Photo Credit: FNG’s Rob Windfelder
The Flyers are currently 10-8-1 going into today’s game against the New York Rangers. It will be interesting to see how many Rangers fans will be in the building for the game. Fans of the visiting team filling up the Flyers barn would have been unheard of in the past but its something we’ve started to see more frequently over the past few years. One of the ways to gauge the progress of this New Era of Orange will be to watch the building slowly returning to a place that is soundly owned by Flyers Fans. Things don’t happen overnight but we’ve come a long way already.
The Philadelphia Flyers are in the early stages of a rebuild. I’m going to stick to my claim that the rebuild started with the hiring of head coach John Tortorella. That marked the point where everything started to change. And it could not have come at a better time. Flyers Fans were living in a dark place with no future in site. Above all what was really absent at that point was hope.
Dark days
As Claude Giroux skated off the ice for the final time in a Flyers jersey he took with him what felt like the last bit of remaining passion for the team. Management had let the Flyers fall into a period of prolonged mediocrity which had no end in sight. Giroux had carried the team for years and when he was gone the neglected future of the Flyers organization became more apparent than ever. There was no real hope of anything changing either. The front office seemed to be the last entity in the city to even acknowledge the situation at hand. Even when the building was filling up with Rangers fans. Everything started to change with the addition of John Tortorella.
Love him, hate him, agree or disagree (we’ll get to that more in a bit) John Tortorella walked into a really barren situation and put his finger right on the problem. This organization did not reflect the city it represents. During the course of his first year behind the bench the city wasn’t asked to change, the organization was.
The organization did change literally from the top down. We are looking at a completely different structure than we were a year and a half ago. In the big picture the Philadelphia Flyers have taken major strides towards involving the fan base and making an honest effort to give the people their team back. There was a divide between management and the fanbase that was growing season after season. That climate of ignoring the literal life blood of the team and expecting them to just accept it is gone. There were times where it seemed that ignoring the fan base and the history of the team could somehow hide the directionless path the team itself was on.
In the new era as the front office filled job after job with passionate hockey people who love and understand the sport hope started to make a come-back. With renewed hope and the possibility of a future comes a renewed level of passion in the opinions of the loyal fanbase.
It’s Philadelphia
No place like home
One of the great things about Philadelphia is that when people talk about you behind your back they do it right in front of your face. Philly can be brutally honest. Opinions are abundant, varied, and rarely private. We like to communicate even when we are not seeing eye to eye. There are a few hot button topics of conversation lately in Flyers World that we are actually really lucky to be arguing about at this point in time.
Free Agents
There are people who are upset that the team was signing free agents during the off season. The concern is that these veteran players are “blocking the kids”. That they will keep the youth from moving up and slow the rebuilding process. The addition of Marc Staal, Sean Walker, Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway is seen by some to be a detriment to the opportunities for younger players. The converse opinion here is that not every young prospect is ready for the NHL. If you can outplay these guys you can earn a spot on the team. If you can’t, then maybe you’re not ready for the big show just yet.
These are short term contracts, they fill out the squad with NHL ready players, and they give the prospects something to shoot for as they develop. Walker and Poehling in particular are playing some great hockey right now and the team is winning so it can be hard to see the downside. Not every prospect is ready for the NHL. If the only qualification for being on the roster was your age it would be pretty easy to pick your players. It would also be a disaster.
Returning from injuries
Same “problem”, kind of. It’s looking like Rasmus Ristolainen and Marc Staal may be ready to return to the line-up after missing considerable time due to injuries. This is going to limit time for players who have been successfully holding things down in their absence. Same “answer”, kind of. If they come back to the line-up and play better than the players they are replacing what’s the problem? Staal was playing some pretty solid hockey when he was injured. Risto was solid last year and has yet to play a game this season.
The blue line
The defense was one of the big question marks coming into this season. Some big names are no longer on the team for various reasons. Travis Sanheim didn’t have his best year after getting his big contract. The defense has been a great surprise. They have beat expectations. Sanheim is having a great season and has totally stepped into his role as the club’s top d-man. The competition for spots on the blue-line is about to become even tougher. This is another “problem” the Flyers are lucky to have.
Scratches
Morgan Frost has been the talk of the town not for the time he has spent on the ice but for the time he has spent off of it. No one besides Frost and Tortorella know all of the ins and outs of this situation but something is going on. Right? There’s gotta be something behind the scenes that is unresolved somewhere. Also it seems to be falling into a pattern of Frost and Bobby Brink becoming interchangeable in the line-up. Both are talented young players so why is it that we can only have one or the other on a nightly basis? From the outside perspective this is a pretty valid argument to be having. Which brings us to the head coach.
Tortz
Some Flyers Fans have been pretty outspoken in their disapproval of John Tortorella’s decision making. Tortorella can be a bit outspoken himself and that trait can bring about a matching tone from your detractors. That being said some are not happy with him for a few different reasons. One of the main ones being who gets scratched. Another is (believe it or not) that he seems intent on winning hockey games. There’s still a small segment of the base that would like to see a “tanking” approach to draw higher picks. This is not going to happen under Tortorella, or Keith Jones, or Danny Briere for that matter. These guys did not take these high profile positions to intentionally lose hockey games. All of them share a passion for the team and the sport and that is another thing to be thankful for.
What is going on?
I can only guess at what is going on with John Tortorella and his choice of who sits and who plays. We have a limited amount of information to work with on that. I can tell you first hand that what you see at practice, or at the coach’s press briefings, or in the locker room afterwards is not all that there is to see. We are only privy to what’s going on to a certain level. A whole lot of really important stuff happens in private. Tortorella has been given the task of seeing this team through the rebuilding process. This process is going to take years to complete. I can only imagine Torts is more focused on the big picture than he is on the implications of the nightly line-up.
Hockey is a team sport
The organization is building a team. They are not building around a super-star or a fading core. They are attempting to instill a structure and systems. How players fit into that system over the next few years is a lot more important in the big picture than the current stats or opportunities of any one player. A great team can go a long way, but everyone has to buy into the system. It is amazing how little an impact one player can have on any team. That being said hopefully Brink and Frost both find their way into the team’s future. They both have a lot to offer.
A good sign
In the end the Flyers are becoming something to argue about again and that’s good news. It’s hockey season, that in itself is something to be thankful for. If our main problems are trying to find room for the amount of talent available to a coach who wants to win hockey games then even our problems are something to be thankful for.
