Frequent Flyer #304 "Blood Pact"

0:00Checked at 3.45 traffic 2 miles, final without the way. Cross runway 30 left, runway 30 right, clear for takeoff. OK, cross 30 left, clear for takeoff, 30. Yeah, they just don't know what they're fucking doing. And God, let's swing to the media for a second here. Because they're Russ Joy, that shithead. Put out a tweet that I was going to reply to it on Twitter than realized it would have been like nine tweets long, because I could just rant and rave about this topic for fucking ever right now. They said, wild to watch people constantly go

1:01after flyers, writers every day. It feels like it's ramped up this season. Fair or unfair. Now, that is fucking objectively funny coming from somebody who is literally caching paychecks from the team and whose partner on his shitty podcast is one of the biggest sellouts in the gimmick land right now amongst flyers writers. Like, people go after the beats right now because every last one of them, at least a vast, vast majority of them, is totally ridiculous. Kevin Kurtz is a fucking gimmick. San Felipe was a gimmick. Those guys aren't even fucking team paid. It was one thing when it's like Mertitis and Meltzer, like the two people that are caching checks from the team to go out there and post your pro state propaganda. OK, fine, whatever. And then Brear and Jones take over and their BFFs with Snow the Goldies, so they get them under contract. And then they do, you have weirdos, like Kevin Kurtz that doesn't seem to know what's going on

2:03in the daily basis around him. And Charlie dips back into this every now and again. This stuff that they try and tell us is either so painfully stupid or easily debunkable. And you're trying to weave this shit to a fan base that is tired of being lied to over the last 15 years. Like, people aren't taking this shit anymore. And like, listen, I've talked about Sean Coit in the past. I have personal experiences dealing with the front office, even though I wasn't even credentialed at the time. Like, I know that guy tried to get me to do and he had no jurisdiction over me. I can only imagine what they fucking say to these people that they do have jurisdiction over. You know, it's a PR machine that loves to intimidate. And nobody's got a fucking spine to stand up to these people. You know, I often talk about the fact that, you know, Briar is a politician because I think he fucking is. I think that most of the past few regimes are, I fucking hate politics. I hate it because I hate and people lie directly

3:04to my fucking face. And that's all politics is, especially this goddamn day on age, that's all it is anymore. And I hate that shit. And that's all the fucking flyers do here. That's all this goddamn press box does anymore. Oh, the flyers have been rebuilding all along. Oh, Matt V. Mitchkov sucks and Sean Cateria is the best. All these goddamn cherry picks, oh, I shone Cateria is so good. Oh, the flyers are rebuilding. Everything's great right now. I can watch this fucking team and come to the conclusion that nothing's great right now. That nothing has been great for a long fucking time. That everything's bullshit. This, you're just feeding everybody bullshit. And the only difference between now and the past everyone's tired. You, we've gone full circle here. We've, everyone loved Briar. Now they're fucking pissed off with him. Because you're burning more and more of your bridges here. And it just so happens that so many of these fucking stupid journalists, journalists quote unquote, I even hate using that term in a reference to most of these people. They're just a bunch of bunch of bullshit to sit here

4:04and be like, man, why does everybody hate us these days? It should be obvious why everyone hates you these days. Because you're a bunch of fucking shills whether you're getting paid or not. Nobody's doing their jobs to question the front office about fucking anything. And Charlie's a big proponent doing this one. He goes, well, I don't think it's important to talk about topic X right now, no matter how important that topic X is. Where the fuck has Oliver Bonk been for the last four months? Well, I don't think it's important to talk about that right now. What do you mean you're top prospect? You shouldn't have been talking about it. Ain't the lip. Oh, I don't think it's important to talk about. We're talking about this right now. Fuck you. It is. You're a journalist. You're supposed to be digging for this shit. I realize it's 2026 and journalism is dead and sports journalism is fucking beyond dead. It's your job, not just a fucking coddle this team, not to fucking caress the cock and both balls of rot and retake it in Danny Brewer. I don't need that shit. I don't need you to tell me how great this fucking team is

5:05right now when they're out of fucking gigantic as losing streak. It's just embarrassing fucking fashion. They're losing these games. Stop doing that. Tell me what needs to, like there's investigative journalists. Tell me dig into it. Fucking press Danny Brewer at these midseason pressers instead of just, hi, Danny, how you doing today? Fuck you. Give me an answer. I hate this shit. Why does everybody hate us? Why does everyone hate us? Open your fucking eyes, pal. It's painfully obvious why everyone's turning on the media right now. Remember three fucking months ago when San Felipe and Kevin Kurtz went on their big fucking, how stupid the fans are when Sean Cotari and Matt V. Mitchkov had their feud. Boy, I can't imagine why everybody hates you. Because you made it painfully clear that you think everyone's fucking stupid. All those cutters go to you. It was Kevin Hase's fault. Fuck you. The fact that anybody bought that was bullshit. You lied directly to our faces to cover the asses

6:09for the guy who's signing your paychecks. Why does everybody hate us? Why does everyone go after flyers, beatwriters? Because you're a bunch of fucking pussy-ass bitches who don't do your jobs. That's why. Plain and civil. I've never seen like other team like beat reporters be so active against others. Yeah. Online like it is just this extreme level of activism to try to squash and weed out and stop and prevent people from having theories about the flyers. There's definitely a push like this year. Well, yeah, yeah, this whole season, there's been an unusual amount of pushing from basically all of them. Not the people who work for the inquire, the two young women, I don't see that. Jordan Holland, the inquire chicks, I think are the only ones that don't cause waves most of the time.

7:10Well, Jordan does it only. He doesn't really respond. He'll gas the line. He'll push it out, but he doesn't argue with people. Yeah, he doesn't respond really to anything. And he just, you know, but he still has that mentality and he's posting things to get a response out of people. That's for sure. But the others are like really extremely active. I just have never seen that. And like, you know, the rest of us got to go to work. We're not sitting there, twiddling our fucking thumbs all day, waiting around. And like these guys get paid to go sit in press boxes and watch games. And, you know, like they can sit there. And I guess I always kind of wonder what they did during the day. It was now there. I was just arguing with people and just trying to see what's on Twitter and get paid to people. I guess I just can't imagine, you know, doing that and taking it to the extent that a lot of them have. It's just really, it's unbelievable, really. I mean, at some point as well, you know, there were some things, you know, Kevin said in his articles, and I think Dan Silver had pointed it out last week

8:12or the week before about, you know, the criticism of Michkoff was just way over the top. It was the editorialization was absurd. It's so fucking petty, so unprofessional. And like, if you're like, who is the editor of this stuff? Like you like it fired for that stuff, you know, people that read this before it gets printed, you know, back in the day, you couldn't say shit like that. Like you were, like you'd be viewed as as somebody like an opinion piece. And like you don't do opinion pieces. You can't find on this shit. No. And if you do, it's got to be specifically couched as that and probably in a different medium, you know, it can't just be like blended into your reporting. Working for the fucking, you know, athletic or New York time, whatever the fuck it is these days. Theoretically, these sports outlet for this stuff. Yeah. And he's just writing like a, you know, angry blogger. Never in my career if I read anything like that. I don't know. Yeah, it's just, I mean, it's unattractive and it's unprofessional, you know, in that context. And like, that's, I don't really read. I don't read it stuff at all. Just, I'm like, you know, what am I going to get from this? So I think part of it too is there's such a dichotomy

9:19between the first half of the flyer season here and what's been going on the last seven games or so. And even though there was people vocal about, including us, that, you know, things were unsustainable. The way that they were playing, the goal tending, that things were, that there was going to be a regression. They weren't going to be sticking around at the same position that they were. It doesn't help that the, you know, the guys that have their best friends are, you know, in the front office are like, crowing about how good the team's doing. And it's like, that's, now you're being a cheerleader, you're not actually reporting. Like, there's a little bit of a fine line and a difference. Like, you could be happy that the team, it's always more fun to cover a team that's winning. There's no question about that. There's also a thing about you're, you're kind of like, trying to stick it to fans and saying, see, I told you these guys know what they're doing.

10:19See, these guys are my friends. They, I know, they know what they're doing. They know better than you. And then, you know what, like, hey, you do that. This is a consequence now. When the team goes through a, a little bit of a foul stretch, well, then people start going, what happened to, you know, your buddies that know what they're doing? How come you're not asking questions? Like, what's the hardest question that Rick talk at his face this year? Like, seriously, there's the outburst about, I can't believe that you're asking me about Mitchkov again for like the sixth time in a row. Yeah. And I don't remember which podcast it was on. I don't know if it was on Merrick's show or whatever, but they were talking to him. And he's like, oh, yeah, that was that Jordan Hall. He asked me that question. George's a good guy though. He's a real stand up guy. I just got a little upset that I was the fifth or sixth question or, and it's like, yeah, but you were like, really upset.

11:20And it's like, it doesn't matter who asked the question. It shouldn't be about who asked the question, but it's now becoming a, why did this person ask the question? Like, it shouldn't be that way. Like, it's, if you have a legitimate source or you have a legitimate question, then it should be asked because it's about knowledge. It's about information and it's about communicating to the fans. The media's product is consumed by fans. And if it becomes, if you start insulting the fans, you're gonna turn people away, and then you can't argue that, oh, I can't believe people are so upset at us. Like, people are upset at you because like, again, you're drawing a fine distinction between a professional obligation and responsibility and making personal statements and opinions. And then when you call fans idiots and stupid and other things, like, there's a way to respond to things

12:21and there's a way not to respond to things. You get stopped by a police officer for speeding. The police officer should come up to your car and say, can I have your license and registration? You know you were speeding, right? Should they say, did you fucking know you were speeding? Are you fucking moron? I can't believe you fucking did that. Don't you know what the fucking speed limit is? You're dummy. I can't believe you did that. Like, which one should they do? Nick talked to me like that one time. Well, hey, listen, Nick's a good-looking guy. He could get away with that. He could do what he wants, huh? It's the end. But that's what I mean. Like, there's a professional standard. Yeah. And that's what I mean. Like, it seems like the online media, Twitter, media, verse for the flyers. It's like this weird wild west where there's standards and practices don't really apply and they kind of should. Like, the people with the inquire,

13:22they've got standards and practices that they have to follow. There's other people that do too. And I'm sure that with Kevin, it is that way with the athletic as well. The thing is, is that the line blurs when he's on Twitter and then he's interacting with people. And listen, in fairness, if somebody goes after him on a personal level and starts cursing at him and insulting his mother or whatever, yes, that's wrong. And you shouldn't really do that, right? Like, he's not a circus animal. Well, he's a human being. Kind of looks like one, I don't know. I mean, listen, hey, I mean, he did run off the San Jose and whatnot, but it is what it is. But at the same time, if it's people with questions and there's frustrations, and as long as they're not, like, insulting, demeaning, going after people unnecessarily or crossing like real lines, you kind of have to have a little bit of a thicker skin than that. And you got to respond in an appropriate manner. And if they just did their fucking jobs in the first place

14:23and reported on the team and asked real questions, nobody would be hampering them in the first place. And you get these fucking losers, like Colby Cohen that come out of the woodwork to shit on fans and all the time. And like, this guy can even stay employed by NBC who fucking still is employing Terran Hatcher, man. If you can't survive Terran Hatcher and you can't, like, I don't know where you can talk. I played one NHL game I knew it and talking back. It was like fucking Bertie, I played Street Hockey and barely went to my 80 year old bench. I knew that go-tending. Go fuck yourself. Fucking, it's just, I don't know, man. This media seemed to, it's so fucked. Yeah. And I can understand from a certain vantage point that it is unusual where their jobs covering the team are then subject to just such an extreme amount of additional scrutiny by people. That's unusual. Imagine with our other jobs and stuff that if everything I did was laid out on social media

15:27and people were constantly talking about it, it'd be weird. It'd be really weird. But at the same time, you sign up for that when you cover a sports team. That's what happens. And unfortunately, or fortunately, we have now ways to communicate with one another and instantaneously about sports talk that never existed until social media existed and people got on here to do this stuff. And back in the day, you would just have conversations just casually with friends and family about what the sports teams are doing. That was kind of the extent of it. And then you had sports radio call in, a little bit more participation there. And then now your social media was stuff. I guess in between that was blogging. But now your social media, and it's just on steroids, the level of scrutiny and conversation going on. And for some reason, the flyer's beat writers have taken a stance to engage to an extent that I've never seen before, from other media people, from other teams.

16:31I mean, occasionally you'll see people, fill these flyers, sixers in town that may kind of get into something a little bit like comments here and there. But it's pretty rare. It is nowhere near the level of just hours of responses that we're getting from most of the flyers people and just sitting there all day just firing away at people. And I think that that's probably not a good thing. I think that their job as journalists is to provide the information. And then it's for all of us to figure out how we want to interpret it and talk about it. It's not to say they're precluded from the conversation, but I think that if they're gonna, I think they kind of are to some extent though. They can jump in, but like they can't use their credentialing and their media pass to say, I'm the authority on this, you're an idiot shut up. And that's what they do. That's the problem with it. If you're gonna participate, you do it in a certain way, not from the, I'm better than you,

17:32I know more than you shut up your theories dumb. And that's what we get from these people. For me, one of the biggest criticisms in hockey media in general from the hockey media is the players are so boring, they always give the same stock answers. You gotta get pucks deep and pucks didn't, we didn't get a puck luck today, you know, all that kind of nonsense. Yeah. Well, I think the same criticism can apply to the, you know, hockey media, and especially with the flyers media. But why are you providing stock questions? Can you assess Bobby Brink's play last night's game? Like that, that's your question. That's the question that you're going with. Like you're not asking like, why is Matt Veyn-Mitchkov on the left wing? Sorry, not on the left wing. Sorry, he's playing left wing, he should be on the right wing. How come? They don't ask that question.

18:33That question you see is confrontational, negative, you can't ask that to rick talk it. I don't know if they're told that they can't, but nobody's asking that. Why not? If you don't want stock answers and you don't like stock answers, then you shouldn't ask stock questions. Ask good questions, ask a variety of questions, and then they dance around and they go, oh, I like, you know, you gotta, you know, work them up and warm them up a little bit with a couple of questions, and then you can ask them like one little, like a trickier question and it's like, it shouldn't be like a fucking tango. Like it's not a dance. You're there to ask questions. You know, like ask Danny Breer, when are we gonna start to add players for a potential playoff push? Ask it, ask the coach. How come Garden Hathaway was on the ice in the closing stages of that hockey game against Utah?

19:36Why? Ask the question. They don't really though. No. They ask the stock questions and then they get mad when they get stock answers and then the fans get frustrated because they're like, what the fuck is this shit that we're consuming? Like why aren't they asking like, how come Mitch Coffs playing is off-wing? What's going on? Yep. I don't know. That's why people are upset. Yeah, that's why a lot of the reporting is just like, you know, and that really reading the articles about the team because it's like, what's in there? There's nothing in there. I guess. I'll subscribe now. Subscribe now so you can read this whole bunch of fluff. They don't ask good questions. They don't produce good articles and they go on Twitter and just defend the flyers all day. I got it now. Like when they all gang up like that,

20:38do they do it by themselves? How do they all come together in unite to be such shit heads all the time? How do you not have like one free thinker there that's like, hey, the flyers do suck. Let's go down there. Like every last one of them is like team-paid shell mode, even if they're not paid by the team. Like how do you end up like this? Is it an operative from the front office or they just all that brainless that they all just follow each other and have no logical thinking between any of them and they're just like, oh, this guy said it. Do I got it right too? Like how did we get to the point where the entire press box is poison? Well, I'm just talking about one or two guys anymore. It's like fucking everybody. Like the minority of people are the people that are like non-confrontational. There's like three of them. And everybody else is just a jackass. It's like, what the like, how? How? Do they all come together and sign some kind of like blood pact and be like, all right, boys. Anytime any one of us is fucking under attack, we all got to get together and defend each other.

21:40I think what the fuck? Yeah, it is bizarre. I think I was back to that. It's treated like some sort of like brotherhood sort of thing and yeah, like a club and they're part of the club and we're fucking free and they're the authoritarian on the team. They're the experts on the team. And if somebody's saying something that they're just kind of speculating on or guessing on which all of us really are because we don't work for a publication. We have other jobs, but we're still engaging in conversation. I think it angers them that, well, I'm the authoritarian on this and I know what's going on with the team. So they just listen what I have to say on the team and they shouldn't be thinking about it that way because I didn't say that. So why would they think that? And I think that it's a controlling type of mentality that a lot of these folks have because they're the ones in the room. It's their livelihood that they cover the team. So if you're not listening to me and not thinking the way that I'm prescribing for you,

22:40then you need to be silenced. And that's it. I think that's a huge part of it. Which is wild that a hockey team does shit like that. We're not talking about national intel here. And we're talking about a goddamn hockey team. And we got to think our way about, fuck off. Fuck off. God. Do you think that when all the media types get together for their end of season dinner? Oh, yeah. That like the conversation comes up. Yeah, the olive garden in between the unlimited salad and breadsticks. Did it Chuck Fletcher take out all the media people to fucking olive garden when he first got here? The whole way, did he? Yeah, I shake this game. This was it. I think it's a way of getting to know the local media. It's like everyone out for lunch to Olive Garden. If somebody did that, was it Dave Hackstall? Maybe it was Fletcher. It was Hackstall, maybe? It was one of the two of them. I remember this happening. I don't remember who did it though. It made that Hackstall. Yeah, oh my God. Either way, I'm not surprised.

23:40The bedding lads would have been all of Garden for sure with those two. I think it was Hackstall because he hasn't no tasted anything. Oh yeah, it was Hackstall. But do you think that that conversation comes up? Like, well guys, another season in the books. You know who was a real asshole on Twitter? That man he been if he does guys a fucking dick. I hate him. Yeah, me too. I'm sure he talk about stuff like that. Yeah. So it was Dave Hackstall in August of 2015. Shortly after being named, I coached the flyers. Hackstall famously took local beat writers to lunch at an olive garden. Oh, famously. Yeah. Because he was always the one. Hackstall was the one that would approach guys like Charlie O'Connor and talk about analytics and try to like pick his brain on that, which is fucking hilarious at the benefit of hindsight. But like, yeah, he was always the one that tried to get involved with the media there. Oh my God, so there's a photo of the whole way.

24:42I can picture. Oh, we got Dave Hackstall here. I'll send you guys this real quick and we can analyze all the characters in here. The characters. Yeah. There's not a single one that's still actually maybe. So we got, we got Hacks at the top of the table. We got, I think Jay Greenberg. I don't know who the guy with the glasses on. We got, we got Timmy Pinocchio. We got Sam Carcidi. Wayne Fish is in there. Who the heck is that? Is that what's his face? Randy Miller. Yes. Yes, it's Randy Miller. That's probably who the young guy is. Is that like a... Dave Isaac, maybe? Yes, Dave Isaac. Yes. Oh my God, Dave Isaac, that's right. And it might be a Jordan Hall who we can't see. Somebody's behind the other. The younger kid.

25:43The younger kid, I don't know who that is. What a motley crew. And take a look at the other patrons of the restaurant. Their average age is like fucking 79. Yeah. Look, you got two old ladies, old guy and an old lady in the corner there. Right across. They've got a bunch of old ladies. Hack was probably like, all right, y'all. You got a $12 limit per person here. Anything over that is odd, you. Let's see, they've got sparkling water on the table. We've got iced tea, couple iced teas and coax. They carefully crafted this image. Like no beer, no wine. Maybe that's why Pinotch is so upset. He's got a scowl on his face. Like, where's my fucking wine? The other hands are under the table, man. Fucking alcohol's under there. They hit for the photo. Oh my god.

26:43It's so good. What a sick lunch that we've been. Can you imagine what they were talking about at that fucking table? No, what I can't, I don't know what they'd be talking about. Maybe that's the key. Maybe Rick Tocket took the media to Crabby Dix. Yes, dude, you know Crabby Dix, yes. They should redo this picture of Crabby Dix. Yeah. Good. Yeah, you know what? I think that is devising. I think it's a good call. I think it's a good call. Who's the guy across from them? I don't know, the younger kid. Yeah. I don't know. I think he could have been. He could have been some guy in the front. Front left. Beside Wayne Fish. Front left at Randy Miller. Yeah, it's Randy Miller. Okay. What the fuck was that going up to this day? Oh my God. I don't know.

27:46Unbelievable. God, I wish this crew was still covering the team. See, this crew never would be acting like the current. No, flyers meet the rules. These guys would never do this shit. Like they write the articles and actually Randy was kind of a pistol. Like, you know, like they write the articles. Actually, Tim was too, but like they're not going to do this crap. They had like lives outside of this and then in the article itself, which is from Crossing Broad. It says, strange and smart power moved by resident hard ass, Dave Hacks, wow, really, that was misplaced. Yeah. Oh, God, the good old days.

28:47What is that true? Yeah, there was a notation of this article that about good thing that he took Tim A to act or that to Olive Garden because we heard that that Penoch had his corporate card taken away by CSN. But it's that late that it's probably joke. It's fucking funny. Oh, God. Huh. What a crew. It was probably like the Olive Garden, like Cherry Hill or something. I probably, I don't know if they were there for the never ending possible that day or free, free breadsticks. I mean, Dave Scott must be pissed all the way to taking was a quick trip to Taco Bell and he would have gotten better breads. Yeah. Yeah.

29:48So good. So good. Good job, man.