I can confirm that the #Flyers just became a playoff team. — Sam Carchidi (@BroadStBull) July 2, 2013

Ya gotta believe.

But it seems that when a team makes the news for something undesirable in the NHL these days, they stay there for quite some time, and such is the case with the hapless Philadelphia Flyers.

Nearly a full week at this point, after the mortifying incident of a team pushed too far by its own embarrassing badness, there are still autopsies being done, promises to Do Something being made.

The good news, apparently, is that the horrifying and indefensible Ray Emery attack on Braden Holtby prompted a decent amount of introspection. Not, strangely, about whether this is the kind of thing we want happening in the National Hockey League in 2013, but rather about why the Flyers are so bad in general. Which is one way of getting to the root of the problem: If Philadelphia weren't getting its lunch handed to it in so thorough and embarrassing a manner by the Capitals in that game, then Emery never tries to beat Holtby to death.

Among those making such promises to get to the bottom of this, or rather hoping that positive affirmations will come true (not really the same thing) is Claude Giroux, who has been actively terrible this season. A lot is being made about his whopping zero goals this season, which puts him behind goalscoring giants such as Cory Sarich, Matt Gilroy, Tim Jackman, Cam Janssen, and of course Mike Smith. Obviously, given that his points per game over the last two seasons is 1.13, the current situation is untenable.

Things are so bad, in fact, that they've led Sarah Baicker of Comcast Sports Net Philadelphia to wonder aloud (here and here) whether all the pressure of wearing the captain's C is getting to him, which would have been unthinkable in September, when Giroux was coming off two straight point-a-game seasons and was in the not so distant past still being hailed — by wrong people — as the best player in the world.

The idea that Giroux would in any way benefit from being stripped of the C for reasons similar to Lecavalier's youthful inexperience is of course ludicrous. Lecavalier, the aging negative-possession center who's now coincidentally an accomplice in the Flyers' downfall because Paul Holmgren is bad at his job, was 20 when he was named Bolts captain. Giroux was 24 when Philly foisted the mantle upon him. He's not in over his head all of a sudden. He looked very good last year even in the absence of Jaromir Jagr and with Scott Hartnell crashing to earth so hard — just like everyone reasonable, and therefore not Holmgren, said he would — he created an extinction event.

(Hartnell, by the way, had himself one point, a power play goal against Carolina, in the first 10 games of the season and is currently earning $4.75 million against the cap, as he will for each of the following five seasons. More money well spent.)

Even his refusal to talk to the media is no sign of anything other than frustration, and who can blame him? He's now being labeled as not being a “good captain” because he refused to talk to the media after his team was again shut out, as though that's always the job. He can call all the players-only meetings he likes, but this is so far beyond him not being a good captain that anyone now pointing out how bad his upcoming contract is (pretty bad!) or saying he should be handling things differently, as though he's the problem here, is being intentionally obtuse about the real issues.

But no, Giroux swears on a stack of JM Barrie novels that the real reason the Flyers are dying is that no one is clapping hard enough in the dressing room. The Flyers don't believe they're a good team right now (and P.S.: They're right) and that's the real problem here. And at least everyone in the room now believes in that mantra. Taking the advice of Tug McGraw, and for lack of anything better to do with their time at the moment, that's what the Flyers are now trying with all their hearts to do.

Story continues