There was the annual bag skate Thursday morning which kicked off the 2024-25 Philadelphia Flyers training camp. And while a few guys struggled, nobody ended up in an ambulance or given last rites on the ice or near the boards. Here then is a recap of what coach John Tortorella said to the assembled media about the skate, about Matvei Michkov and the state of the Flyers. And Sean Couturier and Rasmus Ristolainen spoke about recovering from their injuries also.
Rizzo and Couturier noticed by Tortorella during bag skate
The first day of the annual bag skate came and went, leaving a lot of the 58 Flyer players not collapsing on the ice or needing last rites but just physically spent and exhausted. Coach John Tortorella put the skaters (divided into three 45-minute practices) through their paces and for the most part seemed pleased with how most of them finished the ordeal with Tortorella’s rope being extended, resulting in a larger amount of room to skate the longer the practice went.
Tortorella did make note of how Massimo Rizzo finished the skate, using extremely short strides to make it to the end of the gruelling, challenging skate. “I tell them before the skate, ‘I don’t care what it looks like, I really don’t give a shit about the times, I just want you to finish the skate. I don’t want you to give in.'” Tortorella also saw Sean Couturier on the first two reps of the skate and initially thought, “Oh shit, because it looked like he was going to die pretty quickly but he fought through it.” But after day one on the ice, it’s a plus that nobody was injured, just totally spent and exhausted.
Tortorella not teaching Michkov offense
Flyers coach John Tortorella spoke with the media after the annual bag skate Thursday morning. He says he’s been pleased from what he’s seen with new forward Matvei Michkov after watching Michkov play against the Rangers’ rookies Friday evening in Allentown.
“I thought he played really well in the rookie game, Lappy poured him ice time in the third period and I thought he got better and better as the game went on,” Tortorella said. “You can see his skill, you can see that right away. It’s really, really good his family’s here. I think brother and mom, brother and school, he’s picked up the language pretty quickly. Has hung with the guys for a couple of months now which has been very important.
“My initial look at him is he loves playing hockey. He’s a hockey player and wants to be on the ice all the time. I’m not hanging with him, again I don’t know him that well. I’ve spoken to him four or five times in very short little spurts. But he seems like a really good kid that just wants to play hockey. So I’m really anxious to see what he is.”
Tortorella says Michkov fared well in the skate Thursday morning and “fought through it,” getting some feedback from Tortorella while “guys were trying to help him out through the skate.” Tortorella also said that he’ll primarily deal with Michkov in terms of when he doesn’t have the puck, not trying to dictate how he plays when he has it.
“One of the biggest responsibilities of a coaching staff, not just me, but of a coaching staff, is to teach young players away from the puck,” he says. “I’m not going to sit and go over tape as far as offensive stuff with him. I’m going to hopefully sit back and watch him do some really good things. But the other part of the game is a big responsibility of ours is to teach that, not just me but the coaching staff.
“And the other most important to me right away with a 19 year old kid is understand how you carry yourself, understand what it is to be a pro. All the things no one really talks about because it’s not on the ice. Those are important things for us to teach him. I think so far he’s very receptive, I think he’s handled himself really well in a pretty intense situation for a kid that’s 19. Coming across, coming early, there’s just a lot of things going around him.”
Flyers hoping to generate while grinding without losing pace
Although not really rehashing much of the disappointment from how last season ended, Tortorella was quick to own up to his own miscues, including not figuring out how to get the team to play the tougher, grinding style of games a lot of teams gearing up for the postseason play down the stretch. “I did not do a good enough job in making sure we could play another way at a certain time of the year. I think that hurt us and I think our goaltending it struggled and rightfully so. It’s not to blame Ers, I wore him out. But at that point in time that was the decision we made. We felt he was the best one to give us an opportunity. And it was force fed to him. That hurt us.
“But the one that has bothered me all summer is I think I let the team down and I didn’t put enough effort or enough focus into rebounds, deflections and playing under the hash and creating some offense through some grind when we needed it. We can talk about our goaltending, it did, it struggled at the end of the year. But we also didn’t score any goals either. So that falls on me, that’s something I’ve thought about. It’s going to be a point of emphasis this year as we start.”
Finally, Tortorella said that the team, while terrific and one of the better teams in the league in terms of generating offense off the rush, needs to figure out how to score some dirtier or greasier goals if they want to improve on last season’s performance and not falter down the homestretch.
“We’re playing fast,” Tortorella said. “We’re going to continue to play fast, we’re not going to be safe, we’re going to continue to work on that. We need to score too. I know we were one of the best teams transition wise and in creating offense but we didn’t finish. We need to find a way to finish. I think a guy who scores 15 goals needs to score 18, 19, 20 goals. We very rarely get deflection goals last year, we’re just not around there enough. I think that has to change a little bit without us losing our transition. If it’s one of those grinding games, we got to be able to stand in there and do that. I don’t think we did a good enough job of that. And I think it falls on me because I don’t think I put enough emphasis on that because I was watching so many good things going on with our transition.”
Flyers need to improve from within, no outside help coming
The coach also address the upcoming season in terms of the overall bigger picture of the Flyers’ ongoing rebuild while accepting the simple fact the team’s cap situation this coming season and next year isn’t going to result in massive personnel changes. “Year one we need to subtract, we subtracted people, really good people. They did not fit with our hockey club. Last year was kids, developing kids and our kids grew. I wish we could’ve played a few more games. We didn’t.
“This year, no free agents. Michkov is the only one coming in. We don’t have any money, we won’t have money next year. Now the kids have got to get better. They grew, we got to ask them to be better because this is kind of our group. There may be a couple of guys here and there depending on what happens in camp. I’m anxious to see some of these exhibition games to see if that changes something. but a lot of our lineup is going to be a lot like last year. So we have to get better because there’s no help coming through free agency, not for a couple of years. That’s just where we are as an organization and quite honestly I’m glad it’s that way. When you think you need a free agency now you forget about the process of building. We still have a lot of work to do in growing with our youth.”
Risto eager to play season opener
Defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen, coming off surgery on his elbow, is hoping to be in the lineup with the Flyers hit the ice for their regular season opener Oct. 11 in Vancouver. “Stuff happens that you can’t control and sometimes it’s bad luck too,” he says. “But I’m extremely excited and the big plan is to stay healthy.” The defenseman described having two injuries in basically the same place, resulting in having additional surgery done after the initial surgery to try to resolve the issue didn’t quite solve it. He had the first surgery during the season but had to wait a month between the two surgeries.
In terms of Thursday’s skate, Ristolainen approached it with a simple mindset. “I just go balls out the first rep and then we’ll see what happens after,” he said to some laughter. “Then try to finish.”
Couturier says physically, mentally “over the hump”
Couturier says he thinks he’s physically and mentally over the pressure of last season and is looking forward to the upcoming season. He said his injury was a “lower ab core injury” and wasn’t sure on the muscle. He said he had surgery on the same area 10 years ago. “I mean obviously it was bugging me a little bit last year a little bit so I had to get that fixed right after the year,” he said. “It’s one of those injuries you can try to rehab and maintain depending on the symptoms or how symptomatic you are. But I just wanted to get it done with and move on. I’m glad I did. I feel good.” When asked if his injury was comparable to Claude Giroux’s core injury, Courturier says his recovery time was far less than the months it took Giroux to rehab following his surgery. He also says the injury began to become noticeable to him in December, which would certainly correlate with how his play began to decline after January.
Couturier says his off season training was basically on par with previous offseasons prior to the surgery. He also says his focus is hoping to play a full 82-game season and be at his best. Finally, when asked about Michkov’s skill level, Couturier says while he only has been on the ice with him a few times, he says skilled players like former Flyers captain Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek come to mind based on “his hands and his vision” but says people have to be patient to “let him grow into the player he can be.”
