FLYERS COACHING STAFF EXPECTED TO RETURN

MONTREAL, QC — On the heels of winning just two of their last 11 outings, the floor has completely fallen out from the Philadelphia Flyers’ playoff hopes.

After locking down the third seed in the Metropolitan Division for the majority of the season, the Flyers now find themselves one point back of the Pittsburgh Penguins for the second wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference with just two games left in their season.

The downward spiral over the last several weeks has called Head Coach John Tortorella’s future into question, with many speculating about how much time he may have left behind the bench.

Confirming with team sources, I have been told there is no plan to remove Tortorella as Head Coach before the beginning of next season. This includes the ongoing rumours of him transitioning to a front office job, which I’ve been told has no truth to it. This is not in the cards for next season, and I have not received any indication there are plans for it down the line.

Additionally, Assistant Coaches Brad Shaw, Rocky Thompson and Darryl Williams “should” return to the Flyers’ bench next season.

After being in the Jack Adams conversation for a good chunk of the season, the vibe around Tortorella has done a 180 since the Trade Deadline. In addition to the team’s record taking a massive nosedive, Tortorella’s off ice antics – including his suspension after refusing to leave the bench after being ejected, sparring with the media, scratching captain Sean Couturier, and calling out his team abrasively in public – resulted in the 2004 Stanley Cup winner becoming a lightning rod for the media across the league.

Despite Tortorella coming off as a loose cannon at times, he knows exactly what he is doing. As someone whom I’ve heard enjoys the drama and theatrics that come with the job, Tortorella has played up his antics as a way to deflect attention and blame away from the team taking a massive downturn.

Tortorella has been at this game for a long time, and if he believes he needs to act as a human shield for his players during a tough stretch, he’ll do what’s necessary. Tortorella has also made the Flyers relevant (for better or worse) again after close to a decade of them lurking in the shadows as far as league attention. Though it may not always be for the most positive reasons, the Flyers are one of those teams that make the league better when they have eyes on them.

In regard to him losing the room, I’ve gotten no indication that is the case, either. As some of the players have already mentioned publicly, Tortorella is saying nothing to the media that he hasn’t already made known behind the scenes. The team’s losing streak is not the coach losing his players – unfortunately, the cream has just risen to the top.

As Tortorella alluded to earlier in the week, the loss of goaltender Carter Hart threw the entire goaltending situation into flux. Sam Ersson, in his first full NHL season, was having a remarkable year up until February; since then, his play has fallen off. While Ersson has not been great the last month or so, it is important to remember that he was put in a tough situation.

The team is aware that they overplayed Ersson given the circumstances, and somewhere along the way his confidence went down the train. Neither Cal Petersen nor Felix Sandstrom was capable of giving adequate goaltending to be reliable backups, resulting in Ersson playing more games than he should have been expected to. In the case of Petersen and Sandstrom, their returns to the club beyond this season are anything but a guarantee.

The arrival of Ivan Fedotov two weeks ago was expected to right the ship, but after a promising first showing against the New York Islanders in relief for Ersson, his game has been non-NHL caliber; he currently sports a .811 Save Percentage and a 4.95 Goals Against Average in three appearances this season. This is not to have been unexpected, mind you, as adapting from the European to the North American ice is well documented as being extremely difficult for goaltenders - especially without a full training camp and jumping in near the end of the season, like in the case of Fedotov.

Overall, the Flyers have a dreadful .781 team SV% over the last eight games.

Is goaltending the only reason for the team’s collapse? Of course not, but it is hard to deny the impact it has had. There are easily four or five games you can pick out since the NHL Trade Deadline that the Flyers were the better team but lost based almost primarily on goaltending. Even assuming they could have come away with half of those games, for argument’s sake, the team would still be in the playoff picture.

Does this absolve the coaches of blame? Also no, but it is no secret that this was a team “overachieving” all season based on pure talent. If a team lacking high end talent starts to get league-worst goaltending, it is only reasonable to assume that a free fall is incoming.

Thompson, in particular, has taken a lot of shrapnel as the powerplay coach, which once again finds itself at the bottom of the league in overall efficiency. There is only so much shuffling of the deck chairs a coach can do and at the end of the day, the Flyers lack severe talent. There is room for improvement on the coaching side, but this is predominantly a personnel issue – something that will be addressed in the off season.

As much as this collapse is alarming, bad stretches of play happen to every team. Had this happened in mid-January and the Flyers rebounded to finish 12th or so in the Eastern Conference, alarm bells wouldn’t be ringing.

Personally, I’d say this is a team that slightly overachieved from where I thought they’d be from a standings perspective. But because this will be the lasting memory from this season, the last thought will be the sky is falling, even if the end result is more or less where the team was expected to end up before the season started.

For a young team looking to develop, this will serve as a learning experience. A tough one to swallow in the immediate future, but a potentially beneficial and educational one in the long term. Will just missing out on the playoffs serve as the same lesson rather than losing in the first round? Only time will tell, but it will be how the team responds next season. I’m a firm believer that a group needs to learn heartbreak and become battle tested; this stretch to end the year can certainly do that.

And above all else, this run has highlighted what we (and the team) already knew: the talent needs to improve. Not to say the team didn’t know this before – trust me, they did – but if there was any doubt, this certainly reassures that. Though goaltending has been the driving force in this collapse, there are other needs that have risen to the surface and should be addressed this summer.