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Anatomy of a debut: Inside the chaotic 48 hours for Jamie Drysdale that ended in triumph
Just before 7 PM on Monday evening, Jamie Drysdale thought he had a handle on everything in his life.
He was back healthy after missing most of last season with a torn labrum, and then two months this season with a separate lower-body issue. And now, he was kicking off the first leg of a two-week road trip with his Anaheim Ducks teammates, settling into his hotel room in Nashville with his buddies.
One call from Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek, and everything changed. He was no longer a Duck. He was a Flyer, the main piece going to Philadelphia in exchange for the rights to top prospect Cutter Gauthier.
Drysdale was stunned.
“My mind was kind of in a blender, didn’t see it coming at all,” he admitted.
It kicked off a chaotic 48-hour period complete with sleepless nights, rushed travel plans, an introduction to an unfamiliar team and city, and then finally, a triumphant debut and a full-fledged embrace of Drysdale on the part of his new home.
“I mean, I feel like you can’t draw it up better,” he said after the Flyers’ 3-2 victory over the Montreal Canadiens on Wednesday night. “Exciting game, great crowd, great fans. Came out with the win.”
Monday night/Tuesday
In the wake of his conversation with Verbeek on Monday night and then Flyers GM Daniel Briere shortly thereafter, Drysdale didn’t quite know what to think about his new reality.
He began his emotional goodbyes to Anaheim staff and his teammates, including Trevor Zegras, his closest friend on the club, and waited for what might come next. After the final buzzer sounded on the Flyers’ 4-1 loss to the Penguins, Drysdale quickly got an idea of what was in store for him at his new locale.
His phone exploded with texts from his new teammates, shaking off the disappointment of the night’s defeat by welcoming him with open arms to Philadelphia. And then, he received a call from John Tortorella himself, delivered in typical Torts fashion.
“Just get your butt out here,” Drysdale recalled Tortorella telling him. “I look forward to meeting you face-to-face.”
Drysdale obliged. He found an early-morning flight out of Nashville, scheduled for a 5:45 AM takeoff time, to ensure he made to Philadelphia for 12 PM practice. He was up by 3:45 AM that night, but don’t think for a second that he was being roused from actual sleep when he rolled out of his bed. He was wide awake all night.
“Tried to close my eyes – it wasn’t working out well,” Drysdale admitted.
Nevertheless, just a bit before 12 PM EST, there was Jamie Drysdale, on the ice in Voorhees, New Jersey, in a Flyers sweater. He had made it.
Luckily, Drysdale wasn’t completely lacking for familiar faces. He knew Scott Laughton well, having trained with him every summer dating back to his days in junior hockey. He was already tight with Cam York, via their mutual friend Zegras. Nicolas Deslauriers was his teammate in Anaheim during his first two NHL seasons. He even had met Morgan Frost last summer. But he still had to introduce himself to more than a few new faces.
“The locker room is thrilled that he’s here,” Tortorella said. “He’s gonna fit in just right with this group.”
Quickly, Drysdale locked down a place to stay — at least for the time being — with Cam York and Carter Hart, and began work on the logistics of getting the rest of his belongings shipped from California across the country to his new home.
Then, with his first practice in the books on Tuesday afternoon, he faced the Philadelphia media — and by proxy, the fans — for the very first time. One thing he made abundantly clear in the interview: unlike Gauthier, who was traded only because he had refused to sign a contract with the Flyers after falling out with them by the end of May 2023, Jamie Drysdale wanted to be a Philadelphia Flyer.
“Literally the second I heard about it, my phone blew up from just people around the hockey world saying it’s an unbelievable place, first-class organization,” Drysdale said on Tuesday. “A lot of great guys on the team, great team. Not one bad thing to be said across the board. So that’s just always exciting, to come into an organization that treats people well and is a fun team to play for.”
Gauthier’s choice, most likely, was more about rejecting the Flyers organization than it was rejecting the city. But that’s not how local fans took it. In their minds, he didn’t just reject their favorite team; he rejected them, despite how excited they were for the 2022 fifth overall pick to join the club. So for Drysdale to show up and immediately pump the tires of the organization and team — let’s just say it played well in the City of Brotherly Love.
Drysdale also didn’t back down when asked about the pressure of being perpetually compared to Gauthier, a blue-chip prospect. After all, Drysdale is a blue-chipper himself, selected with the sixth overall selection back in 2020 and still only 21 years old.
“I think it’s excitement, to be honest,” he answered, when asked if he feels the pressure to live up to the Gauthier comparison. “I’m confident in my game. I’m looking forward to come here and learn from these coaches and put my best foot forward. I’m just excited. I think I can do that. I think I’m capable of it.”
And as for the prospect of playing under John Tortorella, which some theorized played into Gauthier’s decision to spurn the Flyers? Didn’t even faze Drysdale.
“People that have actually played for him, I’ve only heard good things in terms of people that have reached out to me,” Drysdale responded. “They said he’s a very honest guy, black and white. You’re never wondering where you’re at with him. He shoots you straight, and I feel like that’s all us players can ask for. It’s just to make you better at the end of the day. I’m excited to play for him and learn from him.”
It was about as well-executed of an introductory press conference as Drysdale could have pulled off.
Wednesday pregame
With his first practice behind him, Drysdale finally, at long last, could get the sleep that eluded him on Monday night. His reward for a good night’s rest?
One of Tortorella’s famous tape study sessions the very next morning.
Tortorella’s tape sessions are well known throughout the league. The head coach doesn’t hold back in his criticism of individual players, pointing out their mistakes for the entire team to see and hear, using it to half teach and half shame. That was what loomed for the club on Wednesday morning; the Flyers’ defensive play was severely lacking on Monday against the Penguins, and Tortorella surely had multiple glaring errors lined up for all to see.
Tortorella noted that he felt Drysdale would benefit from watching the group dive into the details of their defensive zone coverage, given the significant differences between Anaheim’s tactics and those deployed by the Flyers. But even though he wouldn’t be the target of Tortorella’s critiques, Drysdale would get to see what it might be like in the future to be on the receiving end of accountability from his demanding new head coach.
Drysdale claimed after the game on Wednesday that it didn’t scare him too much.
“It was good. I think it’s just an area where you can learn,” he said. “Everyone has their own way of getting the message across. I imagine I’m gonna get used to a lot of those.”
After running through a quick skate after the session, Drysdale returned to bed for another long, much-needed nap. When he awoke, it was only hours before puck drop, and the nerves started to kick in. But Drysdale would have some added support in the stands to help him, in the form of his parents.
During that first conversation with Briere back on Monday night, the Flyers GM asked him a question: would he like the organization to fly his parents out to Philly to watch his first game as a Flyer? Of course, Drysdale replied.
Briere and the Flyers kept their promise.
“It’s a big change for all of us, not just me – my entire family,” Drysdale said. “Real cool that the organization themselves took initiative to get my folks out. I know that means a lot to me, and to them.”
Even with his parents by his side, however, Drysdale couldn’t fully fight off the nervousness.
“I think it was a mix of butterflies and excitement. And just kind of wondering how it’s gonna go,” he recalled after the game. “You hear that Philly’s a great sports city, hockey city. You don’t really know until you actually experience it.”
Gametime
As it turned out, there was no reason for Drysdale to worry about the Philadelphia crowd.
They were fully intent on showing him as much love as possible.
It began before puck drop, with the announcement of the starting lineup. Drysdale easily received the biggest cheers of any of the Flyers’ starters. And the crowd didn’t stop there. Basically every time Drysdale touched the puck for longer than a few seconds, the cheers emerged again. And they never stopped.
“I didn’t see it coming,” Drysdale admitted, regarding the treatment from the Flyers faithful. “I haven’t heard a crowd that loud. It’s pretty cool to play in front of them. It was awesome.”
All sports fanbases are in part fueled by spite — driven not just by support of who the fans like, but also opposition to those they don’t. But Philadelphia takes it to an extreme. And that side of the local fanbase was out in full force on Wednesday, if the numerous people wearing old Ivan Provorov No. 9 jerseys with tape over his nameplate and Drysdale scribbled in were any indication.
They were there to support Drysdale the player, yes. But also Drysdale the anti-Gauthier, the remaining proof of their former top prospect’s rejection of the city, the potential vehicle to allow fans to crow at Gauthier that they are better off without him anyway. Drysdale’s positive comments about the organization the day before only added more fuel to that particular fire.
But Drysdale still needed to impress. All that initial good will would dissipate quickly if Drysdale didn’t deliver the goods, and — perish the thought — looked like a potential bust.
He didn’t look like a bust.
From Drysdale’s very first shift, he flashed the high-end skating ability that made him a top prospect in the first place. But it went beyond skating. Drysdale stepped up in the neutral zone repeatedly to kill plays, including one at the end of a shift that ended with a Montreal player on his backside and the Wells Fargo Center crowd screaming its approval. He largely kept it simple with the puck, but was calm and composed under pressure, using his legs to get him out of trouble. He even made a few sound defensive plays in his own zone, including a breakup of a potential slam-dunk pass from Jake Evans to Brendan Gallagher right in front of goalie Sam Ersson.
Drysdale, in other words, was absolutely as advertised.
“I think I was getting up the ice pretty good,” he said after the game. “Trying to create as much as I can.”
Tortorella loved what he saw from Drysdale’s mobility up close, bestowing an honor that he only reserves for his most trusted offensively-skilled defensemen.
“He’s a candidate to be like a rover,” Tortorella said. “Not a defenseman – a rover. Just because he’s just on top of the ice, the way he skates.”
And of course, Drysdale got on the scoresheet, picking up a primary assist on Morgan Frost’s second period power play goal that tied the game at 2-2. Frost did the bulk of the work, sure, slipping his seeing-eye wrist shot through traffic and past Montreal goalie Cayden Primeau. But Drysdale’s excellent lateral skating certainly helped open up space for Frost to operate.
It’s not that their other defensemen can’t move laterally — Travis Sanheim can walk the line up top as can Cam York, and Egor Zamula has shown legitimate poise up there in his PP audition as well. But none of them have the dynamic lateral movement that Drysdale possesses. In fact, the Flyers haven’t had a defenseman with that kind of burst up top on the PP since the departure of Shayne Gostisbehere in 2021.
“When you have a guy like that who’s mobile, who knows he can either freeze guys or beat guys with his skating ability, I think it definitely gets them out of position and creates openings for other guys,” Sean Couturier said.
The crowd, of course, loved it, rising an extra decibel level when Drysdale’s name was announced in tandem with the goal. A section in the upper level near the press box even started a short-lived, profane chant directed at Gauthier, speaking to the clear link between the two players. And the nearly-packed house got loud once again in overtime, during which Drysdale nearly ended the game twice — once via a second pinpoint pass to spring Frost for a semi-breakaway, and then via a chance of his own in the slot.
Drysdale ultimately was not the hero on Wednesday night. Couturier scored the shootout’s only goal, and Ersson made three saves to shut the door, improving his stellar record in the skills competition this season to 13 saves on 15 opportunities.
But it was the newest Flyers who received the locker room’s “Player of the Game” dog mask.
“I barked a couple times,” Drysdale cracked. “That’s a new thing for me.”
Noted dog-lover Tortorella approved — not of the mask, but of the Flyers’ new acquisition’s work.
“I thought he played really well,” Tortorella said after the 3-2 win. “Living in a new place, he’s got so much stuff going on. I was impressed with how he handled himself.”
Thursday and beyond
In the end, a chaotic 48 hours for Jamie Drysdale came to a storybook ending.
But in truth, Wednesday isn’t the end — it’s a beginning.
On Wednesday, Drysdale could merely be “not Cutter Gauthier” and be celebrated by Flyers fans. On Thursday and beyond, however, he’ll have to develop into Jamie Drysdale, impact NHL defenseman.
At least thus far, however, the signs are promising that Philadelphia just might be the perfect place for Drysdale to turn into just that.
“I love the way this team plays — run and gun and speed,” he noted. “I think I can fit right in here.”
His new organization agrees, as do his teammates, and his new head coach.
“I’m not going to jump up and down, but I am excited that we have a 21 year old righthanded defenseman that can skate like that,” he said. “It’s the perfect timing, as far as where we are in our process.”
And if they’re all correct, these 48 chaotic hours will be the last ones that Jamie Drysdale faces for quite a long time.
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