Flyers couldn't overcome absence of Timonen

IT'S AMAZING how the absence of one little guy can loom so large.

Amid the whining about their misuse and amid the more veiled criticisms of coach Craig Berube, the most startling theme on Flyers Locker Cleanout Day centered around a player who never played.

Which left the question to be begged: Had Kimmo Timonen played this season, would Berube's head be on the block?

Today's 2 p.m. press conference with first-year general manager Ron Hextall should reveal whether Berube's head will roll.

Should it?

No. Not considering the beer hand Berube was dealt.

Life-threatening blood clots kept the 40-year-old Timonen from playing a minute of his 16th season for the Flyers, which would have been his eighth as a Flyer. As soon as he was healthy, the Flyers, their season abandoned, traded him to Chicago to afford him a final chance at a Stanley Cup title.

If not for bias, it would have been Timonen's seventh season as the team's captain.

On Monday, the team's most consistent players, two of the three brightest lights for the franchise's future, lamented the lack of Timonen's voice in the dressing room.

Breakout scorer Jake Voracek and franchise goalie Steve Mason each said that the team without Timonen suffered a gaping leadership void when times were tough, and when players played badly, and when it seemed the train was coming off the tracks.

Or, pretty much all season.

Both Mason and Voracek vowed that, next season, they would be more critical, more assertive; that they would police the room themselves.

Neither offered these observations as a direct criticism of captain Claude Giroux. However, when leadership in sports is at issue it usually falls at the feet of the quarterback, the point guard, the catcher or the captain.

This was Berube's first full season as head coach; his first assigning offseason goals, his first running a training camp. Three games into the 2013-14 season he inherited from Peter Laviolette a poorly conditioned, lazy bunch without remarkable depth, whipped them into good enough shape to take the Rangers to a seventh game in the first round of the playoffs.

His reward was a 2-year contract; and, with it, R.J. Umberger, Invisible Vinny Lecavlaier . . . and no Kimmo.

That, in politest parlance, is a well-cured pile of compost.

If you cared to watch, you could see this coming.

In 2008, Timonen smothered star Alex Ovechkin when the Flyers upset the Capitals. Timonen then stifled Canadiens scorer Alex Kovalev as the Flyers upset the top-seeded Canadiens in five games. He was eloquent between and after games, a splendid representative for his new franchise, which had traded for him the previous offseason.

Timonen played through an injured shoulder suffered in the first series and played through one game in the second round after suffering a blood clot. Without him, the team collapsed against the Penguins (he played in the Game 5 finale).

Big, veteran defenseman Jason Smith was the captain that season, a one-and-done captaincy, as he left via free agency. Timonen had just turned 33, had just made his third All-Star appearance and had just signed a 6-year extension. The clever Finn seemed to be the obvious choice to replace Smith.

That is, as long as the Flyers could look past the historic NHL bias against European players; who, the stereotype ran, considered international play more important than a desperate Stanley Cup pursuit.

Well, instead of Timonen the Flyers chose rough-and-ready, 22-year-old forward Mike Richards . . . whom they traded three seasons later. They then chose defenseman Chris Pronger, a Hall of Fame lock whom they sadly lost to injury too soon. Giroux, a three-time All-Star, supplanted Pronger in 2012.

All are Canadian. The Flyers have never had a captain for a full season that is not Canadian.

"Leadership" has become clichéd; it is now fashionable to devalue it, to tally only talent. But it's funny how much leadership matters when any team underachieves. Usually, the players who underperform cry for greater leadership, better chemistry and all of those immeasurable, unquantifiable and possibly mythical characteristics.

This time, however, the two players who played best called for more intense and greater leadership, especially from themselves.

When players like this make comments like that, suddenly the intangibles become much more quantifiable; much less mythical.

None of this exonerates Berube, but all of it made his job infinitely more difficult.

True, the best coaches manage to extract better play from such players as Lecavalier and Umberger. Perhaps Berube will improve in that area if he stays. Perhaps he will do better next time if he gets fired.

Berube also had a starting goaltender who got hurt several times. The backup goalie was physically unable to handle the rigors of a starter's job.

Finally, seldom do so many players grouse about playing time and roles without merit. There was lots of that sort of grousing; there was plenty of merit for it.

Berube might have made several mistakes this season, but, to be fair, this was a situation that might have been mishandled by the most esteemed coaches; perhaps mishandled considerably worse.

There is no complete defense for retaining a coach with incomplete credentials who did not fully solve most of the problems he was presented with.

However, Berube should not serve as a scapegoat for even a majority of the blame.

Not when he had nothing with which to fill the franchise's biggest hole left by its littlest guy.

On Twitter: @inkstainedretch

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