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The Philadelphia Flyers are enduring another losing season and they will miss the Stanley Cup playoffs for the fifth consecutive season and the sixth time in the last seven years. The only time they made the playoffs was in the Covid-altered 2020 season.
The Flyers began the year with some degree of optimism because they finished 2023-24 season with a 38-33-11 record and head coach John Tortorella's team had been in playoff contention until the final games of the season.
The Flyers had added explosive rookie right wing Matvei Michkov to a returning cast that included center Sean Couturier, winger Travis Konecny, winger Owen Tippett, winger Bobby Brink, winger Tyson Foerster and defenseman Travis Sanheim, so there was every reason to believe the Flyers could take the step and become a playoff team.
The most optimistic perspectives had the Flyers finishing in one of the top 3 spots of the Atlantic Division, bypassing the Wild Card route to the postseason.
But the Flyers have fallen apart this season, and they have been particularly awful throughout the month of March. After registering a 2-1 road victory in a shootout over the league-leading Winnipeg Jets, the Flyers have completely lost their way. The Flyers are just 1-9-1 since then.
The defeats have been particularly galling as they were shut out 5-0 by the Carolina Hurricanes and they followed that game by getting blanked 2-0 by the Tampa Bay Lightning. In their two most recent games, they were beaten 7-4 by the Chicago Blackhawks and 7-2 by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Flyers were sellers at the trade deadline, sending forwards Scott Laughton (Maple Leafs) and Andrei Kuzmenko (Los Angeles Kings) as well as defenseman Erik Johnson (Colorado Avalanche) out of town. Those moves have not helped the team's on-ice performance.
Flyers' management team made huge mistake in hiring Tortorella
Tortorella has had 3 seasons to turn this team around, and the predominant weight of the evidence demonstrates he clearly failed.
The Flyers have not been in the playoffs under his leadership and they are getting worse and not better. The Flyers brain trust made a decisive move in firing Tortorella Thursday,
There is little doubt that Tortorella is an old-school coach who let his players know exactly what he was thinking and he pulled no punches when assessing their performance.
Even though there was a time when strong disciplinarian head coaches were admired and successful in the NHL — Scotty Bowman was the most prominent and Joel Quenneville was among the more recent vintage — Tortorella has long rubbed several of his players the wrong way.
Additionally, his approach with the media can be difficult when he answers questions in a smug and haughty way. While he can be charming and insightful at times, it was not always easy to predict which Tortorella would show up.
The idea of keeping Tortorella at the helm would not have been a positive move for the franchise. Team president Keith Jones and general manager Daniel Briere made the decisive move and sent Tortorella packing.
Briere couched the move in pleasant terms, but the Tortorella tenure was a step backwards for the organization.
“Today I made the very difficult decision to move on from John as our head coach,” Briere said in a statement. “John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set a standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer. … As we move into the next chapter of this rebuild, I felt this was the best for our team to move forward.”
Flyers have some offensive talent
Michkov has demonstrated his offensive skill by scoring 20 goals and 31 assists and he is the team's second-leading scorer behind Travis Konecny who has potted 24 goals and added 44 assists for 68 points.
Center Sean Couturier is a solid defensive center but he needs to be more of an offensive factor as he has scored just 12 goals and 25 assists. The Flyers need more from him.
In addition to that trio, defenseman Travis Sanheim can spur the attack from the back end and Tippett, Brinkett and Foertster all have the skills needed to become impactful players.
Perhaps they need a coach who can encourage and nurture players, something that was not Tortorella's calling card.
Goaltending has been fairly ordinary. Samuel Ersson is 19-15-4 with a 3.10 goals against average and an .882 save percentage. Backup Ivan Fedotove has not distinguished himself. He is 5-13-3 with a 3.21 GAA and and.877 save percentage.
While this team does have some talented players, the Flyers are a discouraged team. A change at the head coaching slot is the first step that helps this group turn things around in 2025-26.
