Tortorella: Flyers Have to Evolve, Fit More Playing Styles

The first day of Flyers training camp, head coach John Tortorella is the star of the show. Check that, the infamous rope he has used for his annual skating gauntlet is.

As the players go through the ultimate conditioning test to get their work started for the 2024-25 season, Tortorella has had time for his own reflections. 

Last season, the Flyers were not eliminated from playoff contention until the final game of the season. With six games remaining, they were still holding the third spot in the Metropolitan Division. An eight-game losing streak at the wrong time put them on the path to ultimately miss the playoffs.

With all of that in mind, what could the Flyers have done differently? Tortorella had a specific area of focus.

“The one that has bothered me all summer, I think I let the team down and I didn’t put enough focus into rebounds, deflections, playing under the hash and creating offense through some grind when we needed it,” Tortorella said. “We can talk about our goaltending, it struggled at the end of the year. We didn’t score any goals. That’s why you end up wherever we were. That falls on me. That’s something I’ve thought about, and it’s going to be a point of emphasis this year as we start.”

That’s not to say that the Flyers were not able to produce at all. They were an excellent transition team last season. They set an NHL record with five penalty shot goals. They had 16 shorthanded goals. But scoring goals as the neutral zone was taken away, allowing for fewer transitions, and a league-worst power play slowed them down. 

It showed down the stretch. In the final 11 games of the season, the Flyers scored just 24 goals. They allowed 45 goals in that same stretch.

“I think it’s knowing how to play different ways too. That’s eaten me alive this summer, that we couldn’t score goals,” Tortorella said. “We couldn’t help [Sam Ersson]. We knew the situation we were in with our goaltending, but we couldn’t help him. I felt the head coach let the team down in not highlighting how we needed to score other goals. So that certainly comes into play.”

That’s where the page turns to this season. It’s now Tortorella’s third season as head coach of the Flyers. The coaching staff has remained the same. Many of the players are returning from last season. And while the injection of Matvei Michkov into the lineup can certainly help, this is a season that will be defined by continued growth.

“We’re playing fast. We’re going to continue to play fast. We’re not going to be safe. Finishing is a very important thing. We need to score too. I know we were one of the best teams transition-wise in creating offense, but we didn’t finish. We need to find a way to finish. I think guys that score 15 goals need to score 18, 19, 20 goals. We very rarely get deflection goals. We’re not around there enough. I think that has to change a little bit without losing our transition. So it’s a combination of both.

“This year, no free agents, Mich 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’ve got to ask to be better. It’s just where we are as an organization. Quite honestly, I’m glad it’s that way. I think when you think you need a free agent now, you forget about the process of building. We still have a lot of work to do in growing with our youth. So this year, [Owen Tippett], [Tyson] Foerster, Cam York, all of those guys to name a few, we’re really happy with your progression, but it’s not good enough. We’ve got to keep on getting better. And that includes the coaching staff in how we coach. We have to do things differently also.”

Tortorella is especially trying to put an emphasis on this style of play, and evolving the team to be more prepared to play different types of games, since there is so much practice time. As you get into the grind of the season, the time to work on such things starts to run out. The Flyers know their transition game was solid last season. Now they work on adding the elements from around the net and being able to adapt.

“Big part of our job is defining momentums,” Tortorella said. “I don’t think we practiced enough around our goal, doing things around our net, deflections and rebounds and playing on the inside. I don’t think it’s taking anything away from transition. I think it’s how the game is going, you’ve got to be able to play in there sometimes. If it’s one of those grinding games, we’ve 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 didn’t put enough emphasis on that because I was watching so many good things going on with our transition.” 

For many players, the end of Thursday’s camp sessions come as a relief. The skate test is over. The gauntlet is behind them. Now the work that Tortorella is describing, the play around the net, can get started as pucks hit the ice on Friday.

Kevin Durso is Flyers insider for 97.3 ESPN. Follow him on social media @Kevin_Durso.