As a lifelong flyers fan, I have bear witness to countless things that made my blood either boil, stew or down right grow cold. My initial thoughts on the recent coaching search were that it was going to be another rush job just trying to find the loudest name, the biggest splash, the least Philadelphian connection, the most inept person out there. When the rumors swirled, and Tortorella’s name kept creeping out I grew to the total outrage stage. In all honestly it mostly grew from his time with the Rangers and how his team and their style of play mostly took massive dumps on the flyers and was such a villain in the city during that period. In my eyes his demeanor and overall likability didn’t get any better throughout the rest of his career until he hit the Lightning and then became the villain in my eyes for how the Lightning just owned the entire league and that playoff series with the Flyers.

As I sat down and allowed the recent event to unfold and took stock of my initial off the hip reactions and listened to the different takes, tales, interviews with about Tortorella my eyes began to open slightly. I started to go back and really look at the teams he inherited and managed. I started to look a little deeper into the statics of how his players played. I really listened to former players not only praise him, but bash the hell out of him. My major change of heart came from where it usually does, and that’s listening to Sirius hockey channel, and I can’t remember the analysts name from Vancouver who covered his limited tenure up there. He put it plainly “He finds the problems, he finds a solution, if management gives a damn they’ll put it together and fix things.” Tortorella already has come out and placed the cards of the Flyers locker room already on the table, to no one’s surprise its in shambles. Tortorella has this appearance and overall feel of an old school coach who can’t / won’t change with the times, maybe this is what is needed to fix the issues in the locker room.  Yeo left this team in shambles, probably better than when he took over, but that’s an issue for another time. Tortorella has the pedigree to sniff out and fix the locker room issues, his no nonsense style is what this team needs now.

Now onto something that has had many people in an uproar, and I quite frankly don’t understand their view points. For the purpose of this article, I’m not going to be diving into the entire roster because I don’t have the time. I believe whole heartedly that this team is extremely talented as a whole and have had their identity stripped away from shortened chunked up seasons, to players being dumped off because of falling outs with the coach and upper management, to the overall shift of how the organization is being run now. The Flyers are no longer being ran like a franchise of a larger entity being shielded by the Great Ed Snider and being allowed to just be a hockey team. Now the shift is to a business entity and making money. This move caused several players to become unhappy and request trades, give up on playing or just caring in totality. Remarks by Vorachek, and other players after leaving just prove this point. The talent I speak of comes from the unknown players like Morgan Frost, who can become a sniper. News coming out of Joel Farabee’s injury and surgery kills my point of how he started to blossom into a top tier winger. Oscar Lindblom has a massive shot, physicality to boot.  Let’s not forget if Carter Hart has an actual solid defense in front of him, he becomes a wall. His overall value has been diminished by injuries and trades that haven’t panned out at all.  Sanhiem, and Provorov still have major untapped potential but have been ladened with bad pairings, injuries, inconsistent coaching, god awful strategies. The two biggest players that we landed to help with some of these issues, have cost us with injuries and lose of caring.  Through out the last two years we’ve never evolved our power play, that created a stagnant appearing talent pool, since most of the time players get highlighted by how much time they get to be on those two lines.  

After conducting my research and listening to way too many Canadians talk about hockey, my opinion that this organization is a partial dumpster fire. They are now realizing this after the poor showings of the last two seasons, and have taken some steps to rectify this. Do I believe that Chuck Fletcher will be a part of this organization after the next season? Not at all, with his replacement standing next to him and having the higher ups ears, Danny will be running the show more and more as the days progress. If I’m lucky enough to write another article for everyone I’ll tackle my thoughts on his  new career and hopefully a halfway decent offseason. Always and forever Let’s go Flyers!!!