"New Era of Orange?" On Thursday, they were the Same Old Flyers

Since the start of the 2023-24 season, the message from the Philadelphia Flyers organization has been simple, straightforward, and consistent.

“We’re different.”

Unlike the old front office, we’re committed to a sustainable team-building strategy, not the process that led first to mediocrity and then to cellar-dwelling status. On the ice, we’re intent on proving that we’re a hard-working club, not the fragile, fractured group which emerged in the wake of the pandemic pause of 2020.

And over the first three months of the season, the team has lived up to those promises.

Their on-ice process is dramatically improved. They’ve gone toe-to-toe with elite clubs, and beaten quite a few of them. They’ve bought into head coach John Tortorella’s system; in turn, Tortorella has given them the kind of high-end direction that the club has lacked for years. And aside from the November 7 loss to the then-winless San Jose Sharks, they’ve avoided the kind of soul-crushing, embarrassing defeats that were a hallmark of the previous era of Flyers hockey.

Thursday’s 3-2 loss to the Columbus Blue Jackets, however, didn’t feel like a “New Era of Orange” at all. It instead screamed “Same Old Flyers.”

Let’s start with the opponent. It’s still unclear just how good this incarnation of the Flyers truly is; even Tortorella noted in December that he won’t have a full understanding of their quality until the end of January. But one assertion is tough to deny: they’re better than Columbus.

We’re talking about a team that entered the night with the worst points percentage in the Eastern Conference, that had to make an on-the-fly coaching change just before the start of training camp, that currently lacks its best defenseman, its most talented goal scorer, and its actual leading goal scorer. This is a club that the Flyers should beat.

And they should especially beat them when they’re leading 2-0, in the third period, at home.

So what happened? Just 55 seconds after jumping out to a two-goal advantage, they let Columbus cut the lead back to one. And then, over the next five minutes, the Flyers could manage only a minor penalty and two shots on goal — one of which came all the way from the defensive zone. The result was a game-tying goal, and eventually, a crushing loss.

“I think we were trying to hold on instead of being aggressive,” Joel Farabee admitted after the game. “I feel like we’ve got to stay aggressive in the third there, keep the pressure on them, and not try and sit back and win the game.”

It’s a quote that easily could have been spoken by Farabee in 2021 or 2022, in the wake of yet another blown third-period lead to an awful opponent, on behalf of previous Flyers clubs going absolutely nowhere. Even the ultimate outcome of Thursday’s game — a shootout loss — fits with the inglorious recent Flyers past, given the team’s league-worst record in the skills competition since its inception. It’s all just so familiar.

And it’s not even that every individual Flyer played a terrible game against the Blue Jackets. Travis Konecny was stellar, celebrating his second all-star appearance (announced just before puck drop) with two big goals. Farabee continued to thrive in his audition on the top line, setting up both Konecny tallies with gorgeous passes. Sean Couturier (two assists) was, well, Sean Couturier. The team as a whole outshot Columbus 41 – 28, and led in all-situations expected goals 3.06 – 2.54 (per Natural Stat Trick).

“I feel like we played well enough in this game to win it in regulation,” starting goalie Sam Ersson said.

But despite standout showings by the team’s top players, the club as a whole still found a way to lose. Just ask Claude Giroux if he recognizes that particular staple of the “old Flyers.”

And just like those clubs, the Flyers players on Thursday received little help from their coaches.

After an ugly game on Thursday that saw him extend his goalless drought to 22 games and take a terrible penalty that led to the eventual gamewinning goal by the Oilers, Cam Atkinson was a logical choice for a punitive benching, or even just a merciful attempt at a reset for a proud veteran. Few criticized Tortorella for sitting Atkinson after a performance like that, even taking into account the fact the Flyers were slated to face off against Atkinson’s former team. But Tortorella couldn’t stop with just Atkinson. He had to bench Morgan Frost as well.

Statistically — unlike the Atkinson scratch, which was easy to justify — the Frost benching doesn’t make a ton of sense. Yes, Frost hasn’t lit the world on fire offensively this season. But during December, Frost has been the only non-Couturier forward on the club capable of centering a line that can drive play at even strength. Frost may not be scoring a ton, but good things have happened when he’s been on the ice.

No matter. The Flyers are struggling, so Frost sits, just as he did in October after the team’s first loss, and in November in the immediate wake of a tough 5-0 defeat at the hands of the Kings.

“It’s between the athletes and I,” Tortorella answered when asked why he chose to sit Frost (and Atkinson).

But the decision to sit Frost in isolation wasn’t even Tortorella’s most questionable decision on Thursday. It was the impact it had on the lineup as a whole. Namely, that it resulted in the Flyers dressing just 11 forwards — two of whom being Nicolas Deslauriers and Rhett Gardner — in the team’s first game back after a long road trip.

Deslauriers has been a good soldier this season for the Flyers, and surely wanted to get back in the lineup after being a healthy scratch on Tuesday. But he now has just three points in 37 games, averaging just 9:04 minutes per night. Gardner isn’t even a clear-cut NHLer — he’s a minor league veteran with only four points in 21 games this season for the Lehigh Valley Phantoms, who presumably came on the road trip to be an emergency fill-in option more than anything else. These aren’t players who can be counted upon for significant minutes in tight NHL games.

And, unsurprisingly, they weren’t. Gardner finished with just 7:28 minutes of ice time on Thursday, and was granted just one shift after the start of the third period. Deslauriers didn’t even get that — just 7:10 minutes and no third period or OT shifts.

In other words, Tortorella rolled with just nine forwards to protect a third period lead, just days after a grueling trip during which illness apparently struck members of the team.

“We took advantage of a team that came (off a) western road trip,” Columbus’ Damon Severson said after the game. “Maybe (they) ran out of a little gas late in the third there.”

You think?

If the goal on Thursday night was to win, given the circumstances, perhaps Tortorella could have held off one more game to bench Atkinson and Frost, or at least one of the two. And if he was dead set on benching both, maybe demand that general manager Daniel Briere call up a prospect of higher quality than Rhett Gardner for the game, a player who might actually have a chance of delivering useful minutes in the third period of an NHL contest rather than starting seven defensemen. Instead, Tortorella simply piled season-high single-game workloads onto Konecny (26:18) and Couturier (23:36) and crossed his fingers they would hold up.

Both did their best. But isn’t it possible they might have had just a little bit more in the tank had the Flyers dressed 12 forwards, or at least 11 playable-in-the-third-period ones? Did Tortorella have any concern at all about the risk of an 11-forward lineup strategy given the situation?

“Nope,” Tortorella tersely answered when directly asked as much.

And we haven’t even discussed the continued futility of the power play, which could have rendered all of Tortorella’s questionable decisions irrelevant to the outcome had the PP simply converted one of its three opportunities — especially a two-minute 5-on-3 at the end of the first period. Instead, the Rocky Thompson-coached unit continued to have no answers, and remains dead last in the NHL (9.8 percent) in terms of efficiency, just as it did over the previous three-season stretch.

No one is burying the 2023-24 Flyers just yet. They’re still mere fractions of a percentage point out of the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. The gains of the first three months aren’t completely erased because of a rough couple weeks. Tortorella on the whole still has the club playing a far more unified, structured style than it has in years.

But the three-year period from 2020-21 through 2022-23 still looms large for the Flyers, and rightfully so. It was a stretch filled with embarrassing on-ice play and top-to-bottom organizational incompetence, to the point that it required a full-fledged housecleaning of off-ice leadership.

It’s memories of that run, more than anything else, which explain why it’s been so hard for many fans to jump back on board, and why so many vocal doubters of the organization remain. The fear that at any moment, the Orange & Black will morph back into a bright orange pumpkin — not merely falling out of the playoff race, but back into all of their past bad habits and infuriating tendencies.

Tendencies like losses to inferior clubs. Blown third period leads. Shootout follies. Indefensible lineup decisions and confusing player usage strategies.

They all were back in full force on Thursday, where for at least one night, the same old Flyers made their unwanted return.