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NHL Notebook: Philadelphia Flyers fire GM and president of hockey operations Chuck Fletcher and Minnesota Wild star Kirill Kaprizov out three-to-four weeks

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Zach Laing
1 year ago
The Philadelphia Flyers made a major shake-up on Friday firing general manager and president of hockey operations Chuck Fletcher.
Hired on Dec. 4, 2018, Fletcher has spent the last four and a half seasons at the helm of the Flyers as the team has sputtered through the ranks. They only made the playoffs once during his tenure there losing in the 2019-20 second round to the New York Islanders in seven games.
On Friday’s edition of The Daily Faceoff Show, Tyler Yaremchuk and Steven Ellis wrote about the move:
Yaremchuk: Earlier this morning the Philadelphia Flyers made the announcement that Chuck Fletcher is gone as GM of the team. He was hired back in 2018 and there is a laundry list of errors and fumbles in my opinion. We’re going to break them all down to kick this thing off. You look at the trades he made, and none of them stand out as overwhelmingly positive. You got Ryan Ellis for Nolan Patrick, which didn’t really work out, attaching a second-round pick to get rid of Shayne Gostisbehere and he turned his career around as soon as he left Philadelphia, giving up a first and a second-round pick with Robert Hagg for Rasmus Ristolainen, well that one didn’t work out either. There just was never really a situation where it felt like Fletcher had this team on the right track Steven.
Ellis: He was just kind of the beacon of mediocrity. Obviously, it wasn’t just the trade deadline, it is interesting that they fired him basically a week after a very unsuccessful trade deadline. They couldn’t get anything for James van Riemsdyk and there were reports that they were looking for just a third or fourth-round pick and you’re telling me you couldn’t get that for JVR? I don’t get that. This is a group where you look back a couple of years ago at the playoff run in the bubble and I thought maybe there were some signs that the team could take some next steps and see what they could do. They just were never able to do that with the talent they have and I think this has got to be one of the most underachieving teams based on the talent level.
It doesn’t seem to matter what they did or what they were doing, it just wasn’t working out and he wasn’t doing enough to address the team. They’ve got a mediocre prospect pool, you look at their on-ice product and it seems everyone is underwhelming and it doesn’t matter who the coach is. It’s a situation where I’m not surprised they made the change. It’s good that they’ll be starting off fresh heading into the draft and into the summer but man, that was just a ticking time bomb after last week and he just didn’t do anything at the deadline. There were quotes that came out saying he was using an app to help make trades and you know people were making jokes that he was playing NHL 23 to figure this out and some of the moves he made, I just don’t get it. It’s a shame that Ellis didn’t work out, he’s a good player and it made a lot of sense, but a terrible era for the Flyers.
Yaremchuk: Yeah and it really feels like this had been coming for a while when you consider how many moves were fumbled by him in this Flyers front office and we rattled off some. You look at some of the contracts now in that system, those might be a little bit difficult to get rid of now.

Kappy out up to a month

The Minnesota Wild will be without star winger Kirill Kaprizov for up to the next month. He suffered a lower-body injury on Wednesday night when hulking Winnipeg Jets defenceman Logan Stanley… well… fell on him.
Here’s some of what Daily Faceoff’s Naftali Clinton wrote about the injury:
The news of this injury is a big blow to the Wild. Kaprizov has been their superstar player for the last three seasons and is currently leading the team in points. Through 65 games this year, he has 39 goals and 74 points, or a 49-goal, 93-point pace.
The Wild sit in second place in the Central Division, tied in points with the first-place Dallas Stars. According to MoneyPuck.com, they have a 96.7% chance of making the playoffs this year. They are 12 points ahead of the fourth-place team in their division, the Nashville Predators.
Fortunately for the Wild, this injury takes place at a point in the season where the team has already put themselves in a great position to make the playoffs. However, other players in the lineup will have to step up their game during Kaprizov’s absence.
The Wild play 14 games over the next month and it is important that they don’t give any opportunity for teams below them in the standings to make up ground on them.
In his NHL career, Kaprizov has played 201 games and has scored 113 goals and 233 points in that span, along with a +43 rating.

Zach Laing is the Nation Network’s news director and senior columnist. He can be followed on Twitter at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach@oilersnation.com.

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