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Quick Hits: Road Trip Prep, Tortorella and More |
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Quick Hits: April 4, 2024
1) The Flyers held an optional practice on Wednesday at the FTC in Voorhees. They will practice again on Thursday before departing for Buffalo. The team faces a crucial back-to-back weekend set with games against the Sabres on Friday and the Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday.
2) Sean Couturier left Monday's game against the Islanders during the first period with an apparent upper-body injury. He was unable to participate in Wednesday's practice. Flyers head coach John Tortorella deemed the issue "day-to-day" at his press conference on Wednesday.
3) Couturier was one of various banged-up Flyers players who rested on Wednesday. Also not skating: Travis Konecny, Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Owen Tippett, Scott Laughton, and Garnet Hathaway. All but Couturier seem likely to play on Friday in Buffalo.
4) I had no issue with Tortorella's fired-up postgame press conference on Monday or his followup statements on Wednesday. I do think a little context is in order. After the Flyers terrible performance against Chicago last Saturday, Tortorella generally tried to take an understanding approach, discussing how some plays who've been asked to take extremely high workloads seemed a bit worn-down in the relentless stretch drive schedule. He specifically mentioned Sanheim and York (both of whom are playing through nagging physical issues on top of logging massive ice time and playing the toughest matchups).
On Monday, Tortorella was understandably upset with the way his team largely left Ivan Fedotov -- making his belated NHL debut under the most adverse of circumstances, in relief of a struggling Samuel Ersson in a vital divisional game -- to fend for himself in the second period. Tortorella deemed it a "soft" effort by his team. Fedotov alone was the reason why the Flyers only trailed 3-2 (on an Anders Lee deflection goal that no goaltender would have been able to prevent) entering the third period.
Tortorella praised his team's comeback in the third period but backtracked it slightly to say that he liked the push that some players showed in crunch time but was still unhappy with other players. Without naming names, he questioned whether these players have the "balls" to step up in the season's biggest games. He also said some of the things he's seen down the stretch drive make him question whether these players should be considered part of the solution moving forward.
4) To which player or players was Tortorella referring? I can only venture guesses, and those guesses are based on a combination of productivity in the last five weeks and usage in Monday's game. As such, I suspect that Joel Farabee was at the top of the list of Flyers players with whom Tortorella is currently unhappy.
For one thing, Farabee started Monday's game on the fourth line and played only a combined 7:35 of ice time through the first 40 minutes of the game. Moreover, in the Flyers last 16 games, Farabee is tied ninth on the team with five points (4g. 1a). He stepped up big in Boston with a two-goal night on March 16, but otherwise, he's seemed to be pressing. Farabee is also a traditional minus-11 since March 1. Going back to the All-Star break, he has nine points (4g, 5a, minus-14) in 26 games.
As such, I suspect that the coach has had a building sense of frustration and discontentment with Farabee. The player put together a consistently strong pre-All Star Break portion of the season, and the expectation was that the best was yet to come. (By the way, it still could be, but with six games remaining and the Flyers now in a dogfight to qualify for the playoffs, the time has to be right now).
It's not a wild guess to put out the idea that Tortorella is concerned about the play of Travis Konecny since his return from a six-game injury absence. His point totals are OK (11 points in 13 games) but he's seemed to be laboring physically at times and he's appeared frustrated -- so has Farabee -- on the ice on several occasions. On Monday, after turning the puck over in the sequence leading up to Lee's goal, Konecny was benched for the first 7:43 of the third period. Thereafter, he played a lot the rest of the way (as did Farabee and other Flyers on whom the Flyers rely for offense).
5) Morgan Frost scored the tying goal in the final 10 seconds of regulation -- first tipping Jamie Drysdale's point shot on net and then staying with his own rebound to score -- but then combined with Drysdale for the game-losing sequence in overtime. On the "tired" ice, Drysdale made a poor -- but not unplayable -- pass to Frost. The puck went off the heel of Frost's stick directly to Kyle Palmieiri. Frost appeared to already be looking to start a potential 2-on-1 rush rather than being sure he was able to control the puck. Frost then went to Palmieri and Brock Nelson was left alone for the winning goal.
After practice on Wednesday, Frost took full accountability for his mistake in overtime, saying he'd f-ed up the play and pledging to make amends to his teammates and the fans alike.
On the whole, Frost has been one of the Flyers' top players down the stretch. He's one point behind Owen Tippett for the team scoring lead since March 4, tied with Tippett (19 points apiece) for second on the team behind Konecny in pos-All Star Break scoring and tied with Konecny (30 points each) for the club scoring lead over the last 38 games.
So while I don't think Frost played particularly well against the Islanders on Monday with the major exception of stepping up for the tying goal, I don't think he was one of the players that Tortorella was questioning for his moxie to step up during the most crucial portion of the season.
6) I thought these were Tortorella's most interesting comments on Monday: "“I don’t think we’re ready to be better and that’s my problem with us right now. And it is my job. I have not done a good enough job to get them over the hump after playing those seven games [against the top teams in the East] and then each game as it goes down — we have six left. I haven’t done a good enough job to make them understand we have to be different now. We have to be at a different level. That’s my frustration with me. And that’s my frustration with the team."
Again, context is necessary. After the Chicago game, Tortorella was asked if he felt the team had not been come out properly prepared to play against the Canadiens and the Blackhawks after the seven-game stretch against the East's top teams. Tortorella immediately shot down that suggestion.
"It wasn't the prep," he said.
That didn't have a ring of self-accountability to it. The Flyers exited the first period against both Montreal and Chicago staring at two-goal deficits. In Montreal, the Flyers mustered an anemic five shots on goal in the opening 20 minutes. They fared no better against the lowly Blackhawks. This seemed to be a time for the coach to fall on his sword along the same lines as he was (rightly) critical of his team. Something along the lines of, "We all needed to be better these last two games, because we didn't seem ready to play for whatever reason."
On Wednesday, without referencing his self-absolution from the previous Saturday, Tortorella included his own failure to get his team reset to face the challenge of the games following the seven-game gauntlet. It was 100 percent the right thing to do. A coach who beats the accountability drum nonstop MUST start with self-accountability. On Wednesday, he corrected a misstep from five nights earlier by doing just that.
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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