybe losing one of Leino, Versteeg, Carle, or Hartnell if there were cap issues.  Goaltending would not have been difficult to discuss; in fact, several others have done the analysis that I would have relied on, that goaltending was not as significant a problem as it appeared.  Plus, goaltending dollars would interfere with how much change to the roster needed to be made to fit an expensive goalie in the cap.  So I likely would have recommended a modest change at best (like Nabokov).  Two of the more difficult posts ones were related, since I believe the power-play problems and the exhaustion were directly related to Laviolette’s style of coaching.  I, like many others, became very disenchanted with Lavi during these playoffs.  If the players weren’t exhausted, and there was a better power-play scheme, that might have fixed a good deal of the malaise it appeared the Flyers were in.   But to quantify this, or to determine a fix, or to suggest a coach firing the year after a Cup Final, well, that would require significant analysis and work to avoid being rightly flamed. 

But the one that bugged me, and the one that I truly had done the least thinking about, because I wasn’t sure of a solution, but which in turn would require the most justification, was the leadership one.  Now, this is interesting to me in part because I not only teach strategy, but also leadership-related courses. But for me, strategy is a lot easier to teach than leadership, since leadership theory is kinda fuzzy.  I can tell you pretty specifically how a firm can gain competitive advantage, but I’m a lot less sure of the best way you can develop leaders.  In many ways, leadership is something that you “know when you see it.” 

And in Mike Richards’s case, I couldn’t see it.  Now, that might not have been a problem.  I’m a fan, I have no idea what happens behind the scenes.  There are many leaders who are relatively quiet like Mike but who are strong leaders in private (although the academics would tell you leaders generally are strong communicators).  But it’s also true that great leaders demonstrate their skill by strong organizational performance.  And beyond all the stupid Center City rumors, I saw a team melt down multiple times under different coaches with Mike Richards wearing the C.  Now, in hockey, the captainship actually means something.  Maybe not as much as we fans think, but it isn’t zero either.  When Pronger went down in 2011, the team faltered.   That is an observable fact in wins and losses.  But I was much more upset at the performance of the team in 2009.  The collapse in the last few weeks, followed by the dismal inconsistency against the Penguins was very distressing.  I believe Holmgren would have been fired, and rightly so, if Olli Jokinen scores in the shootout.  Most of us forget that the second half of 2010 was no picnic either, after trying to recover from a sickening start to the season. 

The performance in Spring 2011 was simply more of the same.  There starts to be a question about which performance is on the regression line and which is the outlier. But I don’t know whether Homer (and Snider) were going to continue to tolerate that inconsistency.  You know, if the team just ground out every game like Nashville, with relatively little talent, maybe that would be ok.  But instead, the team showed flashes of real brilliance, and flashes of mediocrity, never more evident in the bizarre mediocrity of the power play.  With the salary nudged against the cap. 

Maybe Mike’s leadership wasn’t the cause.  But something had to change.  Snider ordered a goalie.  Apparently, Homer decided it was more than that.  Sending out Versteeg and not signing Leino might have made Bryz possible.  Or just sending out Carter as a cap casualty.   But I think, at a minimum, Richards would have been stripped of the C this coming year.  I mentioned this in at least one thread earlier in May sometime.  That is something that they could do as a wake-up call.

But now, if you strip Richards of the C, you also wake up Comcast/Snider.  Richards was signed to a contract that was appropriate in salary amount, but massive in length.  And there is a reason for this:  management thought that Richards brought leadership skills similar to Clarke’s.  I’m guessing that they repented of this belief.  Now, that does NOT mean that you automatically ship out Richards.  But it suddenly means that you have an asset that might be deterioriating in value, particularly as his contract reaches NMC status next year.  And suddenly, it means that he is no longer untouchable.  And it also means that you start shopping him, just like you would ANY player at this time of year (even Stamkos, although it might take Pittsburgh offering Crosby to convince Stevie Y to trade him).  

And if you get a market-value trade, you have to consider it.

The Flyers traded Bernie Parent.  They had to.  It rocked my world.  But Bernie learned, and was ready for the next level when he came back (he was very, very different in 1974 than in 1971).  I’m not saying Richards will be back.  I am saying, that, like Parent in 1971, his performance disappointed management in a way that forced the Unthinkable Trade. 

David Hale stole some of my thunder as I've been thinking about this and noticing a pattern for awhile,  But I think a bit further breakdown of the current Phils power situation might be useful.  I think it is especially important to understand why the current hitting situation "feels" so bad.   FYI, I stink at tables, even though I have to do these at work, so sorry about the formatting (otherwise it will REALLY feel like work)

My basic thesis is that it is NOT OBP per se that is the problem, but SLG.  Many Phils are close to their career average OBP over the years.  Some of this is transferred from hits to bases on balls (and so for some, maybe like Cholly,  it thus seems like they "aren't hitting").  Conversely, SLG% has crashed.

Here are some comparisons, which I'll break down into 3 categories.

All of the following use the following numbers:

HItter    OBP2011  SLG 2011  OBPCareer  SLGCareer

(1) Pretty close to career averages:

Polanco .360 .394 .347 .411

Victorino .345 .468 .343 .431

Brown .319 .422 .289 .389 (SSS)

 Note that I've deliberately avoided the Cerberus types here.  Most of them have terrible SLG anyway.  Here's one example:

 Sardinha .436 .276 .242 .270

 While we are happy about his unsustainable walk rate, he is just as bad as usual in SLG. 

 (2) Significantly down from career averages (this is most of the team):

 First group:  continued downward trajectory

 Rollins .336 .365 .329 .433

Howard .329 .469 .369 .565

 Rollins and Howard SLG continues a multi-year trend of decline.  They may or may not get better.  Rollins OBP is actually almost exactly at his career level.

 Second group:  might get better as the year goes on

 Utley.347 .328 .380 .511

Ruiz .360 .348 .354 .392

Ibanez .301 .421 .345 .474

  I predict Utley's numbers will be better very soon (well, actually, after yesterday's game, they already are. :-)) Some of you might think Ibanez is misplaced, that he belongs with Rollins and Utley.  But if he follows May with a decent June, and then simply repeats the pattern in the second half of the season he started in the first (one horrible month, one great month, one ok month), he'll actually be close to career numbers.  His SLG dropoff is also not as pronounced as some of the others

 Third group:  I have no idea

 Gload .293 .295 .327 .411

Francisco .333 .374 .330 .436

Mayberry .316 .365 .300 .434

 Gload is hurt, Mayberry is SSS.  But Francisco is the intriguing one.  Almost exactly the same OBP, but much less power.  Will this continue? 

 (3) Much better SLG than last year. 

 Yes, there is one member of this group....wait for him.....

Hamels .290 .333 .194 .202

 OK, he's a ringer.  But it shows how many players are having bad SLG years, and basically no one among the regulars is having a significantly above-average SLG year, while several are having close-to-average OBP years. 

 So, some of you are saying, well, we knew this, after all, all of MLB is down for power.

 UH, NOT QUITE. 

 There is a reason that we subjectively perceive that there is a power outage.  And that is because, relatively, there is.  Moreover, very large percentage of runs in the last few years have come from SLG, more specifically the HR.  And now, especially relatively, this is down.  A LOT. 

 Below, per Yahoo, I have the MLB team rankings for the Phils for runs, doubles, triples and homers since 2006.

 (FYI, all of you true stat freaks can consider whether we can do some sort of Wilcoxon signed-rank or other non-parametric analysis on this). 

 Runs-2B-3B-HR

2006:  4-T18-T7-4

2007:  2-T7-3-2

2008:   T8-18-7-2

2009: 4-5-T11-2

2010: 7-T12-T6-9

2011:  T16-27-T11-18

 What you'll notice immediately is that HRs are strongly correlated with runs for the Phils, and not so much other SLG sub-categories.  The very best power and run combo year was the first playoff year, 2007.  And of course, I remember all of the comebacks that year, and power fireworks.  That memory is apparently accurate, at least relative to other teams.  Conversely, run production relative to the competition was significantly down in 2008 from 2007 (thanks, BL) but HRs were still much more prevalent for the Phils than for the other teams.  

 This power/scoring display (which the broadcasters attributed to our JOAB) continued in 2009, but started falling off in 2010.  Now, you can attribute this to injuries, aging, or whatever.  But the real shock to the emotional system as a fan happened this year.

 Let me help parse this out....from 4th in runs scored, with many of those coming from HRs (2nd rank) in 2009 to16th in runs and 18th in HRs in 2011.  This means, on average, *the opposition has more runs and more HRs than the Phils do*.  Wow.  Now, I don't know if there is an MLB power reduction effect, but the relative effect is far greater for the Phils.  It feels more boring. Adding to the SLG slump the Phils are 27th in doubles!  Ewwww (recall that KC, Pittsburgh, San Diego and Seattle are still in the league). 

 Rather than a party with lots of extra-base hits, especially HRs, and players flying around the bases, the Phils have been largely a station-to-station team.  That's not been their MO.  I had already planned this fanpost when I saw Utley double in two, then later HR on Saturday.  Now, that's Phillies baseball.  It will be interesting to see how many others pick up the pace, relative to their peers, the rest of the season.

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As a Flyers fan, I am now coveting your GM.  Homer the GM has made another dubious move in trading for the rights to Bryzgalov when there is no possibility of getting him under the cap and having 20 players on the roster as the 2011-12 roster is currently constructed. 

What I would like to know is if you Preds fans believe that the Preds would consider taking Scott off the Flyers hands, for, say, a 2nd or 3rd round draft choice.  His cap hit is now higher than his salary. 

I know several of you were all for trading him for Legwand straight up, but that's now impossible. 

Thanks for your input.

I mentioned in an earlier fanpost on the Predators acquiring Mike Underwood (sic) that sometimes their marketing department has "other agenda."  Well, since I go to a couple of games a year, the Preds send me missives in my e-mail from time to time.  While Eric G and Blake's (or for that matter Wellwood's) AHL experiences are not enormously different, the spin is different, I'd say.  Here is the e-mail post (and yes, it was this large in my e-mail as well). 

And Geoff doubted my assessment that Geoffrion (and now perhaps joined by Fisher-Underwood) was the "chosen one" (apologies to Weber).

BRENTWOOD, TN'S BLAKE GEOFFRION SET TO MAKE NHL DEBUT ON SATURDAY Nashville, Tenn. (February 25, 2011) – Nashville Predators President of Hockey Operations/General Manager David Poile announced today that the club has recalled forwards Blake Geoffrion (BLAYK JEHF-ree-ohn) and Matt Halischuk (mat HUH-lihs-chuhk) from Milwaukee (AHL).

Yesterday, we debated the relationship of ESPN, Disney and the NHL.  Today, as I flip between CNBC, ESPN News and BSH, I am watching Jeff Immelt of GE discuss wind turbines and auto battery chargers for the CNBC audience.  However, it is likely that he won’t be as much a star at CNBC for long, since it’s rumored that the DOJ and FCC are about to approve the Comcast/NBC Universal merger (purchase from GE).  I think this will have several impacts for NHL Fans. 

First, Versus will likely be put into the NBC Universal business unit, and I think it will be rebranded (remember OLN?) as S-NBC or the “NBC Sports Channel”.  Comcast would then go after ESPN with a vengence.    S-NBC would have a much broader appeal to the average sportsfan, like ESPN, with the exception that the NHL would have much more prominence on S-NBC than it currently does on ESPN.  It is likely that coverage between CSN, S-NBC and NBC would be much more seamless, like ESPN/ABC at Disney. 

Overall, for those of you still in Philly, the transition probably won’t be significant, with the possible exception of better production values in S-NBC broadcasts (sorry, can’t help you with the commentators).

For those of us expatriates, and other out-of-town Flyers fans, there might be more significant changes.  Comcast is likely to push for basic cable placement of S-NBC on a wider variety of carriers (right now, on my system, Versus is premium; recall the wars NFL Network had with Time Warner and others).  The leverage they’d have is that S-NBC would likely be bundled with the very profitable CNBC, as well as MSNBC, Bravo and other channels.  This of course might result in higher cable rates overall.    Off-topic, Comcast’s opposition to net neutrality may be consternating to those of us in favor of that.  In any case, Comcast has never been known to “give away content”. 

For all of us, net net, it is probably good news in that the NHL might finally get some serious coverage and cross-business-unit publicity to regain mindshare.  We can expect more Darren Rovell stories on Chris Pronger and Patrick Kane to cleanse us from all the LeBron-style hype. 

(Apologies in advance for any protocol or grammar glitches, this is my first fanpost).