April 23, 2024
Eric Hartline/USA TODAY Sports
Rocky Thompson (left) and John Tortorella (right) will be back behind the Flyers' bench next season.
The Stanley Cup Playoffs are in full swing now, and the Flyers are watching from home after coming close, but ultimately having stumbled, stalled out, and missed out down the stretch.
The lockers are cleaned out now, the players said their parting words before breaking for the summer, and so did general manager Danny Brière and head coach John Tortorella on the state of the team and the direction it's heading in.
And the Flyers are heading forward, but they're still sticking to this very much being a rebuild, and one still with a long, long way to go.
To that end, here are some extended thoughts – albeit late ones – on Brière's and Tortorella's press conferences last Friday that put an official wrap on the Philadelphia Flyers' 2023-24 season...
A spot was right there for the Flyers to claim in the home stretch of the season, but they didn't do it. And as close as they did get – to the point where Game 82 did have stakes for them – neither Brière nor Tortorella spoke like actually getting there was the immediate mission for next year.
Said Brière in particular:
"We have to be careful, and I know the expectation next year will be that ‘Oh, we got to get into the playoffs.’ I don't even know that we're there yet. It was a great year, but there's still a long ways to go. We have to be very careful with that going into next year. We're not at the point where we're gonna trade young assets for older veterans that are gonna get us over the board. I still don't think we're a Stanley Cup contender, but you know, it's one of those questions where it's not black and white like maybe it was last summer."
And moreover the deadline deal that sent Sean Walker to Colorado in March, which stood as a clear, future-minded decision made by Brière while knowing full well that it was going to make the team in the immediate term worse:
"And it's tough. You look back at the trade deadline, and obviously, the trade that was made with Colorado, I knew that it wouldn't help the team with making the playoffs and it might have cost us the playoffs this year. That's an example of trying to be not just shortsighted and trying to do everything possible to get in the playoffs, but thinking long-term. How is it going to help us long-term? It's going to be the same approach. I'm not sure how long we have to go. Like we talked about earlier, the players are gonna guide us in that, but I don't think we're quite there yet. I still think there's more that we need to do before we can take that next step and start pushing the envelope, taking some risks a little bit more. I still think we're at a stage where we need to think about the future, we need to build the right way to give us the best chance to be serious contenders for years to come and not just for a year or two."
The Flyers played themselves into playoff contention this year, and since it was right there until the very end, Tortorella tried to push them to go after it because why not?
But there was a whole lot of patience exhibited over in Voorhees last Friday now that the Flyers' season is all said and done.
They don't seem to be tricking themselves with where they really are, or are at least trying really hard not to.
They're still sticking to this being a rebuild.
Tortorella in response to a question about his age (he's 65 going on 66) and his desire to see the Flyers' process fully through:
"I am as energized as I've ever been. This team here, the organization, I love working here, and I'm already thinking about next year. I just spent an hour with Danny. We just spent a half hour with Patrick Sharp and some of our analytics guys on certain players that we think we can help. I am totally in until Danny says ‘Get the hell out of here.’
The Flyers stalling out and falling apart within the last month of the season, especially with that eight-game winless streak so close to the finish line, fueled some vocal speculation from subsects of the fan base and media, but a lot of it threw the several months prior – when the Flyers were playing way above expectations and with Tortorella and his staff being credited with getting as much mileage out of the roster as possible – out the window. Ditto for a few players who struggled down the stretch too.
Look, the season ended badly, but the team did make some major strides this season with Tortorella behind the bench and made some foundational ones even going back to last season, too.
He'll be back.
And to the narrative that Tortorella is a coach with a shelf life: That is true – it is for every coach in professional sports – but his isn't anywhere near as short as some make it out to be.
He lasted seven years with the Lightning, five with the Rangers, and six with the Blue Jackets. The only outlier is the Canucks for that one season in 2013-14, but that was a straight-up mismatch from the jump for a veteran and aging Vancouver team that hadn't yet realized its championship-contending window had closed.
Tortorella and his staff aren't going anywhere, not yet at least, which also means that...
Even after being in charge of the NHL's worst power play at an abysmal 12.2 percent success rate for the year.
But for right now, that's not getting fully pinned on him.
Tortorella said there are going to have to be conversations with Brière, along with other offensive minds within the organization like Patrick Sharp and Dany Heatley, about where to take the power play and the almost just as troublesome 3-on-3 play over the summer, but made sure to note that Thompson will be staying put and having a part in those talks.
"I think Rocky has tremendous ideas," Tortorella said. "I think he thinks out of the box. But I, Danny and I talk, let's just bring in some other people. Patrick Sharp is in this organization. Dany Heatley is in this organization. We've got some guys where I think we need to look for different ideas and discuss it because it's that important and it's been that bad."
But really, two core issues plagued the Flyers on man advantages. One was a lack of movement, which can be fixed relatively quickly, hopefully, with some adjustments and film review over the summer. But the other was a lack of true goal-scoring talent, which will take a lot longer.
The Flyers' power play just never had that one true threat on their power play and no one ever stepped into the role, and as a result, they kept rolling out a special teams unit that just about everyone knew was only going to waste two minutes away.
Maybe Matvei Michkov will make that difference in a couple years' time (more on him later), or maybe the Flyers land on a future sharpshooter in the draft, but either way, the immediate answer isn't there yet and won't be for some time in that respect.
Another thing: Watch all of these power play units in the playoffs and how dangerous they can be to really see the difference. Structure and strategy do count for something, absolutely, but not anywhere near as much as Colorado being able to send out Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, and Cale Makar or Edmonton going right to Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.
The Flyers are not even remotely close to being able to do that.
Sean Couturier got the captaincy in mid-February and hit a wall just as soon as the C was put on his chest.
His struggles had him demoted down the lineup and even scratched for a couple of games late into March, which at the time the veteran center visibly didn't agree with and pointed to a possible rift between him and the coach.
Coupled with the thought that all that time missed from nearly two years off because of injury might have caught up with him, and it was a hard way for Couturier to end his age-31 season.
But Couturier's tone shifted a bit during his exit interview with the media earlier last week and signaled that he and Tortorella would talk over the summer to iron things out.
And Tortorella on Friday reinforced that there shouldn't be any concern about him and his captain going forward.
An excerpt from Tortorella's lengthy answer in regards to the coaching decisions he made with Couturier this season, and with fellow veteran forward Cam Atkinson, who also returned after a year missed from injury and also struggled:
"If everybody's going to be happy coaching under me, I'm not doing my job. I want you to understand that. I want you all to understand that with Sean, I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. But I'm going to coach players the way I think I need to coach them. Could happen again next year, but what I will say about Sean and Cam is I can't make a judgment on them this year. Because I think of their injuries, I think Cam fell off and I think Sean fell off. I can't make a full judgment on them. Thrilled the way they both played early on. Next year, we'll see where it goes."It probably won't be smooth sailing from here on out, and Tortorella doesn't seem to even want that, but things do have to work.
After all, Couturier's got six more years at $7.75 million per.
He isn't going anywhere either.
Brière was asked about the short-term future of the goaltending situation and said he expects Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov to be the NHL duo next season.
Prospect Alexei Kolosov came over from Belarus and the KHL to join the Lehigh Valley Phantoms down in the AHL, and will likely be down with them for next season, too, to allow the 22-year old to develop more.
Ersson struggled down the stretch much like the rest of the team, but bounced back with a strong effort over the final three games, and all things considered, performed well in the tough situation of suddenly being catapulted into No. 1 goaltender status midseason.
By the time he was done, the 24-year old Ersson was at 51 games and 49 starts, by far the most he's ever played and all after Tortorella admitted that he was only originally supposed to play in around 18-22 contests.
He continually stepped up for the team and has earned the shot to have it be his net going into next season.
"We put Sam Ersson in a really tough position and I was really impressed with how we handled it," Brière said. "Now I know, down the stretch, it got a little difficult and maybe he got overplayed. Overall, it was an impressive season
for a young goaltender."
Fedotov, who finally arrived from Russia late in the season after a draining and heavily sidetracked two years in the country, got thrown into a tough bind, too, needing to play for the Flyers almost just as soon as he joined them – a considerably extreme ask for a goalie who just got to a new country, a new team, and a league with a different set of ice.
He did what he could, but now he'll have the benefit of a full summer to get acclimated, and then pick up as Ersson's projected backup.
The Flyers are staking a lot of their future on last summer's No. 7 overall draft pick Matvei Michkov, the Russian goal-scoring phenom who carries the potential to become a game-breaking star.
But they're also waiting on him, as he's signed to a KHL contract that's supposed to run for a couple more years.
Brière was asked about Michkov's status, to which the GM explained:
"Look, if there's an opportunity, we would jump on it to get him here quicker. But as far as I know, at the moment, it's still the same timeline. He has two years left on his deal. I think on his end, he would have to find a way out of his deal before we can do anything. That's out of our control, so as far as I know, we have to wait two more years.
"Believe me, we keep watching him. We have a heavy interest in what he does and he's had a tremendous year. It was fun to see some of the highlights, but at this time, I don't hold too much hope that we'll be able to get him out sooner."
So don't hold your breath.
However...
One under-the-radar thing the Flyers have proven this past season is that, as an organization, they've become an incredibly tight ship.
Very little has gotten out on the rumor mill about them since Brière and Keith Jones have taken over.
We didn't know anything was up with Cutter Gauthier until the trade was announced, and Fedotov looked like he had fallen out of the picture entirely until suddenly there were rumblings one day and then he was just here in Philadelphia the next.
Again, don't brace for Michkov sooner than expected.
This is just to say that the Flyers' front office is developing a trend here of pulling off the unexpected and all in near radio silence as it's happening.
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