On March 23, 2024, the Philadelphia Flyers had a 36-26-9 record, giving them 81 points in 71 contests and an all-but-certain postseason berth right in the palm of their hand. Less than three weeks later, they sit at 36-32-11 for 83 points in 79 contests with miracle-at-best odds to qualify for the playoffs.
What actually happened to the Flyers? How did it get so bad so quickly? Perhaps it wasn’t as unprecedented as it seems.
The Flyers Play a Taxing Style Without High-End Talent
John Tortorella is, objectively, a great coach in the NHL and has a historical resume. For as good as he is, he can only do so much. That has been highlighted quite frequently in his last few seasons in the NHL.
The Flyers being on an eight-game losing streak at the end of the season isn’t something unique to them under Tortorella. In fact, they lost seven of their last nine contests in 2022-23 during his first campaign with the Orange and Black. But it doesn’t stop there — it goes back to his days with the Columbus Blue Jackets.
In both 2019-20 and 2020-21, he lost 12 of his last 15 contests with the team. When something like this happens in a coach’s last four seasons in the NHL, it shifts from a possible coincidence to a genuine concern. What are some reasons why it is happening?
Well, for one, Tortorella’s teams play an incredibly taxing style. This season, Philadelphia has had to finish checks and get low to block shots to the tune of the second-highest rate in the NHL. He demands a lot out of his players. And, to his credit, it works for most of the season. He has a knack for having underwhelming on-paper rosters achieve solid records.
Once the 60 to 70 game mark hits, that’s where the wall begins. It’s just not feasible to play with this sort of energy over the course of five or six months. Thus, the downward trend starts. These trends can almost only be broken by superstars or those teetering on that title.
There’s a reason why the skids of Tortorella teams only started after the 2018-19 season; he had top-end players like Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky on the roster before 2019-20. When they left for free agency in 2019, everything suddenly changed.
Players with top-end talent don’t slow down once the games start to pile up. If anything, they flourish once the bodies of their opponents break down.
On April 9, for example, Nathan MacKinnon of the Colorado Avalanche had one of the most…
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