Joel Farabee sits as healthy scratch, but Tortorella "not going to give up on him"

VOORHEES — Sometimes, when announcing a healthy scratch of a player, Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella presents the news without explanation or much in the way of public empathy.

That wasn’t the case on Saturday, when he announced that winger Joel Farabee would take a seat against the Anaheim Ducks, ending a streak of 216 consecutive games for the winger. Never before had Tortorella went to the healthy scratch well with Farabee (he did bench him after just two shifts during a November 2023 game against New Jersey), but after five consecutive pointless games and a scoring slump dating back to February of 2023-24, Tortorella made the call to sit the 24-year old.

“Up until probably a couple of weeks ago, I liked his game,” Tortorella said in explaining the decision. “But the past couple weeks, it’s gotten stale. So he’ll sit out tonight.”

Farabee has struggled to light the lamp all season long — through 42 games, he has just six goals and 14 points, putting him on pace for under 30 points and just barely over 10 goals for the season. But throughout the season’s first two and a half months, Farabee was racking up scoring chances — his problem was finishing. In fact, his 8.34 scoring chance/60 rate at 5-on-5 from Game 1 through December 18 was second among Flyers forwards, trailing only Owen Tippett.

Since then, however? It’s dropped to 6.56, ranking seventh. The dropoff in his quality of play has been real. And with the team coming off its worst performance in weeks on Thursday versus Dallas and Olle Lycksell in reserve waiting for his shot, Tortorella and the Flyers are making the swap — at least for a game.

But Tortorella made it clear that it took no joy in the decision.

“Sometimes you take out players for punitive stuff, (and) sometimes you take players out just let (to) them get away from it for a bit,” Tortorella explained. “So this isn’t punitive. I need to get him playing better.”

Tortorella also made sure to address the elephant in the room in the wake of his decision — Farabee’s future with the team. After all, his name has popped up in trade speculation over the past few weeks, specifically ranking No. 6 on Daily Faceoff’s NHL Trade Board, which was released earlier this week. And a healthy scratch generally will only serve to increase rumors and chatter.

Tortorella noted that he’s had multiple conversations with Farabee this season regarding his scoring woes, and he doesn’t question his desire to improve or his willingness to work to find a way out of this.

“The guy cares,” Tortorella said. “His name is being bounced around during the deadline and all this. He wants to be here. I am not going to give up on him.”

In fact, Tortorella noted that as a result of conversations with Farabee, he kept him in a top-of-the-lineup scoring role this season longer than he may have otherwise been inclined. He even gave him penalty kill usage coming out of the holiday break, which the head coach hoped would help spark him offensively. But recently, he’s skated on the fourth line, and he’s cracked the 17-minute mark just once in his last nine games.

Perhaps, Tortorella mused, that demotion was what caused Farabee’s underlying process to fall off to match his longstanding scoring struggles.

“He didn’t lose minutes for a long time,” Tortorella said. “He wasn’t productive, but we coached him because he was involved in a lot of stuff, so we kept on giving him the (ice) time, hoping he’d break out of it. He faded off, lost some minutes. I’m sure (he wanted more ice time) — and he alluded to me he wanted to continue to play those minutes to get himself out of it — but somewhere along (the way), I have to make a decision as far as trying someone else, and that’s what I did. I think that might have hurt him.”

Farabee’s struggles are undeniable, and unless he can get it going over the second half of 2024-24, his name will continue to be raised as a potential change-of-scenery candidate, despite his immense popularity in the Flyers’ locker room and his desire to remain in Philadelphia. Perhaps that could be in the cards for his future — his talent is still highly regarded in league circles, and a number of clubs could view Farabee as an enticing buy-low reclamation project.

But the Flyers aren’t ready to go there just yet. Tortorella made sure to position Saturday’s healthy scratch of Farabee as more about trying to get him going, rather than paving his way out of town.

“I told you guys my first year that when I watched Farabee — and I think he had a couple years of 20-plus goals — and I said, ‘He’s a key guy,'” Tortorella said. “He can play center, he’s utility, and you can move him up and down the wing. It just hasn’t steadied itself for that to happen.”

The Flyers’ head coach wasn’t willing to say when Farabee would return to the lineup, if this would be a one-game reset or a longer stretch in the press box. But Tortorella also didn’t speak as if Saturday’s news meant he was going to lose sight of his struggling young winger, either.

“I’m not sure where it goes after the game. We’ll see where we go,” Tortorella said.