When John Tortorella was hired, the Flyers knew they were getting a coach known for squeezing every ounce of compete out of his teams, no matter the talent level on the roster. It’s a reputation that precedes him, and it never comes easy. His training camps are infamously brutal, so much so that the anticipation leading up to his first one with Philadelphia had players talking.
“I think this will be the toughest training camp any of us other than Cam [Atkinson] have gone through,” Kevin Hayes said. “I think that will bring us together.”
It’s ironic looking back for Kevin Hayes to have felt that way, considering the complicated relationship he eventually had with his coach, but that’s a story for another day.
In both seasons with Tortorella at the helm, day one of training camp consisted of strictly conditioning drills, without even using a puck. According to NBC Sports Philadelphia’s Jordan Hall, Tortorella’s version of the “bag skate” consists of “17 minutes of laps” of varying distances and “goal line to goal line” up and backs.
This year, he elevated the intensity further by increasing the number of laps, demanding yet another level from his club.
“I thought they could handle a couple more reps,” Tortorella said. “It’s more of a test. I felt our guys could handle it and they did. Six is hard. Two more, why not? They went about it the right way.”
As for why he pushes so hard, Tortorella said he likes to get players used to physical and mental tests early on. After all, the start of training camp is just the beginning of a long road of hurdles a team will face throughout a full 82 game schedule.
“There’s going to be harder skates than today as we go through camp. It’s not to pound our chest and just bury them. We want to test them and it develops a camaraderie. They kind of look at you like, ‘You’re not going to get to me.’ I think that’s the attitude we’re trying to develop is a will.”
It’s difficult to fault any coach for making conditioning a priority in the early going. It’s hardly an innovative concept; other teams do it too. Still, Tortorella gets his reputation for pushing just a little bit harder than his peers.
Add to that the fact that this Flyers team was never going to be able to coast and win games on skill alone, and you have a group pushing themselves to the brink every night to capture two points. Management has often said, though they lack top-end talent, they expect to play hard and compete. It’s all part of the “standard” Tortorella is so focused on, about playing “the right way.” But could these measures be counterproductive?
No one needs reminding that the Flyers have lost eight of their last nine. Despite a surprising win in New York on Thursday night, they’ve fallen out of playoff positioning in spectacular fashion in just a couple of weeks.
Tortorella-led teams limping to the finish line has become a trend in recent years. Ironically, after practice on April 3, Torts admitted that a common criticism of his coaching career is players quitting on him and how that stigma “follows him around.” Whether or not that’s the case here is pure speculation, but perhaps wearing his team down before season’s end is the real issue.
This year’s collapse does warrant some context, however. The Flyers lost their franchise netminder, and replaced him with a quartet of goalies that have all underperformed, delivering the league’s worst save percentage by a comfortable margin.
They traded away one of their most effective defensemen in Sean Walker and, in the process, broke up their strongest pairing. At the time of Walker’s departure, three other starting defensemen were out of the lineup, leaving them effectively without two-thirds of their defensive corps.
Their forward group has mostly forgotten how to finish, with guys like Sean Couturier, Morgan Frost, and Joel Farabee disappearing on the scoresheet. Travis Konecny hasn’t looked the same since returning from an injury and may still be playing hurt.
Of course, there’s also the argument that the Flyers were never supposed to be here. They were supposed to be a bottom-feeder, but they punched above their weight class and are now finally coming back down to Earth. There’s some credence to that claim, since all of the teams that have fizzled out under Tortorella’s watch haven’t been particularly talented.
But throughout the course of a season, expectations change. It’s hard to imagine that a Flyers team that played themselves into a playoff spot over 70 games would just suddenly implode because they weren’t very good all along. In fact, the underlying metrics have been rather strong and point to one glaring flaw.
Still, save percentage is largely a team stat, and it doesn’t tell the whole story. Tortorella himself admitted before Thursday’s game that, though it’s been a struggle between the pipes, they had to start playing better in front of their goalie and regain structure. Nevertheless, it’s near impossible to win games when close to 25% of shots are ending up in the back of your net.
It does feel like this entire season has been a pressure cooker waiting to explode, and we’re seeing the fallout of it all now. This Flyers team is a sum of all its parts, and it’s unfair to point to one particular thing as the sole culprit for their struggles. But Tortorella’s last four seasons indicate a negative trend that he will need to correct. A full season is 82 games; it can’t stop at 70.
Easier said than done, obviously, because what’s the alternative? Coaching 80% and saving the remainder for a playoff push? Certainly not. There is no easy answer, but the consensus is the Flyers have hit the proverbial “wall”, and it couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Amazingly, with their win on Thursday night, Tortorella has a chance to buck that trend right now. The Flyers aren’t dead yet, and it would be a fitting end to a wacky season to see them sneak in. Tortorella hasn’t pushed all the right buttons in his second campaign as head coach, but these final two games are an opportunity to get it right one more time.
