The Philadelphia Flyers storybook 2023-24 campaign has come crashing down after a late-season losing streak has pushed them out of the playoff picture, and it has left everyone scrambling for answers at to where the problems stemmed from. And while the answer is essentially that the entire puzzle went to pieces at the same time, there’s one man who is the lynchpin of the whole operation and that’s head coach John Tortorella.
Tortorella has never been afraid to stir the pot. He’s been making roster tweaks for most of the season that come across as questionable, but done with some shadowy intent. Then he made the executive call on March 19 to bench Sean Couturier both because his personal play was struggling and as an attempt to light a fire under the rest of the roster.
Update: Since that March 19 game against the Maple Leafs to today (October 24), the Flyers have gone 4-12-4, playing some of the worst hockey of the season and subsequently have fallen out of a playoff spot that they’ve held on to since December, then started the 2024-25 season 1-5-1.
So the question has to be asked- did the players essentially give up on Tortorella for his decision making that day?
First and foremost, let’s talk about Couturier. It’s no secret that he has not been very good since the calendar flipped to 2024 and quit frankly he deserved to be benched and the minuscule minutes he was playing didn’t really make a difference anyway. It’s a move that shouldn’t have caused the media circus it did, but the scratching came just 34 days after he was given the captaincy ahead of the Stadium Series.
Why the Flyers handed him the “C” after the open refusal to do so for the previous year and a half has not really be answered by the team, but the reality is they chose to name him the leader despite the likely downward trend he was on, and going to continue to face as a 31-year-old veteran.
Then there’s Tortorella’s, whose form of “accountability” fluctuates from player to player. Pretty much everyone on the roster has felt his wrath at some point over the last two seasons. He’s been particularly aggressive to the younger guys this season, but Couturier’s scratching was the first shot at the leadership group in quite some time.
Update: It was revealed that Couturier had a sports hernia and underwent surgery during the 2024 offseason, but he himself downplayed the severity of the injury and the impact it had on his season. Any lingering effects could help explain his slow start as most core injuries take time to fully come back from.
The thing is, the Flyers beat the Leafs and took the Hurricanes to overtime during the two games that Couturier missed. It did seem to light a fire (and prove the team was just fine without Couturier’s reanimated corpse gliding around) until the metaphorical crap hit the metaphorical fan and flung across the room. It it worth nothing that Couturier himself was rather salty about the benching and gave some quotes to the media that were very not-leader like of him, so maybe there was a lingering attitude from Captain Couts that lingered throughout the room and changed some attitudes.
So maybe it’s not that the players directly mutinied against Tortorella because… well… they did just fine in the immediate aftermath, but it’s possible Tortorella opened up an old wound with the removal of Couturier and the infection spread to the rest of the room because the captain was walking around with a full diaper afterwards.
The reality is, it’s unlikely the team “gave up” on Tortorella because of the benching, and it just so happened to correlate with the wheels falling off the tired and battered group. Though, it doesn’t mean Torts is off the hook, however. His antics have a shelf life. He can only piss in so many players’ Cheerios before the schtick wears thin.
For an organization that championed culture as much as the Flyers did, it makes the collapse that much worse. The roster was underwhelming, that part was easy to see from day one. But when they talked themselves up and shifting the word “rebuild” to mean culturally rather than talent, it was supposed to be so things like this didn’t happen again. Yet here they are, taking big losses in heartless, piss poor efforts that a better culture was supposed to prevent.
The reality is everyone is to blame. The goaltending was miserable. The offense was dry. The powerplay was nonexistent. The defense was playing above their heads for much of the season. And Tortorella’s erratic behavior and controversial decisions absolutely fanned the flames of this smoldering pile, even if he wasn’t directly responsible for the crash in the first place.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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