A New Era of Flyers
This will be the second time in team history that the Flyers will miss the playoffs for five consecutive seasons.
The first time was from the 1989-1990 season through 1993-94.
The difference is that after that 1993-94 season, the Flyers then qualified for the playoffs 11 consecutive seasons, including a loss in the 1997 Stanley Cup final to the Detroit Red Wings.
The Red Wings are an example of how difficult it is to maintain success in the NHL and also an example of how quickly things can go south.
Detroit qualified for the Stanley Cup playoffs 25 consecutive years from 1990-91 through 2015-16. During that time, the Red Wings won four Stanley Cup championships and appeared in the final on two other occasions.
Yet, Detroit hasn’t returned to the playoffs since the 2015-16 season.
The Flyers would need to vastly improve next season to end their playoff drought.
Moreso, they must rebuild with a new coach. John Tortorella, who seemed ill-equipped to take over a young, rebuilding team, was fired last week, failing to complete his third season with the Flyers.
Tortorella was supposed to bring toughness to the organization, but what happened is that there wasn’t enough development of the young players under his guidance.
This is a coach with a great pedigree, having won the Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004. Yet his comments last week seemed to seal his fate.
Tortorella may have done himself in with post-game comments following a 7-2 loss in Toronto, that extended the Flyers record in a 12-game stretch to 1-10-1.
“This falls on me,” he said, according to the Athletic. “I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where 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.”
It wasn’t a big surprise that he was fired two days later?
When a coach admits that he isn’t interested in coaching during such a losing season, then the Flyers had littler recourse.
He was fired with another year left on his contract and associate coach Brad Shaw was named to replace him on an interim basis.
The Flyers were 28-36-9 when he was fired and finished 97-107-33 during his nearly three-year reign.
The one strong season he had with the Flyers was last year, when the Flyers went 38-31-11 and appeared heading to the postseason before a late-season collapse.
So, whoever is the next coach will have to be somebody who can develop and grow the young players, led by rookie Matvei Michkov, who the Flyers view as a potential All-Star.
No matter how the young players fare, the Flyers won’t be able to challenge for the playoffs until they fix the goalie situation.
Samuel Ersson has not proven to be a consistent starting goalie. This year’s backups Ivan Fedotov and Aleksei Kolosov, also haven’t stood out.
General manager Daniel Briere has plenty of work to do. The Flyers need a coach who will work the young players hard, but not play mind games with them, a tactic that Tortorella was accused of doing.
This team still has a long way to go, but they made the right move in removing a coach who wasn’t suited to guide the Flyers during such a difficult transition.
Photo: Courtesy of Philadelphia Flyers' Twitter/X
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Author: Marc Narducci
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