The Flyers' apparent plan to build a contender, and everything that's wrong with it (2024)

Do the Philadelphia Flyers actually have a plan?

It’s a reasonable question for fans to ask. After all, since 2020-21, the Flyers have quickly slid into irrelevancy, first merely disappointing in a season with high expectations, to ultimately sliding all the way to near the bottom of the NHL standings in 2021-22.

With the 2023 NHL Draft looming — a draft filled with as many as four potential stars, including generational talent Connor Bedard — the Flyers could have chosen to purposely weaken their roster entering 2022-23, with the aim of maximizing their chances of adding one of those players. In other words: tanking. It wasn’t an outlandish suggestion: both Chicago and Arizona openly structured their 2022 offseason around the plan, while other clubs (San Jose, Montreal) took softer approaches to the same strategy.

The Flyers, however, showed little interest in the tanking strategy.

Instead of looking to bottom out in anticipation of the 2023 draft, they made moves that ran in opposition to said strategy. They hired John Tortorella, a 64-year-old two-time Jack Adams Award winner, to be their head coach. They traded away three draft picks to acquire Tony DeAngelo. And aside from buying out Oskar Lindblom, they didn’t actively jettison a single contributing member of the 2021-22 club.

The result? Philadelphia is not bad enough to have strong odds of nabbing a top-three pick. But the Flyers are also not good enough to be in realistic playoff contention.

Thus, the frustration from fans regarding the lack of a plan — a real plan meant to return the Flyers to their place not just as a playoff team, but as a Stanley Cup favorite.

However, it’s not fair to say that the Flyers don’t have a plan. They do, at least in theory. And understanding that plan as they envision it is important, if for no other reason than to properly critique its likelihood of success.

So let’s dive into how the Flyers envision fixing their current situation step by step. If they’re not tanking, what are they doing? And does it have any chance of working?

Step 1: Tortorella’s culture fully takes hold

This goes back to the point that I made on Saturday morningheading into the game against the Canucks.

It’s not that the Flyers had to beat the Canucks. But they did need to avoid another lethargic, disinterested performance like their previous two showings that week against the Kraken.

Why? Because it would be setting them down a path of resistance to Tortorella’s emphasis on effort and structure.

And why would that be such a bad thing? Because full implementation of the “Tortorella culture” is clearly the first step in the organization’s plan. That’s why they chose to hire him.

The philosophy of the higher-ups in hockey operations is that before the Flyers can be retooled or rebuilt (or whatever word one wants to use), the existing players need to all be pulling on the same end of the rope. They need to be cohesive. They need to be giving maximum effort. They need to be playing with structure. They need to be, as Tortorella loves to say, “hard to play against.”

Only then can talent be properly developed. Only then can they build a Flyers team that the city of Philadelphia can take pride in.

The Flyers can lose — a lot — and still check this box. In fact, the 6-2 defeat against Vancouver was an example of a “good loss,” ugly score notwithstanding. They outshot the Canucks 37-23. They doubled them up in shot attempts. They had a clear edge in scoring chances. The Flyers didn’t quit on Saturday night. They just lost.

What can’t happen for the organization’s planned Step 1 to work is for the players to tune out Tortorella, to become so frustrated with the lack of on-ice results that they start mailing in shifts, doing regular fly-bys on defense and freelancing with no care for the direction of the coaching staff. Suddenly, they’d be right back where they were in 2021-22, and the entire point of this season (in the organization’s eyes) would be a failure.

The organization sees Tortorella’s culture as setting the foundation for the rest of its plan. Without player buy-in on that front, there is no Step 2.

Potential issue: How long can Tortorella’s message stay fresh?

Right now, the Flyers are buying into what Tortorella is selling. But how long will that last?

Historically, Tortorella actually has had a pretty long shelf life with his clubs. He lasted parts of seven seasons with Tampa Bay (Stanley Cup win in his fourth year), parts of five with the Rangers (best season: Year 4) and six with Columbus (sweeping the Presidents’ Trophy winners in again, Year 4). So he has shown an ability to sustain player buy-in. But there’s always the risk of burnout with his demanding approach — it didn’t work in Vancouver, after all — and if the players did lose trust in him, the organizational plan quickly collapses. It’s an ever-present threat.

Step 2: Get more high-end talent

The Flyers straight-up need more talent. Everyone knows that. And yes, even the Flyers front office knows that.

Getting more talent is a key part of the plan — in that everyone involved in the plan knows that it’s an essential Step 2 to rise beyond competitive nonentity.

The problem is this is the “???” part of the three-step plan, in South Park terms.

Travis Konecny’s performance Saturday against the Canucks highlighted just how far the Flyers are from having the necessary amount of high-end talent to contend. After all, Konecny was fantastic on Saturday. He was all over the place — 13 shot attempts, 10 scoring chances and five high-danger chances, per Natural Stat Trick. He’s the best skater on the Flyers, the only one who can play with truly dynamic, game-breaking ability, and he provided a glaring reminder of that fact versus Vancouver.

But on a truly great team? A team with realistic designs on the Stanley Cup? Konecny can’t be the best player. He probably can’t even be the second or third best player, either.

Right now, according to FanDuel’s Sportsbook, the five teams with the best title odds are Boston, Colorado, Carolina, Toronto and Tampa Bay. Where would Konecny slot on all of those teams in terms of a hypothetical “best player” depth chart? Let’s add in a little subjectivity here, and point out the players on all of those teams who the vast majority of hockey observers would concur are clearly better than Konecny. Sure, there are others on each team with a case, but these are the obvious ones.

Even the Hurricanes — the contender with the least “star power” has three players clearly better than Konecny. That doesn’t speak highly for the Flyers’ current talent base.

This was the underlying thought process behind the argument to shop Konecny — given his age and contract status, he almost certainly doesn’t fit a realistic timeline for Flyers contention before he’ll require an enormous raise. But the Flyers have shown little interest in trading Konecny. So if they’re going to keep him, they must believe that either Konecny is poised to take an even greater leap as a player, or (more likely) that they can add three-to-five players in the next five-ish years that can push him down the lineup into his ideal spot on a true contender.

So what’s their plan to do so?

Step 2A: Draft a couple stars — without drafting in the top five

Barring serious draft lottery luck, the Flyers will not end up with a top-three selection in the 2023 draft. Right now, if they hold their current spot as the NHL’s eighth-worst team, they’d have a 6 percent chance of nabbing the first pick, and a 6.4 percent shot of grabbing the second slot.

Combined odds of 12.4 percent makes it possible, but not likely. And even a total collapse in the final third of the season is unlikely to drop them any further than fifth from the bottom. They’re not catching Columbus, Chicago or Anaheim, and most likely not San Jose either. The Flyers aren’t good, but they’re not tanking.

And in truth, tanking was never part of the plan in Philadelphia.

Tortorella was hired to fix the culture, and a team with culture and accountability and defensive structure simply isn’t going to lose enough games to fully tank unless it consists of 23 AHL-caliber players. (No, the Flyers aren’t that.) Staying out of the top five in the 2023 draft is a feature of the plan, not a bug. It was always the intent of the front office to improve this season.

Which means that to get the top-tier players they acknowledge that they need, they’ll need to unearth them via shrewd drafting — not by watching a future star fall into their laps in the top three.

This isn’t impossible, to be clear. Let’s look at the 20 players listed above, and how their teams acquired them.

• Drafted by current team, in top five: 8 (40%)
• Drafted by current team, first round (non-top-five): 4 (20%)
• Drafted by current team, second round or later: 7 (35%)
• Added via trade or free agency: 1 (5%)

Getting elite players via the top five of the draft isn’t the only way to add them — it’s just the best and most efficient path. But the Flyers aren’t going to do that, at least on purpose.

So now, draft day for the Flyers comes with an even higher degree of difficulty in comparison to other clubs. They can’t merely hit singles and doubles with their picks for their plan to work; a top-six filled with Konecny-caliber players isn’t going to win anything meaningful. They need home runs. They need to find the next Charlie McAvoy midway through the first round or Sebastian Aho in the early second or Brayden Point in the middle rounds.

Is that fair to the organization’s scouts? Probably not. But this is the talent acquisition plan that the organization has chosen. So it’s completely fair for fans to demand they find stars with non-top-five picks if the front office acknowledges that high-end talent is needed but refuses to position themselves to end up in the drafting position where those talents are most easily discovered. It basically has to happen for any of this to work.

Potential issue: It’s really hard to do, and takes both great scouting and a lot of luck

Neither has been in strong supply for the Flyers since nabbing Sean Couturier with the No. 8 pick in 2011.

Step 2B: Develop a few existing players into stars

Konecny is probably the best skater on the Flyers right now. But might there be players in the organization — either on the Flyers or in the system elsewhere — that could jump him in the not-so-distant future?

Internal development absolutely is a key part of the “get more talented” aspect of the Flyers’ plan.

Carter Hart is the most obvious option, and there’s a case to be made that he’s actually better than Konecny. Tortorella recently called him “our most consistent and best player,” and he ranks seventh among NHL goalies in Goals Saved Above Expectation, per Evolving-Hockey, having stopped 15.84 more shots than “expected” from an average netminder. That said, Hart probably needs to take a further step into something like Connor Hellebuyck territory — consistent yearly excellence and regular Vezina Trophy contention — to truly check this box.

Then, there’s Couturier. For him, it’s less about development and more about hoping against hope that he can return at full strength from his two back surgeries. After all, pre-surgery Couturier was superior to even this improved version of Konecny, and he’s still only 30 years old. But first, the team’s medical staff needs to get him back playing again (he hasn’t been spotted skating at the practice facility in weeks), and then return him to his previous level of Selke Trophy-quality two-way play. Unlikely? Perhaps. But it’s at least possible.

Cutter Gauthier is probably the best hope for a homegrown star — not coincidentally, he was a top-five pick. He’s impressed as a freshman at Boston College, racking up 28 points (14 goals) in 26 games while adjusting to the center position full-time. Physically, he has all the tools to be a dominant offensive force in the NHL. Can the Flyers develop him properly? They better.

Finally, there’s “the field” — the rest of the organization. Cam York has flashed legitimate play-driving ability in top-pair usage as a 22-year-old; perhaps he could develop into a Devon Toews-type low-key star blueliner. Owen Tippett shows flashes of physical dominance and game-breaking ability, though it’s far less consistent compared to Konecny. Bobby Brink, Emil Andrae and even Noah Cates could pop if absolutely everything breaks right for them in their development.

Again, is it fair to any of them to expect greatness? Nah. But for the Flyers’ plan to work, they need one or two to take a big leap (or in Couturier’s case, just return healthy) in addition to drafting one or two more in the near future that reach that same level.

Potential issue: Can the Flyers’ infrastructure actually develop talented youngsters into true stars?

Former GM Ron Hextall flooded the organization with 42 prospects over the course of his five-year, draft-and-develop-centric philosophy. Out of all of those players, the Flyers got Konecny and Hart as borderline impact guys, and that’s it. Sure, they’ve made organizational changes at the developmental and coaching levels. But their track record doesn’t speak to a club that is adept at maximizing talent.

Step 3: Fix the cap situation

The Flyers need stars. That’s undeniable at this point.

But as the Oilers of the back half of the 2010s proved, stars aren’t everything — if a team can’t build a viable supporting cast around them.

And even if the Flyers unearth three-to-five high-end players in the next couple years to push Konecny down into his ideal spot on the depth chart, the front office still needs to successfully clean up their cap situation and turn it into a strength in order to keep and build a strong team around them.

That’s not going to be easy.

In 2023-24, the Flyers will have a whopping $23.1 million dedicated to what charitably can be called a mediocre-at-best top four on defense: Ivan Provorov, Travis Sanheim, DeAngelo and Rasmus Ristolainen. (It’s $29.35 million if you count Ryan Ellis, but he’s almost certainly spending the rest of his career on long-term injured reserve.) They still have three more years of Kevin Hayes at $7.14 million. Cam Atkinson has two more seasons at $5.875 million. Couturier’s deal lasts for seven more years at $7.75 million.

Let’s set aside the contracts that are concerning mostly because of injuries for a second. The Flyers’ big problem at the moment is that very few of their players are delivering anything close to surplus value on their contracts — in other words, players with $5 million cap hits playing at an $8 million caliber level. And the ones that are — Konecny, Hart, York, Tippett, Cates — will be due raises in the relatively near future that very well could push them out of surplus value territory.

Surplus value is how a team builds a sustainable, star-filled club. Want to know why Boston is so good this season? It might have a little something to do with the massive cap advantage that comes with having Patrice Bergeron on a $2.5 million cap hit, David Krejci at $1 million, and David Pastrnak at $6.66 million. That’s how a team can afford “luxury” adds like Taylor Hall to beef up depth scoring and Hampus Lindholm to solidify the back end.

And it’s what the Flyers will have to do to morph into a contender — even if Tortorella’s culture change sticks and they find new top-of-the-lineup stars.

Fixing the cap situation isn’t impossible. Hayes would have a market if the Flyers are willing to retain some of his cap hit over the next three seasons. Both Provorov and DeAngelo’s contracts expire by 2025, which would allow the front office to restructure the defense into a more effective group. Ristolainen’s $5.1 million cap hit is still an overpay, but if the 2022-23 version of him is real, it’s less a total cap-crippling albatross than an annoying overpay for a low-scoring but useful No. 4/5 defensive defenseman. And if Ryan Reaves can be traded twice in his mid-30s with a $1.75 million cap hit, then so can Nicolas Deslauriers if necessary.

It’s doable. It’s just not going to be easy and will take real vision to navigate successfully.

Potential issue: Does Fletcher have the vision and foresight to pull it off?

Fletcher proved unable to adequately prepare from a cap standpoint for the free agency of Johnny Gaudreau, despite it being an open secret for years in league circles that Gaudreau’s preferred free agent destination was Philadelphia. That doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that Fletcher has the ability to successfully navigate a delicate future cap situation that he himself made delicate.

Now, is it possible that the Flyers could pull off each step of this loose three-step plan? Sure. Tortorella’s message could stick with the club for years to come. The Flyers could stumble upon a star or two over the next couple years of the draft. Hart could take a leap into Vezina-winning quality. Couturier could return as his old self. Gauthier could be a dominant first-line forward. And Fletcher could make all the right moves to allow the front office to fit everyone under the cap and build a deep club to support them all.

The degree of difficulty to pull it all off is just going to be so, so high.

Torts’ message can’t grow stale. They need to find stars at parts of the draft when it’s not reasonable to expect stars will be unearthed. Player development and the medical department need to come through in a big way. A front office that just constructed a maxed-out cap team that’s in the bottom third of the standings needs to turn into cap wizards capable of finding undervalued talent and signing them to contracts that maximize surplus value. It won’t be enough for one or two of these outcomes to play out. The Flyers need all of them.

So do the Flyers have a plan? Yes, they do. It’s just one that looks highly unlikely to succeed.

(Photo of Chuck Fletcher: AP Photo / Matt Slocum)