There was one thing that the Philadelphia Flyers failed at more than any other team in the entire NHL this past season. Despite being a decent-to-good team for most of the year, and almost making the playoffs, the Flyers had the league’s worst power play. There is no way around it — they completely sucked when it came to scoring with one more player on the ice.
The Flyers’ 12.2 percent conversion rate was the worst by a mile (the next-worst was the Columbus Blue Jackets and their 15.1 percent) and it is now the third consecutive year where this team sits at the bottom of the power play rankings.
So, naturally, it was a point of contention when head coach John Tortorella took the stand and was available to the media for his final availability of the season.
The bench boss made it clear that this is going to be their approach: They aren’t going to make sweeping changes to the tactics and they are simply betting on the percentages regressing to the mean and becoming just what they should be, given their talent.
“Our power play cannot be as bad as it was this year with the people we had. So, we have to look at ourselves with this here,” Tortorella said Friday.
In theory, it sort of makes sense. According to Evolving-Hockey, the Flyers generated 53.02 expected goals on the power play this season. Compare that to the actual 31 goals that they scored, and that’s a whole lot of points left on the board. Even if they just became a below-average power play team, that should have led to more wins.
So right now, Tortorella and his staff are banking on that happening. There will be no changes when it comes to the personnel on the ice or on the bench, as we know now that Rocky Thompson — who is in charge of the power play — will be remaining there for the 2024-25 season.
“I think we need to have a discussion on our power play, but Rocky Thompson is one hell of a coach. He’s so frustrated, as the players are, as we all are, with our power play. And I’ve got a general manager that was one of the best power play guys in the game,” Tortorella said. “So we’re going to sit as an organization with those people and just discuss it this summer. I think it’s a big point of emphasis for us, our power play.”
At least this team knows it is incredibly important to at least get that one thing down pat if they want to at least look like a competitive team next season.
And it might not have just been the power play, either.
“These are also special teams,” Tortorella added. “I think I made a mistake this year on our 3-on-3 and our 4-on-4 that we did not practice it enough, It’s sometimes hard to practice because you’ve got other things going on and sometimes that just may be a couple of minutes of the game, but I think it’s so important. I think I failed the team this year that we did not do enough work on that.”
Towards the end of the season, it was almost comical how quickly games would end in overtime. As soon as the puck was dropped during 3-on-3 action, the Flyers would just scatter across the ice like mice in a subway tunnel and allow whatever team they were facing, to score almost immediately. It was brutal.
To go from a team with a powerful “power kill” that appeared to score shorthanded goals at whim, to just deflate to a nothing team if it wasn’t during 5-on-5, was concerning. Hopefully, that gets addressed and if not, well, at least we can maybe start researching top prospects for 2025.
