Bob Clarke took a shot at the tankers of the NHL in a Tuesday article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, singling out the Pittsburgh Penguins in particular. But really, he’s going after all teams who … well, let’s just say “win the wrong way.”
“We’ve been to the Finals so many times and played so good and so hard and didn’t quite get it done,” said Clarke, the Flyers‘ senior vice president. “It pisses me off that teams try to lose continually to come up with the Crosbys . . . and Malkins” in the draft. … “The Flyers have never intentionally tried to lose. That would put a foul taste in my mouth,” Clarke said. “Who wants to be a part of any organization like that? I wouldn’t want to be.”
This isn’t a new sentiment by any stretch of the imagination. This has been a common refrain among many Flyers fans for years — that even without a Stanley Cup in 40 years, the Flyers are constantly successful and are always trying to win a right way, not the way of the Penguins last decade or Oilers, Sabres and Coyotes today.
It holds true, too. The reality is that the Flyers’ 40 year Cup drought is more bad luck than anything else — running up against an Oilers dynasty in the 1980s, or a Red Wings quasi-dynasty in the 1990s, or what’s quickly becoming the cap-era equivalent of a dynasty in the Chicago Blackhawks this decade.
Despite that, this team has always had success.
The Flyers have qualified for the Conference Finals more than any other team besides Chicago since the 1960s expansion — and they’ve done it with more consistency over time than anybody else, as well. In a nutshell, aside from a few off years here and there, they’ve basically always been good. It also applies to the regular season, where the Flyers have the second-best overall points percentage in NHL history, behind only Montreal.
Clarke’s general thought holds true here, but it’s also easy to see the flip side. Would you rather see a team tank for a few years and win a Cup afterwards, or would you rather be competitive year-in, year-out and fail to win a Cup? I think we all know the consensus on that.
Hopefully, the Flyers are falling somewhere in the middle right now. After gunning for it nearly every season for 40 years and coming up ever so damn short so many times, the Flyers aren’t exactly doing that right now. Nobody realistically thinks that this team is a Cup contender right now, and they may not be for several years. But they don’t believe they need to bottom out before rising again, either.
They’re being patient with a process that will allow them to build through the draft and, if all goes to plan, build a team and a system that can sustain itself over the long haul. But they aren’t tanking, either — their process isn’t the same as the Oilers or Sabres, or even the NBA team that shares their building.
We can all agree that tanking sucks, and we can be proud that the Flyers have never done it. Hopefully it’s not the only way to build a Cup winner in this era.
