One thing about the 2023-24 Philadelphia Flyers season has been clear from the start: making the playoffs was never the goal. The central message from the beginning of Daniel Brière and Keith Jones’ tenures as general manager and president of hockey operations, respectively, is that the franchise is committed to rebuilding the team the right way. Even as the Flyers surprisingly succeeded throughout the first half of the season, their commitment never changed. And forced to back up their words at the trade deadline, they did so by moving Sean Walker to the Colorado Avalanche, sacrificing a top-four mainstay to add another first-round pick to the organization.
So, it isn’t the end of the world that it doesn’t look like the Flyers won’t make that playoff push after all. The last two seasons of Flyers hockey have been about learning. The first was weeding out players John Tortorella and company felt were more harmful off the ice than helpful on it, leading to the departures of Ivan Provorov, Kevin Hayes and Tony DeAngelo last year. This season has been about determining who truly will be the leaders of the team’s hopeful return to relevance. In anointing letters on the jerseys of Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny and extending Owen Tippett through 2032, they believe they have done so.
But that, while important, wasn’t the main goal. The Flyers believed that a toxic locker room culture had significantly contributed to the team’s downward spiral at the start of the 2020s. As former players and members of Flyers teams that went on deep playoff runs, Brière and Jones know firsthand the difference between a divided and a united team.
The ugliness of the team’s eight-game losing streak, a skid that has mainly occurred against teams at the bottom of the NHL standings, has threatened to undermine the progress the team appeared to have made all season. The Flyers may not salvage their playoff hopes in their final three games. All those contests will likely determine the position of their first-round pick. But no matter what form it takes, it’s imperative the Flyers don’t lose the culture gains they made over the first 71 games of this season.
It’s Not Just Missing the Playoffs — It’s How it’s Happening
With 14 games left in the season, there was a clear path to the Flyers missing the playoffs. The team was about to undergo a seven-game gauntlet: two games against the Boston Bruins, Florida Panthers and Toronto Maple Leafs, plus another game against the Tampa Bay Lightning, with only a game against the San Jose Sharks providing a reprieve in an otherwise brutal 17-day stretch. The Flyers had just traded Walker and lost Nick Seeler to injury. With Jamie Drysdale and Rasmus Ristolainen already injured, their defense was in shambles.
It would have been understandable if those teams had simply ground the Flyers into dust and left them with too big of a standings deficit to overcome. And it looked like that might be the case when the team allowed 19 goals in three straight games against those stellar teams, all losses (albeit with a win over the Sharks in the middle of that span). But whether it was because of or in spite of healthy scratching Sean Couturier (or both), the Flyers stabilized, picking up six of a possible 10 points, closing out their most difficult portion of the schedule with their playoff spot still secured.
What has happened since is downright shocking. The Flyers have lost eight straight games, with the only loser points they’ve picked up coming against two of the stronger teams they’ve played over the last few weeks, the New York Rangers and New York Islanders.
Still, it’s understandable for the Flyers to be running out of gas. Tortorella has them playing a pretty demanding style to make up for their talent deficiencies, and as previously mentioned, the team’s defense was in shambles throughout March. Losing tight games to the Chicago Blackhawks or Montreal Canadiens would be frustrating but definitely wouldn’t have qualified as a shock at the start of the season.
What would have qualified as a shock is the nature of their recent games. In recent games against the Blackhawks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Buffalo Sabres and two against the Canadiens, the Flyers have been outscored 28-9. The nine goals they surrendered against the Canadiens on Tuesday were their most since a 9-0 loss to the then-middling Rangers on March 17, 2021. The Flyers haven’t just lost — they’ve been bulldozed.
By the numbers, the Flyers haven’t necessarily played poorly — in fact, their 57.34% expected goals mark at 5-on-5 since March 24 (the beginning of the freefall) is third in the NHL. But there are some more concerning signs if you dig deeper. In four of their last six games, the Flyers have lost the xG battle in the first period. In three of those games (two against Montreal, one against Columbus), the opposition has racked up at least 80% of the expected goals in the first 20 minutes.
The Elephant in the Net
There is one reason to explain the team’s struggles, though, and one that isn’t the fault of the skaters or Tortorella. And it’s a glaring one.
Throughout the first half of the season, the Flyers had some of the best goaltending in the league. The team around their netminders was playing well, too — through Jan. 20, the Flyers were 11th in xG at 5-on-5 and 10th in save percentage in all situations, a solid combination.
But Jan. 20 would be the last game Carter Hart played in before being placed on an indefinite leave of absence after being charged with sexual assault as part of the 2018 Team Canada World Juniors scandal. Suddenly, Samuel Ersson went from emerging 1B to carrying the team. The weight on his shoulders only grew heavier as internal options Cal Petersen (.864 SV% in five games) and Felix Sandström (.823 SV% in five games) proved incapable of playing in the NHL.
The surprise arrival of Fedotov offered some hope. But despite his extensive KHL experience, Fedotov has understandably struggled jumping right into the NHL in the middle of a playoff race, recording a .811 save percentage in three games (only one of which he started). Ersson, meanwhile, has been completely overplayed, with Tortorella admitting the 24-year-old is incredibly fatigued. His .868 SV% in 12 games in March and .768 SV% in three games in April are evidence of that.
You could blame Tortorella for overplaying Ersson, but again, he didn’t really have a choice given how poorly Petersen and Sandström played. A team receiving such porous goaltending over an extended period has no chance of making the playoffs unless they were playing at a Presidents’ Trophy level before.
It’s important to add that context when talking about the team’s spiral. The Flyers all but didn’t show up for the Columbus game, even though the Blue Jackets were legitimately missing half of their roster due to injuries. And there was the debacle that was the beginning of Ivan Fedotov’s NHL career against the New York Islanders, as rather than pick up their new teammate after he came in to relieve Samuel Ersson, the Flyers were outshot 17-3 in the first 20 minutes of his time in Philadelphia.
What This Means for the Flyers’ Future
It will be fascinating what effect this collapse has on the team’s offseason. Here’s an example. The Flyers reportedly received strong interest in Scott Laughton last offseason, but as the only player wearing a letter at the time, he was deemed too important to the team’s culture to trade. If the Flyers had finished this season on decent footing, even if they missed the playoffs, it would’ve been much easier to make the case that the value Laughton brings to the organization would no longer outweigh the value he’d get back in a trade.
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As bad as the last two weeks have been, it would be surprising for the Flyers to dramatically shift their course. Playing in meaningful games in April is a significant step forward from where they have been the last two seasons and should help the team’s young talent handle these situations better in the future. And on the whole, they haven’t performed that poorly — unspeakably bad goaltending has dragged everybody down, even if it hasn’t been the only issue.
But the vibes for this Flyers season have been good for so long. Restoring some semblance of positivity before the final horn sounds is crucial for the team’s future success.