Photo Credits: FNG’s Rob Windfelder
Not saying that this was the kind of season that we’ll remember the same way we look back at 1974 or even 2010 for that matter. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that this year will be remembered as a benchmark. This past season may be the start of something big for the Flyers. Or it maybe it was just an unexpected growth spurt that the team may have trouble living up to next season. Either way there was no shortage of memorable moments that are now part of Philadelphia Flyers history.
The Flyers organization is still early into a rebuild but this coming Fall will already be season three. It depends on how you look at it I guess. In my humble opinion I consider John Tortorella’s first year behind the bench to be year one of the Flyers rebuild. The first and most monumental step was the changing of the guard at the top of the organization. The addition of Briere, Jones, and Hilferty along with the coaching change was definitively the start of the “New Era of Orange”.
Season one saw a respected group of very legitimate hockey guys getting settled into their new high profile positions and evaluating the situation they had inherited. The team went 31-38-13 on the season but they already had a much different attitude under their new head coach. This mismatched Flyers squad just refused to give up even in the worst situations. They were a team with a losing record and a ton of injuries that just refused to lay down. At the beginning of the season there was talk of a splintered locker room. At the end of the season Tortorella made a statement about the subtractions being more important than the additions.
Subtractions
Last off-season saw a mass exodus of veterans from the team’s roster. Either through trade, expired contracts, and even retirement there were plenty of subtractions. Some big names would no longer be donning the orange and black. Provorov, DiAngelo, Hayes, van Riemsdyk. Also on the list were Braun, Brown, Lemieux, Bellows, Sedlak, Hodgson, Willman. MacEwen was traded at the deadline and Allison did not make the team out of camp. This left a lot of skates to fill especially on defense.
The Flyers defensive core this year was one of the season’s most pleasant surprises. You could easily argue that the combination of players who left weren’t getting the job done, but you must admit the defense was a huge question mark coming into camp. Travis Sanheim looked more like himself this past season and Cam York really came into his own. Sean Walker was a solid addition but he was traded at the deadline for a conditional 2025 1st round pick and Ryan Johansen. The Flyers letting go of a quality defenseman like Walker was more proof of their continued commitment and focus on the future of the team.
The group that took the ice at the 2023 season opener was a vastly different team than the one that didn’t come close to a playoff spot six months earlier. The “conventional wisdom” was that this team didn’t stand a chance this year. The team was made up of young guys getting a chance to prove themselves and a select group of veteran holdovers. The roster had been fortified with a few free agent signings to keep the team competing at the NHL level. Some of the young hopefuls were sent to the Phantoms where they could get experience and maximum ice-time. Free agents Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway both proved to live up to the Flyers ideal as tough hockey players with a great work ethic.
Rocky start
By November 7th the Flyers were 5-7-1 after handing the San Jose Sharks their first win 12 games into their season. Unbelievably the Sharks managed only 19 wins for the entire 2023-24 season. This was an early low point for the Flyers and it seemed to snap them out of a funk. By the time they returned from that trip out West they were above 500 and they did not fall below that benchmark for the duration of the season.
The New Era of Honest
On January 8th a shocking development dropped right in the middle of a home game against the Penguins. Word spread up and down the press box and half of us thought it was a prank. News broke that Cutter Gauthier one of the Flyers top prospects had been traded to the Ducks for Jamie Drysdale and a 2025 2nd round pick. Gauthier said that he did not want to play for the Flyers so they decided to move him while his value was high following the World Junior Championship.
Many were waiting for Cutter Gauthier to arrive in Philly and save the team. He was considered to be a substantial building block in the Flyers rebuild. The kid’s got plenty of talent that’s for sure. At the same time Tortorella had been working hard to get this group playing as a unit where every player is responsible to the team and follows the system. He holds everyone to this no matter who they are. Proven NHL stars have found themselves riding the pines for coloring outside the lines. In the background Gauthier was posting highlight reels and fashion photo shoots while still playing for Boston College. To be honest the entire thing had all the earmarks of a train wreck waiting to happen.
Travis Konecny has a ton of talent. He was voted the team’s MVP this season. He tallied 33 goals and 68 points to lead the Flyers in scoring. He represented the Flyers on the NHL All Star Team this year. All that being said, he is a total team player and he works his tail off every single night. That’s what this organization is looking for. Gauthier who once said he “was built to be a Flyer” wouldn’t even return phone calls from the organization’s top guys. He did not want to play hockey in Philly.
The front office handled the entire Gauthier debacle with a candid transparency that immediately put the entire city in the Flyers corner. The Flyers new tone of honesty and transparency was hitting home with the home town crowd. Flyers Fans had been begging to be treated like adults for years. If you haven’t noticed people in Philly are a pretty straight forward bunch. They’d much rather hear the ugly truth than allow themselves to be smoothed over with a pretty lie. Which is good because a much bigger shoe was about to drop.
Bombshell
By January 20th the Flyers were a sturdy 25-14-6. Word began to spread around town that the rebuilding Flyers were becoming something worth paying attention to. Seats started filling back up at the Wells Fargo Center. Much of the team’s success was due in part to the impressive goaltending tandem of Carter Hart and Samuel Ersson.
On the afternoon of January 20th the Flyers suffered a miserable loss to the Colorado Avalanche. The final score was 7-4, Hart was yanked after the 5th goal, and Owen Tippet left the game with an injury that kept him sidelined for weeks. Like I said, it was miserable. Hart did not look at all like himself that day giving up 5 goals on 15 shots. That was the last time we would see Carter Hart in the Flyers net. This loss started a five game losing streak during which the team announced that Hart had requested a leave of absence from the team for personal reasons. The team released the news on the afternoon of January 23rd just before a home game against the Lightning. This was a bombshell.
The press box was a buzz that night as Danny Briere held yet another impromptu briefing by the coffee machines in the press box during the first intermission of a blow-out loss to Tampa Bay. Over the next few days the situation started to come into focus and the implications could not be worse. Hart was done playing ice hockey for the year but that was not the biggest issue at hand. He was facing criminal charges in a sexual assault case and he had a limited amount of time to turn himself over to the authorities in London Ontario.
Briere did not cancel or postpone a previously scheduled mid-season meeting with the press the following morning. He addressed the Hart situation as head on as he is allowed to. The organization was transparent and their priorities were clear. It is a very serious allegation that needs to play out in a court of law. Just for the record Hart’s contract with the Flyers expired at the end of the 2023-24 season and pre-trial hearings in this case are scheduled to get started towards the end of this coming November. Hart is one of four NHL players facing charges along with one other member of the 2018 Canada World Junior Championship Team.
It was at that point that Samuel Ersson went from being a very reliable back-up to becoming one of the busiest starters in the league. It was the 24 year old netminder’s first full season in the NHL. At first Ersson’s back-up was Cal Petersen. Petersen arrived in Philadelphia as part of a complicated three way deal with the Kings and the Blue Jackets. It was a cap dump for the Kings and Peterson allowed 18 goals in four starts and some back-up minutes before being sent to the Phantoms. Felix Sandstrom returned to the Flyers but Ersson ended up started all but seven games between January 20th and the end of the season.
Just to keep things really interesting and slightly bizarre, there was still one more chapter in the goaltending saga to play out. That was 6′-8″ Ivan Fedotov showing up in Voorhees at the Flyers training facility with just over two weeks left in the regular season. Fedotov was already under contract with the Flyers but was not allowed to leave Russia until he served mandatory time in the military. After his military service was fulfilled he had to report to the KHL. The KHL had announced earlier in the year that they had orders from Vladimir Putin not to allow players to walk away from their KHL contracts to go to the NHL. It was all part of sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine.
Fedotov’s future with the Flyers was uncertain to say the least and then suddenly out of nowhere there he was just over the bridge in New Jersey standing next to Flyers GM Danny Briere. Fedotov looked fine in his first back-up situation but looked totally lost in his first start as a Flyer. Fedotov may need some time to adjust to the NHL game and the Flyers seem eager to give it to him. The team just signed him to a two year extension worth $6.5 million. Fedotov has a proven record of success and this was not the easiest way to jump into his brand new situation. In the meantime Ersson went right back to work guarding the Flyers net for all of their remaining games.
In mid February John Tortorella named Sean Couturier as team captain and added Travis Konecny as an additional alternate along with Scott Laughton. Coots is the first player to wear the “C” since the departure of Claude Giroux. Tortorella had said he wouldn’t be naming a captain this year so basically stop asking him about it. It was a curious move, why the sudden change of heart? It could be that the Flyers chances of earning a playoff spot was starting to look pretty good. Things were coming together quicker than expected. Towards the end of the season when things were slipping away Tortorella often took responsibility for the team not knowing how to “take it to the next level”. He said he hadn’t taught them that and he took the blame for their inability to step up. No one expected the Flyers to have such a good year. Things were moving along ahead of schedule.
Even with all the twists and turns in the plot the Flyers found themselves locked into 3rd place in the challenging Metropolitan Division for the better part of the season. Their big test was going to come in mid March when they played a seven game stretch against some of the better teams in the league. This stretch of games became known as “The Gauntlet”. At the time it seemed as if the Flyers playoff hopes were riding on it. They did better than expected. They came trough that stretch earning six points with two wins and two overtime losses. The mood was high and the finish line was in sight.
The Flyers were still hanging onto 3rd place in the Metro after facing the toughest part of their schedule. The next six games were against some of the worst teams in the NHL. This Flyers team that we were told “not to expect much from this year” now seemed almost a lock for a playoff birth for the first time since 2020. Flyers Fans watched in horror as the team lost all six of those “easy” games. They capped off the eight game losing streak with an absolute disaster of a game in Montreal losing to the Atlantic Division’s worst team 9-3.
The Flyers faced the press after that game as a team. The entire team remained in the locker room, at their stalls, in full uniform. The scratched players came down in their suits and stood with them as their captain Sean Couturier spoke for the team and took responsibility for their recent slide. Coach John Tortorella said he was not frustrated with them, he was frustrated for them. He shared in the responsibility for the team’s unraveling in the homestretch. That was rock bottom, but it was also the turning point. Two nights later they went into Madison Square Garden and beat the best team in the league 4-1.
In their second to last game of the season Samuel Ersson shut out the Devils in Philly 1-0. Travis Konecny scored the only goal of the game shorthanded. The Flyers led the league with 16 shorties on the season, Konecny scored six of them. The final game of the regular season was going to be at home against the Capitols. Their fate was no longer in their own hands. They needed a victory against Washington but they also needed the Canadiens to beat the Red Wings on the same night to keep their slim hopes alive. The Penguins game the following night was also going to be part of the equation.
The Flyers played a solid final game. They needed to win in regulation, one point would not be enough to get them into the playoffs. The Red Wings also needed to lose in regulation to the Canadiens in Montreal. The Flyers were locked in a 1-1 tie late into the 3rd period. The Habs had the Wings down by one with only seconds left. Unbeknownst to the Flyers bench the Red Wings scored with three seconds left tying up their final game and ending the Flyers playoffs hopes. The Flyers pulled Ersson for the extra attacker with three minutes left to go in a tied game.
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Washington scored on the empty net seconds later but the Flyers were already done they just didn’t know it. The two goals came only seconds apart. Still this rebuilding Flyers team had a chance of making the playoffs up until the final three minutes of game 82. This is a pretty big accomplishment for a team that “wasn’t supposed to be here”.
This of course only raises expectations for next season. This group crumbled down the stretch but they over-performed all season long and the momentum almost pulled them over the finish line. There were so many memorable moments over the course of this year but this season as a whole is going to stick in our heads. It’s human nature to expect progress. If the Flyers don’t make the playoffs next year it will seem like a step backwards. It only makes sense that there will be more accountability expected next season as well. You can say they aren’t supposed to be this far along yet, but they are and the bar has been raised.
You have to expect over the long off-season there will be more changes in the roster before the puck drops again in the Fall. Some things will change some won’t. Tortorella did not treat the final game against the Capitols like it was his last. He benched three talented forwards in Atkinson, Frost, and Brink for the entire second half of the game. He was still setting the tone and laying down the law during the final game of the year. At the end of the season press conference Tortorella said “I’m totally in until Danny says get the hell out of here”.
This season will surely be remembered for all of its twist and turns. It will also be remembered as a new benchmark. You can say this team overachieved, or maybe other teams underestimated them along the way. That’s all well and fine, but next season Flyers Fans are going to expect their team to pick up right where they left off. That may prove to be a tall order. This Flyers team was three minutes away from making the playoffs.
