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Jake Voracek’s high expectations for Flyers make him frustrated, but he’s not going anywhere | Sam Donnellon

The outspoken forward fits in well in Philly: "If you don’t play well, they let you hear it," he said of fans. "If you do, they let your hear it, too. I find it way better to be in a city like that instead of one that doesn’t care."

Jake Voracek came off a career season and saw his production decline by 20 points and his plus-minus from a plus-10 to minus-16. As recently as before the trade deadline, he has even expressed an expectation for big changes, for breaking up the Flyers’ core.
Jake Voracek came off a career season and saw his production decline by 20 points and his plus-minus from a plus-10 to minus-16. As recently as before the trade deadline, he has even expressed an expectation for big changes, for breaking up the Flyers’ core.Read moreYONG KIM / Staff Photographer

Sometimes you absolutely love Jake.

Sometimes you absolutely hate Jake.

Sometimes he feels absolutely the same way about you.

"I’m the kind of guy who fights with someone and moves on in 10 seconds," Flyers forward Jake Voracek was saying as he met with – and entertained – reporters one last time for this season Sunday afternoon in Voorhees. "I think that’s the way it should be. Everybody wants one thing -- to win."

This has led to some hostile moments between the Flyers’ outspoken forward and the fandom he plays for, like when he told fans behind the glass urging him to "Shoot it!" during a few games this season, to "Shut the [bleep] up" after power-play stoppages. Late in the season, sitting out a suspension in the press box high atop the Wells Fargo Center, he rose from his seat with the same command, after the same advice.

“It’s all in fun,” he said. “Trust me, we would like to shoot the puck more. But sometimes there’s absolutely no chance that puck gets through.”

As the Flyers’ season sank once and sank again, Voracek was often a hairball of frustration, rambling on about the redundancy of his last seven seasons as a Flyer, about the lack of a playoff run and the seasonal exhaustion of pushing from the depth of the standings every year.

Amid this, his productivity from his career season of 2017-18 declined by 20 points and his plus-minus followed, reduced from a plus-10 to minus-16. At times, as recently as before the trade deadline, he has even expressed an expectation for big changes, for breaking up the Flyers’ core. And sometimes when he does, he seems to suggest that he himself would benefit from a change of venue, a changed narrative.

Each time, though, there is a retreat from that view, as there was the other day, and again Sunday as he cleared out his belongings for the seventh consecutive season without the experience of even one playoff-round victory.

"It’s like my home here," he said. "I’ve been here for 8 years. You got to understand a lot of people don’t understand hockey. A lot of people do, but a lot of people don’t. If you are frustrated during the game, or I say something out of frustration, it doesn’t mean I want to get traded. It doesn’t make any sense."

And for one overriding reason: Voracek, having finished his eighth season as a Flyer and 11th overall, has five years left on an eight-year deal that averages $8.25 million annually. No player traded at this season’s trade deadline made more than that, although 26-year-old Vegas forward Mark Stone, acquired from Ottawa, was in the last year of a deal that paid him $7.35 million, and signed an eight-year deal two weeks later with a $9.5 million annual cap hit.

So, he is here for the foreseeable future, tethered to what has become an annual question for him and his team.

Namely, what’s missing?

"I’ve been asked that question the last several years -- it’s frustrating," Voracek said after Friday’s practice, on the heels of a 7-3 loss at St. Louis. "It’s easy to think we’re not good enough, but obviously we don’t think that way. We’ve had a lot of young guys come in over the last couple of years. And so I thought this was the year. From that standpoint, it was my most disappointing season in the NHL -- because I had way higher expectations.

"Last year we made the playoffs, [Claude Giroux] had a hundred points. I had a career year, [Sean Couturier] had a career year. It’s not going to happen every single year that guys are going to have career years. But I think if 17 or 18 guys have above-average years, then we can become a great team. We have to find that consistency from 17, 18, even 20 guys. I think that’s what we are missing. We have a few pieces going here, few pieces not. We have to find that consistency level for 70 to 75 games. You’re going to have those 10-12 games a year where you just don’t have it. But we have to get that consistency level from more guys way more often."

One way to do that is to improve their mental toughness.

"With so many slow starts in the past, and we started slow again this year, I think we got into our heads a little too much instead of just going out there and playing," he said. "We lost so many games we shouldn’t have lost …"

Particularly at home, where the Flyers lost more games than they won (19-18-4).

"If you don’t play well, they let you hear it," he said of Flyers fans. "If you do, they let your hear it, too. I find it way better to be in a city like that instead of one that doesn’t care."

So he will be back. Like it or not, or both. Not just because of the money he makes, but because the Flyers will begin next season in Prague, Czech Republic – not far from where Voracek grew up.

Another city he cares about, and that cares about him.

“Hopefully, I don’t get dealt before it,” he said, smiling. “You never know. But I think that’s my insurance right there.”