The Philadelphia Flyers 2023-24 season may have ended a couple months ago at this point, but there’s still been a lot of great playoff hockey to watch. The team fell just short of the playoffs in the first season of the rebuild, but they took major steps forward as a group. Coach John Tortorella tore things down to the studs and started all over from a culture standpoint and the system implemented for the team.
Tortorella teams must play TEAM DEFENSE, a point that I’ve noticed to be absolutely crucial for playoff success. All players must commit to playing smart defensively responsible hockey or face the wrath of losing ice time. Despite several back-end injuries all year long, the Flyers were excellent defensively this year suffocating teams with blocking shots all night long and finishing checks. The team was able to even generate a good amount of rush based offense playing this way with stick checks sending guys up the ice or blocked shots springing long passes as well. Not cheating the game, playing smart and letting the plays come to you brought a lot of patient success. This one consistent theme was heavily prevalent throughout the season and to me it came full circle as the playoff teams began.
Looking at the first series played by the New York Rangers and the Washington Capitals, it was clear that the Rangers were going to destroy them. Several fans share the opinion that the Flyers would have been able to put up a much greater fight against New York had they not lost so many games and missed the playoffs. Injuries and running your rookie goaltender into the ground ultimately led to their final collapse. The systems in place and the style of play the Flyers bring onto the ice is conducive to playoff success. The Flyers play a style of hockey similar to Carolina albeit much less precise and not nearly as star studded, the blue print is there. This is one take I strongly agree with and I’d like to explain the point further, but first some important context.
No team is healthy heading into the playoffs. Everybody is dealing with something. As the teams get knocked out we continue to hear the horrific injuries the guys chose to play through all to chase the cup. What i’m getting at is there is no hypothetical world where the Flyers are magically injury bug free to continue the high level of play they had albeit lacking high end talent. If you ask my humble opinion, having Ristolainen healthy alone would have made a huge impact on the Flyers defense especially for how well he was playing under Torts system. Risto was not around for months prior to the Flyers collapse so it’s revisionist history at this point BUT I wanted to add some love for Risto I think he will be a big playoff piece moving forward IF he can stay healthy. It’s more effective to say that losing Sean Walker at the trade deadline, and Seeler going down really saw the Flyers come loose at the seams.
We now also know that Sanheim and York were both playing injured as well, these things happen. The team did not have the depth to cover these injuries and the team’s play suffered greatly, combine this with Ersson starting games at a Martin Brodeur pace things collapsed hard. With a few exciting prospects on defense coming up to help and not losing your starting goalie forever again, I do think things will continue to improve on the backend building off their successes.
I’ve watched the majority of the 2024 playoffs this year and a few key points support this: The Carolina Hurricanes were a dominant force this season playing very sound hockey as a whole team, they unfortunately ran into the Best Goaltender in the world vs the Rangers but I still see them as a great standard for the Flyers to try and catch up to.
To Fix– For starters, the Carolina Hurricanes had the second best power play percentage in the regular season with double the success 26.9% vs 12.2% of the last ranked Flyers Peco Power Outage. Fixing the powerplay goes without saying would have won the Flyers several more games helping them reach the playoffs. This is their weakest part of their game and has been a sore subject painful to watch for the last few years, they can’t buy a goal on the powerplay.
To Fix– Since the departure of fan favorite long time Captain Claude Giroux, the Flyers have dipped heavily in the faceoff dot. This has largely been due to the loss of Giroux combined with Couturier missing the better part of the last 2 seasons, the Flyers hurt at Center. Finishing the season 19th in the faceoff dot is a far cry from regularly being a top five faceoff team in past years. Carolina is vastly deeper at Center and finished the season sixth in faceoff percentage. Winning offensive zone faceoffs to get a shot on net fast as possible is always a lethal scoring threat, something the Flyers used to excel at and need to return to doing.
To Maintain– Despite the Flyers’ end of season collapse and onslaught of injuries, the Flyers finished 4th on the season in Penalty Kill percentage trailing only the Hurricanes, Kings, and Rangers. If the team stayed healthy and could afford to not play Ersson for a month straight, there’s legitimate argument the Flyers could have finished first on the penalty kill. The team was lights out picking off passes, blocking shots like fiends, and even scored more goals on the penalty kill than they did with a man advantage. Tortorella’s system sets them up to be lethal on the penalty kill if they continue to play “The right way” as he says with smart defensively responsible hockey. A dominant suffocating penalty kill is CRUCIAL for playoff success, often times one successful powerplay goal can be the lone deciding factor in a tight series and being able to shut them down is clutch. –Carolina is very very good at this as well hence they finished First on Penalty Kill percentage in the regular season, just wanted to shine more light on the positives going forward for the Flyers.
To Maintain– Going into 2024-2025 I am personally quite bullish on the Flyers goaltending due of Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov. Ersson showed flashes of being able to handle true #1 responsibilities this year with an incredible knack for responding positively. Prior to playing far too many games for a rookie, Ersson would have a bad game and immediately respond. Too many goalies this era self destruct mentally after a bad game, this is something the Flyers don’t seem to have to worry about with Sam. When Fedotov was first drafted he was once thought to be the next coming of Hasek if he could ever get here safely from Russia. Making it to the US safely and having actual time to acclimate to the speed/size of the NHL Hockey gives me a ton of hope for this tandem going forward. If Fedetov is even league average playable .900 save percentage for 25-30 games Ersson will get much needed rest to be in great shape come playoff time. It goes without saying if you watched the Canes this year their only weakness it seemed was goaltending. Comparing the 2 teams i’m going with the Flyers goalie factory of late any day.
To Add– From 2023 back to 2004 every single Stanley Cup winning team has had a true Elite number one defenseman on their backend, some argue John Carlson wasn’t a true number 1 in 2018 but the Capitals still won. There is hope that Cam York will continue to develop into the number 1 defenseman this team so desperately needs, and this season would show you can put stock in that fact, but he isn’t there just yet. Sanheim had a great year prior to being injured down the stretch, I still think they are missing 1 more puck moving true defenseman. Carolina has several strong defenseman on their team with high skill passers to start the offense going the other way. Brent Burns crushes the body and sets plays for the Canes regularly. Brady Skjei and Jacob Slavin are Elite passers and defensively sound both easy to slot in as a top pair on most teams.
Something Philadelphia has to prioritize is getting deeper on the backend while looking for another cornerstone defenseman. It’s possible one of their recent draft picks fills this role but only time will tell. TEAM DEFENSE is key, any of the remaining final four playoff teams were a case study for this fact. The team with the best players doesn’t always win, ask Colorado about that. Edmonton adjusted their teams system to play a smart defensively responsible TEAM DEFENSE that chokes out their opponents despite not being as deep on defense. At the end of the day, you can be fancy and do flashy things left and right but you still have to play the game of hockey itself effectively to win. Philadelphia is well suited to hold things down tight with this style of play, all players have bought in on defense they just need to add a bit more.
To Add– High end talent has been gone from this team for too long. Carolina is disgustingly deep at Center arguably the deepest in the league even more so following the trade deadline acquisitions of Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov. Having Captain Jordan Staal, Sebastian Aho ,Martin Necas, and Jesperi Kotkaniemi is quite a line up of Centers without counting the additions. Carolina’s Centers could all slot in as 1 or 2 in Philadelphia easily. Adding Michkov alone makes the Flyers 10x better, but he can’t do everything himself ask Claude Giroux how that worked out towards the end. A number 1 Elite playmaking Center is Vital to this team’s construction during the rebuild. Someone has to be able to get the puck to Michkov and create plays for the team, it admittedly hurt the Flyers terribly to lose a player like Cutter Gauthier who would have fit that mold greatly. The 2024 draft is crucial for this team, there are some stud Centers available and they must hit on the player they pick if this rebuild is going to march forward the right way.
-Authors Note: I am personally hoping Danny Briere pulls off a deal to have them draft Berkley Catton and Cole Eiserman somehow in the 10th-14th pick range. if i’m Danny, try to pry the 8th pick from Seattle, 10th from New Jersey or the 11th pick from Buffalo to get the both of them. Draft picks are a complete lottery, but if you can get Richards and Carter again out of Catton/Eiserman you jumpstart something special from this rebuild.
In Conclusion-The Flyers systems in place and the style of hockey underneath John Tortorella is a style of play conducive to success in the playoffs. They play a smart defensively responsible game that keeps them in the game almost every night they hit the ice. The blueprints to success are there, the seeds have been planted, but there is much left to be done before this team is truly a threat. Carolina as an organization have become the gold standard teams should strive for on how to build a competitive team both on and off the ice. If Philadelphia can keep making some smart decisions under new leaders Danny Briere and Keith Jones, it’s not far fetched to think the rebuild won’t take nearly as long as we thought.
Personal Wishlist– I would love to see the Flyers bring back Shayne Gostisbehere not just because he was a fan favorite but for the fact that they are sorely lacking an offensive dynamo at the blue line such as himself. One of the easiest ways to help improve the dismal Power Play is to add a player like him getting pucks on the net. There is hope that Oliver Bonk plays a similar style and his power play success in juniors will transition to the NHL but that is a wish and certainly no guarantee. Ghost would fit right in and do his thing taking some pressure off of York/Sanheim while providing his playmaking abilities to the worst ranked Power Play in the league.
Bringing back Captain Claude Giroux at the trade deadline is a very far fetched wish of mine but I genuinely think it could work out on the cheaper end. Veteran players on expiring contracts have been claimed for next to nothing the last 3 playoff seasons. I feel bringing back the heart and soul of Philadelphia IF**** the Flyers are locked for a playoff spot would be a huge boost in all aspects. I envision a trade for him similar to that of Nashville’s deal to acquire Jason Zucker this past season. Zucker was on an expiring contract a long seasoned veteran player who had scored 27 goals, still went for just a 6th round pick. Zucker was a big part of the Preds playoff run this season for pennies on the dollar. i’d give up 5th round draft picks for the next 10 years if it meant securing Claude Giroux for 1 more playoff run alongside Matvei Michkov, no brainer.
Written by: Anthony Spotts @SpottsonGoal
photo credit: nhl.com
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