Flyers Now 11th in Points % in East; Tortorella Still an Infallible Genius?

[PatriceBergeronFan]

Philly is a terrible roster. Coaches can only do so much...

 

[LaP]

A team that was supposed to be bottom 5.
No superstar
Main goalie disappeared*
Seller at the tdl and get f***ed with 0 return.
Still one point out of playoff.

Jesus what do you need?
He piloting an Airbus with two ducktaped scooters in place of the engines.

They look like a bad unorganized ECHL team tonight there's no excuse for that. The team has bailed out and this should not be a surprise the way Tort behaved in interviews for the last month.

 

[Will Hunting]

Hats off to the Flyers. They had an amazing season. It´s just a little weird to go on a 8th game losing streak at the end, losing to Columbus 6-1, Chicago 5-1 or Montreal 6-0. Still a fantastic season by the Flyers. Tortorella for Jack Adams.

 

[Fight4yourRight]

Hats off to the Flyers. They had an amazing season. It´s just a little weird to go on a 8th game losing streak at the end, losing to Columbus 6-1, Chicago 5-1 or Montreal 6-0. Still a fantastic season by the Flyers. Tortorella for Jack Adams.

You missed the /s

 

[Leafsfan74]

Torts: "If you think you are going to quit on me you've got the wrong coach!"

Next Game Flyers Team: "Hold my beer"

6-0 Habs and it isn't over yet...

 

[Will Hunting]

You missed the /s

I mean, they are the laughing stock of the league, or at least they were supposed to be so. They just managed to do it in a very specific way this year. But they did it

 

[Rich Nixon]

All 10 of you? ( I had to, sorry)

No apologies, it's fair. There used to be more of us, but the other two were smart enough to give up rooting for this team years ago.

 

[red devil]

 

[Block]

No apologies, it's fair. There used to be more of us, but the other two were smart enough to give up rooting for this team years ago.

No, no, I was making a literacy joke. Much as I hated visiting Flyers fans growing up near DC, you have always had a very loud and large fan base.

 

[Leafsfan74]

I look forward to the post game questions

 

[Rich Nixon]

No, no, I was making a literacy joke.

Yes, so was I.

 

[Givememoneyback]

For what it's worth the Flyers played well vs. the Pantherz this e year.

 

[Rich Nixon]

Philly is a terrible roster. Coaches can only do so much...

It's not terrible, it's just nothing. They're a team entirely comprised of middle-6 wingers and #4 defensemen. They've got the perfect recipe to win 33-37 games every season. Not weak enough to bottom out, not talented enough to do anything interesting.

 

[The Grim Reaper]

I'm a writer, apologies in advance for the length.

Look, Torts does what he does. For a time, he can galvanize a team to overachieve—that was the story of his CBJ tenure. He got them to 50 (!) wins before Panarin even got there. That's impressive, and that's to his credit.

But it comes at a cost. He will lean as hard as humanly possible on whatever's working in the short term, long term be damned. That's not a great thing to do on a thin, ostensibly-rebuilding team.

Couturier, for instance, was nearly two f***ing years out of the league. He's diminished, but still useful—a terrific defensive center. The Flyers are severely lacking in center depth—Couturier, Frost, Poehling, Laughton/Cates (who are both better at wing). So what does Torts do with that?

Tortorella spent the first leg of the season scratching Frost for no expressed reason and, having limited his own options, absolutely riding Couturier. For the first half of the season Couturier was one of the highest-played forwards in the league. Some nights he eclipsed 25 minutes.

Common sense tells you that, if you have a veteran player who has had 2 back surgeries and 0 games played in nearly 2 calendar years, you might want to manage his workload out of the gate. Tortorella did the dead opposite, and the fatigue built up. Couturier didn't fall off a cliff this season, he declined over a long period of time. You can't tell me that his usage didn't contribute mightily to that.

Meanwhile, Frost has repeatedly expressed that he didn't know exactly why he was scratched (Couturier echoed that when he was as well). And when Frost finally was given proper top 6 usage he...produced like a top-6 center. The Flyers took off this season and held that playoff spot for so long because, with two legitimate top 6 centers instead of one, they were a better team. Since demoting Couturier, they collectively have fallen off a cliff.

This is the stuff that is so maddening, but it's even more upsetting in the context. That context being: What's the f***ing point?

Those of us who have followed this team for 20 or 30 years or more don't want to be lectured about having pride. Until about ten years ago, we might've been the proudest damn fanbase in the league relative to success. We've lost twice as many Stanley Cup Finals as most teams in this league have even appeared in. From 1973 until 2012, there were only a handful of seasons where the Flyers were not in the conversation

So as far as moral-victorying their way to the playoffs...we don't care! We don't give a f*** about SCRAPPY UNDERDOGGIN' our way to a first round splatter. That's the story of the last decade. We're over it. We used to eat Eastern Conference Final losses for breakfast.

The reason so many of us are comfortable selling assets and bottoming out for a bit is because that's at least something that resembles a path towards getting the high-end talent this franchise needs to return to the top.

Instead, these guys are rudderless. Torts was hired over the last GM's head; the current GM and President of Hockey Operations were internal hires because the vapid cable company ownership conditioned hiring based on keeping Torts around. Meaning every outside option turned them down, and the guys they have now are inexperienced mascots who haven't displayed anything in the way of competence or vision yet.

There's a lot to it, and I'll stop myself there, but...it's easy from the outside to go "what's there to be mad about?" But when you follow the ins and outs of this team, the answer is basically...everything. Bad ownership, bad management, no clear future. They're a sales and marketing operation that treats players like shit and fans like exploitable marks.

I'm an Eagles fan, it took me two days to read this. Good post.

 

[Miller Time]

They look like a bad unorganized ECHL team tonight there's no excuse for that. The team has bailed out and this should not be a surprise the way Tort behaved in interviews for the last month.

Indeed. I like torts in general, but his ego went on overdrive the last few months... Lost the script completely and it looks like he lost the trust of the men he's responsible to lead.

Might be time for him to hang it up unless he can find some humility and learn from this screw up

 

[red devil]

 

[The Grim Reaper]

 

[A1LeafNation]

This streak matches the Sharks at the beginning of the year.

Flyers Jersey on the ice...in Montreal.

 

[Spring in Fialta]

A Flyers fan just tossed his jersey on Montreal ice. That is a rough image.

 

[red devil]

 

[shaner8989]

Ersson and Fedatov are both ECHL level goalies

 

[SomeDude]

Philly is a terrible roster. Coaches can only do so much...

Like bench the captain shortly after you give him the C and lose the locker room.

 

[Jee]

I feel violated for watching the Flyers play, my baby jesus

 

[centipede2233]

the hart LOA was too much to overcome for this roster…

 

[Winston Wolf]

First, I'd just like to apologize to the Coach Tortorella enthusiasts who were offended by my thread title. I didn't know that a bit of hyperbole would affect such a group of gritty, sandpapery individuals.

Second, I'd like to reiterate that I never criticized Tortorella in my post. I merely posited that if he was given all of the credit for the team's earlier success and any criticism of him at the time was pointedly dismissed, does he not now deserve criticism by these same people as his team epically implodes?

Third, many still continue to parrot the idea that the Flyers were expected to be terrible and if not for the grace of Coach Tortorella himself, the team would've finished a few spots down the standings than they will now. This narrative again was presupposed by the idea that Couturier was a non-factor, not a top 6 center playing 20 hard minutes a night for the first 50+ games of the season. Or that Sean Walker was a cap dump and would't play like a #3 defenseman. Or that Sanheim (who Tortorella tried to scuttle for Torey Krug) wouldn't play like a top pairing guy again after Tortorella tried his best to sabotage him. Or that Farabee might not bounce back after a terrible season after an experimental neck surgery with a direct follow up of Tortorella mind games during his recovery.

Fourth and most importantly, as a dual U.S. military and HFBoards veteran poster, Coach Tortorella would surely want you to be respectful to me, so please keep that in mind. Mahalo.