Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella has already created some drama this season with some of his coaching decisions. To put it bluntly, he is not being truthful about how he will run the team.
Frost is an Annual Scapegoat
For the second season in a row, Morgan Frost appears to be Tortorella’s golden ticket to escape accountability. After getting walked over by the Ottawa Senators on Oct. 14, the coach felt that his level of play was not up to par, and scratched him in the Flyers’ home opener against the Vancouver Canucks on Oct. 17.
Frost wasn’t fantastic in his first two games and might have deserved what happened to him, but there were players who played as poorly or worse than him. Tortorella has been biased against him in the past, and that still seems to be the case even after his stellar second half of the 2022-23 season.
Tortorella is known to be a fan of Owen Tippett, and he has not been great to this point. He is yet to score, has not been hitting the net when he gets chances, and hasn’t generated enough offensively to be getting the ice time he is currently getting, which is a little bit over 15 minutes per game.
If Frost and Tippett were on an even playing field, it would make sense if they were both punished for their underwhelming play to this point. Instead, one of them was benched, while the other got a maintenance day in practice following a decent but not great performance.
It is expected that a player who is playing poorly for their standards will be benched. There is complete justification in sitting Frost, as long as other players are sat as well. It’s a problem when some players are coddled while the other is used to make an example. Both Tippett and his teammate were objectively equal in their offensive creation and defensive zone play, but one has gotten completely different treatment from the other.
Marc Staal Hasn’t Missed a Game
If accountability and playing the best-performing players is Tortorella’s motto, he hasn’t been following it. Marc Staal has had a rather disappointing start through three games. He has turned the puck over quite a bit and has been an overall liability defensively, lacking proper defensive awareness and positioning several times throughout the season already.
Staal wasn’t exactly the world-beater that he used to be when he was signed in the offseason, but the fact that an underperforming 36-year-old is getting ice time over young players is a problem. Unless Tortorella forces the veteran to rest for a game or two, the player’s issues could continue.
It’s hard to criticize a defender with as much knowledge and experience as Staal, but he simply has not been good enough to be a consistent member on the Flyers’ blue line. Tortorella would be justified in playing the 36-year-old as much as he wants if he never preached learning from his mistakes.
A player like Egor Zamula is coming off of a good game as opposed to Staal, but one has a spot on the blue line all but locked up, while the other one does not. Tortorella’s philosophy says that nobody is safe if they don’t perform, but this hasn’t really been applied to the older players yet.
What the Lineup Could Look Like After Win vs. Canucks
Frankly, the Flyers beat Vancouver in spite of Tortorella’s moves, not because of them. If Frost’s benching was the precedent, then there should be more changes to the roster.
Related: 5 Takeaways From Flyers’ 2-0 Win vs. Canucks
Along with Tippett, Cam Atkinson really hasn’t been himself, either. He hasn’t been the same electrifying player that he has in the past, as he has not been generating quality scoring chances to this point. He has been good defensively, but the lack of production offensively would be grounds for making him a healthy scratch based on what happened to Frost.
In all likelihood, Frost’s benching served as a wakeup call to the young forward. This isn’t anything out of the ordinary, and could very well just be an early statement by Tortorella. There might not be anything atypical about the team’s lineup entering their Oct. 19 matchup against the Edmonton Oilers, but if the coach was being truthful about resting players who need to perform better, there would be a lineup without Tippett, Atkinson, and Staal for at least one game.
The Flyers have only played three games and already the drama is getting spicy. How Tortorella goes about business in his second season with the Orange and Black will be interesting to observe, and the question to whether or not consistent underperformers in the lineup are given the same treatment as Frost was will be answered.
