Chuck Fletcher wanted a track record. And, as long as he was at it, Alain Vigneault’s fast track to a Stanley Cup final in his first season coaching the Rangers looked inviting to the Flyers general manager too. So never mind the excellent response interim Scott Gordon got from a Flyers team that was dead in the water in mid-season 2018-19, $5 million a year for five went to the guy with 1216 NHL games and 11 playoff teams.

A million of it will be for improving the special teams, the next million for figuring out how to get Shayne Gostisbehere to get it, and another million to find out whatever became of Ivan Provorov. The remainder is to bring along Carter Hart, who, after practically inspiring a cult in his successful debut last season, turns out very much in need of being brought along.

In the last two starts the kid hasn’t stopped anything, including fan board gripes that the coach is using the same darts and board as Dave Hakstol in deciding which goalie starts the next contest. Never mind the Flyers won three straight with Brian Elliott. What kind of an idiot did not use Hart in one of those, where he surely would have been better than in the contest he got yanked? Then they would have won all four!

Angry town, gotten angrier every year without a playoff series win since 2012. The Ron Hextall days of slowwwwwww cooking are over, thank you very much Hexy for drafting well enough to make a deep playoff run finally conceivable. The problem, however, is that the two old pros added to the defense and the experienced, second line center brought in with no expense or cap room spared aren’t going to make any appreciable impact this season if Hart goes through what practically every impressive kid goalie historically has in Year Two, necessitating 55 starts from 34-year-old Brian Elliott.

The arrow is pointing up for the franchise. Claude Giroux still has his A game and Sean Couturier has become almost a perfect player. There are a lot of Hextall draftees getting better by the year and more on the way, while all the dead weight he collected trying to keep the Flyers respectable during his process has been blessedly purged.

So are they a playoff team? Still not a playoff team? What we know is that in long stretches when the Flyers have had stable goaltending – in 2017-18 until Elliott broke down in late February and last year after Hart was reluctantly called up–the Flyers were winning at a playoff-qualification pace. When they had to go through eight goalies before Christmas, duh they were not.

The other upgrades-Matt Niskanen, Justin Braun, and Kevin Hayes–as well as he has played so far–are balance additions, not difference makers. Maybe Joel Farabee will be, but let’s not get carried away too soon, which the fans already have done with Hart because that’s what fans do.

Has management too? Fletcher hasn’t declared Hart a Hall of Famer but bringing back a goalie who shouldn’t be pushed past 40 games tells you something about the GM’s immediate expectations for the kid. Fletcher traded for Cam Talbot at the trading deadline with a plan to use an early window to sign him, but the guy wanted a chance to compete for a No.1 job, so that didn’t work out. Elliott, whose unavailability for more than 23 starts a year ago was the genesis of the eight-goalie mess, took a one-year deal to come back with the expectation of playing. . . how many games?

Not a problem if a 21-year-old continues to perform beyond his years but like so many instant sensations before him, Hart has gone off his game, and off his feet, flopping, searching.

Maybe it’s just a bad two weeks. Hart started slowly at Lehigh Valley last year and got it back together pretty quickly, but it’s a lot harder up here than down there and, having seen plenty of crises of confidence through the years, this looks like the beginning of another one to us. So hold those declarationgs of an end to Flyers goalie woes. hey still have to get through this year.

Goaltending Coach Kim Dillabaugh—never met the gentleman in the four seasons he has been on the staff cause the Flyers won’t let us talk to the assistants–has his work cut out for him, no reflection on Hart’s viability as the franchise’s long-term answer. He is a talented, cheery, kid with a good work ethic, destined to be very good. His fundamentals are way off now, though, classic signs of doubt, and he has to learn how to handle failure..

To a degree, so does Vigneault, who in Vancouver was blessed with Roberto Luongo and in New York with Henrik Lundqvist, leaving the coach’s only job in goaltending care picking the right contests each season to give them a rest. You have to go all the way back to Vigneault’s Montreal days of Jeff Hackett, Jocelyn Thibault and Jose Theodore for a time this coach didn’t have a clear 60-game goalie. Protecting Hart while developing him is a challenge.

Elliot has now given up 10 goals in his last two starts, more a reflection of what is going on in front of him than anything, Considering that, plus, Hart's last two starts, it was clear Vigneault was not anxious to make a fast switch in any attempt to stay in the Pittssburgh game, waiting until it was a clear mop-up job to go to the kid in the third period.

All the Corsi and advanced numbers suggesting the Flyers have played better than their record have become irrelelvant after consecutive horrndous road performances against division opponents. On the brighter side, 5-5-1, hasn't buried a team that has been looking up much bigger November deficits than this one for a decade. The power play has clicked, the penalty killing is much improved. But the defensive zone play, good in most of the wins, porous at Calgary, Edmonton and then even worse in the last two clunker, has been inadequate, which brings us to the perplexing case of Provorov, who was well on his way to becoming another Duncan Keith until last season, when he suddenly became as average as average can be.

Any presumption that stalled negotiations for his first big contract were on his mind is proving false. Provorov has obtained a considerable deal and, in all his relief, his game still hasn’t picked up. At the top of a complete package was his brain for the game, but it appears shut down, his decisions mundane. If other things go right, the Flyers could make the playoffs with their anchor defenseman playing like this, but becoming an elite team will a require a much more dominant version.

This is a reason Vigneault is being paid the big bucks. Another is the tricky machinations of preserving Elliott while nurturing Hart in a year at the back end of Giroux’s prime, when the pressure is on to make the Flyers the Flyers again sooner rather than later. The coach is going to have to prove he is worth his pretty pennies.

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