perfectly said. hakstol is such a bad coach

I'm a Flyers fan. Honestly, Hakstol did some good things with some of our young guys and roster as a whole. He started putting Couturier as the top center and he broke out big, he put Provorov and Ghost together for their best years ever each, put G on the LW to boost his production and he had a career year, TK steadily grew under him, and he actually played Nolan Patrick a good bit when he was drafted, including PP time in the regular season and in the playoffs against the Penguins.

But....

He also would bench or move down other players in the line up for Andrew MacDonald who was declining so hard that when Chuck bought him out, he couldn't even get a PTO signing in the NHL pre-pandemic. And play Dale Weise on the top PK (though the team was thinner then too).

I don't really like Hak as a coach but I don't feel like he's a Babcock of terrorizing players, especially younger ones. I have no idea what they are doing with Wright and it seems like a ****ty situation for him. I will say this though. Hak basically survived in Philly as long as he did because Hextall wouldn't fire him. Hextall was a mixed bag here, but after they left it became apparent that Hakstol was basically Hextall on the bench and in the line up decisions. I know Canes fans felt Ron Francis drafted ok/good but also was weird about roster/line up deployment. So, I'm curious if maybe this is a Francis problem and Hakstol is really just the puppet/figurehead. I hope he figures it out, I personally like Wright and don't buy the "bad attitude" thing, I think its totally normal to be disappointed about how his draft status went after all the buzz which really isn't his fault as much as the media coverage. He's a kid who plays hockey and likes playing hockey, can't control those narratives and weird "character" things the boys club GMs think about.

Breaking into the league as an 18 yr old C is very hard and it has a lot more to do with faceoffs, playing away from the puck, positioning, and D responsibility. Wright just might not be ready for it right away. Honestly, I don't think he looked great in the games I was watching him.

That being said especially since he is on the first year of his ELC and doesn't require waivers there is no reason for him to be in the press box, if he isn't in the lineup and going to get in the 12-15 minutes a game range then he 100% should be 1C and 20 mins a game in the AHL. It would actually boost his morale and help him get his groove and touch back better. that is the real mistake here.

Good point here, it might not be all on Hakstol. I'm calling him out specifically because most teams seem to be, the GM makes the roster and the coach makes the lineup. But maybe it's different here. In any event, I think someone needs to step in and make something happen.

Yeah, I just figure, you get 9 free games to play him for the slide... they already played him for 5 games, might as well do the next 4. In his 5 games he on was the 4th line, anyway, so really hard to judge. His ATOI is 6 minutes. At this point you may as well get the full slide games in. I'm not too keen on the specific rules but I believe he can't play in the AHL, so he'd have to go to the OHL from what I heard. But still, anything is better than a healthy scratch at this stage of his career