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Flyers’ Head Coach John Tortorella is known to be a hard-nosed coach, who commands the most from his players. He is not afraid of benching or calling out star studded players either. This was one reason why the majority of the Flyers team reported early for training camp for the past few seasons. They also knew that they would have to give their all to fight to stay in the lineup.
It’s become apparent as some have excelled, and some have had difficulties learning this, but on most nights the Flyers do not have a problem with effort. The team may not be talented enough to beat stiff competition or playoff bound teams on a nightly basis, but they do fight and claw their way into games nine times out of 10. With that being said, does Tortorella have to err on the side of caution with sitting or talking to a fragile bunch, that simply doesn’t know/have what it takes to win this time of year?
“Absolutely, and we are very cognizant of that,” Tortorella said at morning skate before the Ottawa Senators, that the team might be fragile from the losses of some leaders from the trade deadline this past Friday. “They have played hard. There certainly needs to be patience with this here, but there’s still teaching going on, so that’s where I got to pick and choose as far as how we go with that.”
In the past, Tortorella wouldn’t have worried about this, but at that time he didn’t have a young budding superstar like Matvei Michkov, who doesn’t know the English language fluently, coupled with the losses of big vocal leaders on and off the ice like Joel Farabee, Erik Johnson, and Scott Laughton. This team is just a fragile bunch, and that started with trading away Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost, then add losing leaders like Farabee, Johnson, and Laughton within the span of just about a month. This rarely transpires this close to one another, but yet again this proves the Flyers are in a rebuild.
Cam York was benched this past Saturday afternoon, in a tilt with the Seattle Kraken. The scratching was quite earth shattering, as most players were recouping from a trade deadline that saw friends like Laughton and Johnson leave. It has become apparent from our very own Rob Windfelder, who was present in the locker room at morning ksdate before the Flyers hosted the Ottawa Senators that York did not understand, nor did Tortorella communicate with him on why he was benched. After all, York was owed an explanation at least, and the same situation popped up a year prior with Captain Sean Couturier and Tortorella.
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Now Tortorella will not hunt a player, rather that player has to take ownership and hunt him down in a closed door meeting. Frost had many of those said meetings with Tortorella, much like Jakob Pelletier did just the other day, as Tortorella said at morning skate, as well. Meetings like Matvei Michkov has with him each week, and that’s why I was not a fan of Michkov being benched for the rest of the first period on Saturday. Honestly, Michkov may not have understood Tortorella properly during the game, rather it should have been handled during the first intermission.
With the team, as a whole, being this fragile. Tortorella does at least acknowledge he has to be careful with how he approaches this team after a loss or vice versa. Maybe he has learned from this past weekend that he cannot operate the way he did in prior seasons. He has been a bit more patient this season, than in years past with the organization, and he hasn’t called any one player out publicly. However, obviously, he has to communicate a bit more effectively with this fragile bunch, especially with the playoffs out of reach now. The team in turn could tune him out, and play lackluster hockey for the rest of the season.
For now, the team is giving effort, that doesn’t correlate with the narrative that he lost the locker room. If he lost the locker room, then the team wouldn’t give effort. This is just a pure collapse, and in the grand scheme of things the team needs more talent to win this time of year. It really is as simple as that
