Inside look at Philadelphia Flyers
DeAngelo, Tortorella tasked with team 'playing the right way'
The Philadelphia Flyers hired coach John Tortorella as the first step in changing a culture and resetting a standard.
"I think we have some bad habits within the team and I'm looking forward to try to work with them," Tortorella said. "I want to work with them. But I'm going to work at them to try to get better."
The Flyers (25-46-11) finished eighth in the Metropolitan Division and 15th in the 16-team Eastern Conference last season.
Despite that, the Flyers will return mostly the same lineup. Defenseman Tony DeAngelo was acquired in a trade with the Carolina Hurricanes on July 8, and defenseman Justin Braun (one year) and forward Nicolas Deslauriers (four years) each signed on July 13 to give the Flyers more experienced depth.
"We'll be a much-improved team," general manager Chuck Fletcher said. "We'll be a competitive team. A lot of things that we really struggled with last year, I feel we have a chance to be considerably better at, whether it's our goals against, our structure, our penalty kill, and our power play, in particular. Those are areas we're all going to attack."
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DeAngelo, whose 20 power-play points led Hurricanes defensemen last season, should energize a power play that was last in the NHL (12.6 percent) last season.
"I think the elements that I bring, the way I get shots through and kind of set up on the point, I can help with the breakout, moving up the ice with speed," he said. "So, a lot of different things. ... Wherever I'm at on the power play, I'm going to try to do what I've done so far in my career, and I think it'll help."
Tortorella said there also will be an emphasis on making the Flyers harder to play against on a nightly basis.
"Everybody thinks when you say we want to be hard to play against they immediately start talking about bodychecking," he said. "It isn't that. It's protecting the puck on the wall just inside the blue line where you don't turn it over there and it comes right back and ends up in the back [of] your net. It's protecting the puck at the blue line and maybe getting it out and taking a hit and we get going on a 2-on-1. It's understanding that blocking shots is part of playing defense. ... All those things come into play.
"That doesn't happen overnight. I've watched video of some games from last year and we've got a lot of work to do with that as far as playing the right way. It's not going to happen overnight, but that's how we're going to try to approach this and coach them that way."
Having centers Sean Couturier and Kevin Hayes healthy will help. Couturier played 29 games before undergoing back surgery on Feb. 11, while Hayes was limited to 48 games because of three surgeries on his abdominal region since the end of the 2020-21 season.
"I'm thrilled with the conversations I've had with them both in person or on the phone as far as how they feel," Tortorella said. "It's exciting to me to have two pretty good players that we're going to ask more of. They're going to have to be better if we're going to find our way. But to have them healthy, and that mindset for them, that's so important as we enter our camp."
The Flyers aren't completely healthy. Defenseman Ryan Ellis is still recovering from a lower-body injury that limited him to four games and might not be ready to start the season. And forward Joel Farabee is expected to miss the start of the season after having artificial disk replacement surgery in his cervical region on June 24; he was expected to need 3-4 months to recover.
Regardless of the injuries, the Flyers feel they have a better team, and the motivation to disprove their doubters.
That includes DeAngelo, who was born in the Philadelphia suburb of Sewell, New Jersey, and grew up a Flyers fan.
"Our expectation is to start winning games again," he said. "The Flyers way, this is not a rebuilding organization or rebuilding type of team. It's a team that wants to win. It's one of the top organizations [in] the NHL for a long time now. There's a standard that needs to be met and it's on the players. A lot of people could talk, and we can tell you guys as much as we want, but we have to go start changing the direction of the team."
