March 26, 2025
Dan Hamilton/Imagn Images
Flyers defenseman Emil Andrae gets bumped out of a race after the puck by Maple Leafs forward Max Domi.
Tuesday night in Toronto was a team falling apart at the seams, provided there were any still strung together.
The Flyers got embarrassed by the Maple Leafs, 7-2.
Ryan Poehling swung the opening tally, but soon after, Cam York got bodied off the puck by Bobby McMann behind the Philadelphia net, then stood and watched as William Nylander skated away with it to set up John Tavares' equalizer.
It was all downhill from there.
York was benched for the rest of the night after that goal, only skating 3:50 in total, while the rest of the team was thoroughly outshot, outworked, and decisively overmatched by a Toronto team with its eyes on the playoffs.
The Flyers, on the ice that is, don't have anything to set their sights on.
Their season is all but done, and they know it, head coach John Tortorella bluntly acknowledged pregame.
But they still had 10 games left heading into Tuesday night to build up and walk away with any positives they could muster.
Instead, they're spiraling.
Tuesday night's thrashing from the Leafs made it six straight losses and a complete 0-4-1 record on the Flyers' five-game road trip.
They're 1-10-1 in their last 12, and while they've kept some efforts close like last week against Washington and Dallas, the past two against Chicago and Toronto have just crumbled with the Flyers allowing seven goals in each – first with Ivan Fedotov in net on Sunday and then Sam Ersson on Tuesday.
It's been a struggle, and maybe the most brutal of Tortorella's three-year tenure behind the Philadelphia bench so far. But even through it, a commitment to a process was repeatedly emphasized by both himself and the players as the means to push forward.
But now? They just look out of gas and out of answers.
Scott Laughton skated across from the Flyers in a blue and white uniform on Tuesday night. He was a valued leader within their locker room for years, but with the organization trying to rebuild, the time finally came this past trade deadline to ship him out in a push to get younger, which long-term, could prove the right decision.
But right now? The team misses him – maybe more than they thought.
"It's honestly one of those guys that it's gonna take the whole summer to kind of regroup, get the team back to normal," Travis Konecny said earlier Tuesday. "When you lose someone like that, he's been a staple of the locker room ever since I've been here. He's got a huge personality, I mean, he runs everything as far as getting the guys together and just music in the locker room, and so you put a major hole in the team aspect.
"I mean, yeah, it's gonna be something you gotta collectively come together and fill. We're really missing him."
As far as getting to the summer, though, the Flyers are limping toward it.
Again, long-term, that's probably for the best. With these last nine games, it's a race with Buffalo, Nashville, and Seattle for the third-best possible draft lottery odds (San Jose and Chicago have 1 and 2 mostly locked, respectively), and general manager Danny Brière and the front office need that top selection.
But the players here now, and especially the ones who are expected to stick around, still need to show something promising as the schedule dwindles down and they all try to turn the page.
But they might be out of gas and out of answers.
"When you're in this type of situation, you're losing all the time, and there's nothing at the end of the tunnel for ya, there's certainly gonna be some frustration," Tortorella said postgame Tuesday night. "But this falls on me. I'm not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, what we're at right now. But I have to do a better job.
"So this falls on me getting the team prepared to play the proper way until we get to the end."
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