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Farewell, four-game losing streak.
The Philadelphia Flyers entered Saturday’s game against the Calgary Flames knowing full well that they had to put a halt to their longest extended skid of the season — a dip in play that started long before Christmas — and return to playing like the team that turned so many heads over the first two and a half months of the 2023-24 season.
That was certainly a start.
Erasing 1-0 and 2-0 deficits in the process, the Flyers took down the Flames by a 3-2 final score at the Wells Fargo Center on Saturday afternoon. Morgan Frost and Sean Couturier kept the Flyers in the game with second period goals, and Travis Konecny provided the third period spark with his fifth shorthanded tally of the season. Carter Hart made 22 saves on 24 shots in the win.
Looking for the details behind the win? Here’s 10 observations on what was a huge game for the Flyers, on multiple levels.
1. That’s more like it
The Flyers needed a game like this.
Sure, they needed to halt a season-high four-game losing streak. But they also needed to control a game, to outplay an opponent start-to-finish for the first time in over three weeks. And then, they needed to punctuate that effort with a W.
“It was important that we at least get a result and not a one-point game (given) how hard they worked today,” John Tortorella said after the 3-2 win. “This time, it was important we get a result.”
Tortorella contended that the team played a solid game on Thursday night against Columbus as well, and that they weren’t given enough credit for it by the local media. Fair point — they did outshoot (41 – 28) and outchance (3.06 – 2.54 by all-situations expected goals, per Natural Stat Trick) the opposition. But that wasn’t the whole story. They lost on Thursday because of issues that had become endemic to the Flyers’ organization over the previous three seasons: failing to take care of business against underwhelming opponents, blowing a third period lead, making a win more difficult than necessary due to tough-to-defend lineup decisions. The team may have played better, but they lost because of a combination of all of the same factors that help lead to the Flyers’ demise since 2021.
On Saturday, they looked far more like the “New Era of Orange” club from the 2023-24 season’s first two and a half months.
The Flyers traded punches — both figuratively and literally — with the Flames in the first and third periods, but came out slightly ahead in both shots and xG in both stanzas. The second period, on the other hand, was total Philadelphia domination; Tortorella noted that the team’s internal metrics had them down for 16 or 17 scoring chances, and they racked up a whopping 24 shots on goal. In total, the Flyers collected 64.1 percent of the expected goals at 5-on-5, and 67.84 percent on the whole. This was a game they very much deserved to win.
“More physical, more scrums, I think more togetherness today,” Tortorella said. “Certainly the past two games more forechecking and pucks to the net.”
That degree of control over the game has been missing for the Flyers since the middle of last month. In fact, since December 14, the Flyers only won the 5-on-5 xG battle in one out of nine games — and that single win was the 7-6 defeat in Detroit, during which the Flyers punted the entire first period. They hadn’t had a truly dominant, impressive 60-minute victory since taking down the Capitals over three weeks ago.
Now, they can fully put the disappointing Disney on Ice trip behind them, with the knowledge that the strong process which got people excited about the team in the first place isn’t gone for good.
Maybe there were signs of it against Columbus. And perhaps Tortorella’s decision to scratch two top-nine forwards and go with just 11 forwards — including AHL veteran Rhett Gardner — after a long trip Thursday was his attempt to jolt a flagging club back to attention and into taking commitment to their process seriously again via an attention-grabbing punishment. It could have been Tortorella’s attempt to play the long game, to sacrifice a few points of win likelihood percentage to make a larger point about the team’s need to fully recommit to what was working a month ago.
But given the many indefensible coaching decisions made by Flyers’ head men over the past decade, the benefit of the doubt was not going to be given. If it was a long-term play, it had to produce results and set the Flyers back on their previous path. Perhaps Saturday was the first step to doing just that.
2. Snider honored both before and during the game
If Ed Snider was still alive, Saturday would have been his 91st birthday.
The new-look Flyers organization pulled out all the stops to honor the team’s deceased owner and chairman, via their Ed Snider Legacy Game.
Kicking off with a pregame donation of $300,000 to Snider Hockey by current Comcast Spectacor head Dan Hilferty, the afternoon was a celebration of the team’s founder. Prior to puck drop, the Flyers played a three-minute retrospective video of Snider, and Hilferty brought out new Philadelphia mayor Cherelle Parker — notably arm-in-arm, in what easily could have been taken as a subtle message sent to the 76ers regarding their attempt to leave Comcast’s Wells Fargo Center and get their own arena approved by the city — for the opening ceremonial puck drop.
“I was thinking to myself on the bench when we were all watching that tribute: ‘There’s no way we lose this game,'” Travis Konecny noted. “You could just feel it in your body, the excitement going through the game and through the building. It was awesome.”
Throughout the game, there were Snider testimonials shown on the jumbotron, from on-ice legends like Bob Clarke and Bill Barber to off-ice heroes like the recently retired radio color commentator Steve Coates. They even removed the “Gritty’s Chaos Corner” section in the lower level, a heavy-handed but understandable nod to the belief that Snider never would have approved the creation of Gritty in the first place, given his long-standing opposition to mascots.
Back in 2022, portions of the fanbase and (most notably) members of the Snider family felt snubbed by the lack of any honoring of Snider during a game played on his birthday. The new Flyers leadership wasn’t going to let that happen again, and based on Sarena Snider’s appearance on the pregame show of Snow the Goalie, a Flyers podcast now fully under the organizational umbrella, the Snider family is back on board.
Snider’s presence still looms in the organization even nearly eight years after his passing, as Tortorella — who never met him — noted on Friday.
“Just the way people have talked to me about him, I have a special admiration for him. It goes on daily here, talking about that man,” he noted. “Through talking with the players and everybody in the organization, some of the alumni, he cared. He cared about the people.”
Which helps to explain why so many still care about him.
3. A game Snider would have loved
It didn’t hurt that Saturday was a throwback game on the ice as well.
The Flyers and Flames legitimately went at each other. Post-whistle scrums were the norm, Joel Farabee spontaneously dropped the gloves to stick up for Cam York after the latter took a big hit along the boards, the whole team came to Travis Sanheim’s defense when he was boarded, and the final buzzer brought a full-fledged brawl, with Scott Laughton and Jonathan Huberdeau in the middle of it, and Konecny yapping all the way.
“Those ones are fun,” Konecny said in reference to the final scrap, but easily could have meant the game as a whole.
Part of this Flyers team’s identity is their willingness to stick up for each other, so it was little surprise to see someone come to the defense of Sanheim and York. But it’s not merely the bruisers who did so. Farabee is a middleweight at best, probably a lightweight. York didn’t let his small frame stop him from leaping feet into the air to jump onto the pile after the Sanheim hit. Nicolas Deslauriers didn’t even see the ice during the second half, and it didn’t matter. The Flyers had each other’s backs.
“We’re a family in this locker room,” Cam Atkinson said.
The Broad Street Bullies era is never coming back. But Snider certainly would have recognized and appreciated the adjusted version of Flyers hockey that was played on this night.
“The type of game, the style of game… I think he kinda had us playing that way up there, I don’t know,” Tortorella noted.
4. Crowd loved it, too
It’s become difficult these days to truly trust the reported attendance numbers. After all, they only account for sold tickets, and don’t serve as a close estimate of how many people actually went through the gates.
But on this day, the 19,715 number felt pretty much right.
Through the season’s first two months, the Wells Fargo Center certainly had its fair share of empty seats for Flyers games. Perhaps the tickets were sold, but they certainly weren’t used. That started to change with the final home game before the Christmas break, and continued on Thursday against Columbus. But both contests proved to be Flyers losses. This was the first time that a larger in-arena crowd got to watch a Flyers win, and they rose to the occasion, injecting the building the kind of energy it has lacked over the past few seasons.
Perhaps the Snider tribute played a role in getting more fans in the building, especially given the wintery mix outside. But more than anything else, people are intrigued by this Flyers team once again — they’re in the playoff mix, they have quite impressive young players, and they’re playing a fast-paced, energetic style.
It’s another reason why securing a win on Saturday was so important for the organization. They needed to keep this recent fan interest momentum going. And given the action-packed contest that the fans in the building got to watch on Saturday, the best guess here is that they came away itching to see more.
5. Frost returns with style
When Morgan Frost was once again a healthy scratch for Thursday’s game, it felt from afar that it could be the tipping point in the relationship between player and team. For the 11th time in 38 games, John Tortorella deemed Frost not worthy of a lineup spot, this time going with 11 forwards and starting Rhett Gardner over him.
It could have been the end. Instead, perhaps it’s a new beginning.
Frost chose not to speak with the media on Friday after practice to discuss the scratch. Instead, on Saturday, he let his play do the talking. After a strong all-around first period, Frost broke through with the game’s first goal, a Johnny-on-the-spot rebound goal that he punctuated with an exuberant celebration, and then he tacked on a second assist via Sean Couturier’s power play goal. When the final buzzer sounded, no Flyers player had a higher on-ice expected goal share at 5-on-5 than Frost and his stellar 82.35 percent mark.
It was the perfect bounceback game — and exactly the response that Tortorella wanted from Frost.
“You guys may think that benching players is fun for coaches, and you’re just pounding your chest. That’s not the way we feel,” Tortorella said after the game. “It’s trying to get someone’s attention, and it starts the conversation.
It’s that last part that may have been most important.
6. Torts/Frost conversation maybe a turning point?
On Friday, Tortorella recounted the lead-up to Frost’s scratch — he had a conversation with Frost on the plane ride home from Edmonton, presumably expressing general dissatisfaction with his recent play, and then Tortorella called Frost on Thursday to lay out the specific reasons why he was being sat.
The conversation they had on Friday morning, however, was far more important. Why? Because Frost himself requested it.
“I just had some things that I kind of wanted to get off my chest,” Frost noted on Saturday after the game. “It was a good back and forth.”
It’s no secret that there is a disconnect between Frost and Tortorella, and it’s at least part because of their differences in personality. Frost is a quiet person, by his own admission; it doesn’t come naturally to him to actively challenge his head coach. Tortorella, on the other hand, actively wants his players to come back at him when they disagree. He considers it to be a sign of the player’s competitiveness, his drive, and his willingness to make a situation work.
On Friday, Tortorella was positively beaming when he reported to the media that Frost, at long last, had requested a meeting and gave Tortorella a piece of his mind.
“I was thrilled that he came in and wanted to talk, and gave me some of his thoughts, and not agreeing,” Tortorella said. “That’s a huge step for me with Frosty.”
Through all the scratches and the comments through the media, was this what Tortorella has been waiting for from Frost?
“I wasn’t waiting, it’s part of my job to… how can I put it? It’s part of my job to try to bring that to a head. I think that’s the only way that you can find a road to communicate, and try to help the player.”
In other words, kind of.
“I think sometimes that’s all it takes, is to go into his office. I think he respects that,” Frost said. “Obviously, sometimes it’s not the easiest thing to do.”
But Frost did it, and more importantly, he followed up the meeting by delivering a standout performance that got him named the game’s first star. It was reminiscent of the first confrontation between Tortorella and Travis Konecny early last season, when he benched Konecny (along with Kevin Hayes) for the entire third period of an October game against the San Jose Sharks. Konecny sought out Tortorella the next day, hashed it out with the head coach, and then delivered a stellar game a few nights later; now, he’s the team’s star player and beloved by Tortorella. (Hayes didn’t talk to Torts, and he’s in St. Louis now.)
Now, this doesn’t mean that Frost and Tortorella are destined to become best buds now that Frost has yelled at him a bit. But Tortorella certainly seems to view the meeting as a potential breakthrough, both in terms of the player/coach relationship and in getting the most out of Frost in Philadelphia.
“I guess he’s probably been brought up (to believe) you just don’t talk to coaches,” Tortorella said. “It’s different for me. I need the conversation. I think he took a big step. It’s gonna help me try to help him. Where it all goes, I don’t know. But at least there’s a path there now.”
7. Atkinson makes progress, still goalless
Morgan Frost wasn’t the only forward returning to the lineup after a high-profile scratch. Cam Atkinson also was back in on Saturday, trying to get his season back on track as well.
But the similarities between the two scratches (and returns) end there. While Frost is still trying to build a functional relationship with Tortorella, Atkinson and Torts are already tight. Perhaps it’s no surprise as a result that Atkinson essentially fell on his sword after Friday’s practice, taking full blame for Tortorella’s decision to bench him.
“I take full ownership of the scratching, and deservedly so,” he said. “I gotta get back to playing with my energy and demanding the puck, and wanting the puck. I’ve kind of let that slide, to hoping that things would come my way, and obviously they haven’t.”
Tortorella, for his part, positioned the scratch as coming from a place of admiration, not disgust.
“I have too much respect for him to let him continue to go down the road he was going,” the Flyers head coach said on Friday.
Atkinson’s goalless drought, Tortorella explained, was only part of it. The other details of Atkinson’s game were slipping as well, turning him from a snakebitten player — as he was as recently as a few weeks ago — into a legitimate on-ice liability.
At least on Saturday, he was back to merely being snakebitten.
Atkinson had multiple scoring opportunities throughout the game — a wide-open chance from the slot in the first period that he shot wide, a 3-on-1 shortly thereafter that he flubbed, a second period breakaway that was stopped by Flames goalie Jacob Markstrom. It wasn’t the game that Frost had, but it at least was progress.
“I felt good. I felt I had my energy, had chances,” Atkinson said. “Good step in the right direction.”
Tortorella agreed.
“I noticed Cam. He was more energetic and active,” the head coach offered.
Atkinson isn’t fixed yet. But at least he appears to be back in a place where a reemergence from his slump is possible again.
8. Much-maligned power play getting going?
Atkinson may not have broken out of his slump. The Flyers’ power play, however? It finally broke through for its first goal in five games.
But even if the goal that Sean Couturier scored was a bit fluky, the Flyers’ recent work on the power play has been anything but. Even on Thursday against the Blue Jackets, the Flyers were racking up shots and chances on the PP, and nearly broke through on multiple occasions. In fact, over the past two games, the Flyers have a whopping 41 shot attempts on the PP, and 20 shots on goal.
This wasn’t a case of a barely-functional unit just getting lucky. This was a snakebitten group with a surprisingly sound process finally breaking through.
“These last two games, I think we’re onto a little something here,” Couturier said. “We’re in a little more in the offensive one, moving the puck better, creating chances. Now it’s time to actually finish a little more. But we’ve just got to stick to it even if it can be frustrating at times.”
So what’s changed for the Flyers’ power play in these two games, after falling somewhere between bad and historically embarrassing for most of the season? Couturier’s own work around the net has certainly been part of it, while he credited Joel Farabee’s work on the half wall, and praised Morgan Frost’s passing on Saturday. But another player immediately came to mind for Tortorella.
“(Egor) Zamula has made a big difference,” he contended. “I think Z has done a terrific job in settling things down, and other guys have chipped in from there.”
Zamula has been on the power play for the past six games, and has five total points in his last seven contests. Tortorella even gave him 20:25 minutes on Saturday, just 18 seconds shy of his season-high set back on October 21. Zamula — like the Flyers’ power play — appears to be making real progress.
9. Konecny’s shorthanded goal puts Flyers back in league lead
The Flyers entered Saturday tied for the league lead in shorthanded goals with the St. Louis Blues at nine. Now, after Konecny’s third-period snipe — the gamewinner, as it turned out — they’re back in the NHL lead with ten.
In fact, Travis Konecny himself would rank in a tie for fifth on the NHL leaderboard. Not among players, to be clear. Among teams. Only four teams (Philadelphia, St. Louis, Calgary and the Islanders) have more shorthanded goals than Konecny does.
10. Deslauriers benched, Brink sat in third
While the Frost scratching did play into the “Torts punishes the usual suspects” narrative, some of his other moves this week don’t quite fall into that neat of a basket. Scratching one of his favorites in Atkinson was a surprise, as was the fact that he sat Nicolas Deslauriers for his first game of the season in Edmonton.
And it doesn’t appear that Deslauriers is quite out of the doghouse yet. After being a party to Calgary’s second goal midway through the second period, Deslauriers didn’t see the ice for another shift the rest of the way, finishing with just 3:36 of total ice time, in a game filled with chippiness seemingly tailor-made for his protective presence.
Of course, Tortorella also sat rookie Bobby Brink for the third period, so he’s not completely turning over a new leaf. But his recent treatment of Atkinson and Deslauriers hints that even his apparent favorites aren’t immune from discipline.
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