2022-23 NHL team preview: Philadelphia Flyers
LAST SEASON
After the Philadelphia Flyers missed the playoffs by 13 points in the 2020–21 season, general manager Chuck Fletcher went to work. Out went Jakub Voracek, Shayne Gostisbehere, Nolan Patrick, Brian Elliott, and Phillippe Myers; in came Rasmus Ristolainen, Cam Atkinson, Ryan Ellis, Martin Jones, and Keith Yandle.
Asked last summer about his aggressive moves, Fletcher was direct in his reasoning.
“We can’t just keep bringing the same players back year after year and expect different results,” Fletcher said. “We had to make changes this year. We need some juice, we need some energy. We need to change the mood in the room and the energy in the room.
“It’s nothing against the players that we had here before. It’s about trying to create a new group.”
Fletcher’s new group proceeded to miss the playoffs by 39 points in 2021–22. Last year’s Flyers scored just 211 goals and allowed 298. Head coach Alain Vigneault didn’t last until the middle of December before being fired, and his replacement, Mike Yeo, was himself fired at the end of the season.
The Flyers went on a seven-game point streak almost immediately after Yeo took over behind the bench in December. Then, between Jan. 1 and 25, the Flyers lost 12 games in a row. The team still had exactly a month’s worth of games left to play by March 29, the date they were mathematically eliminated from post-season contention.
Basically, last season was a complete disaster for the Flyers. In the opposite fashion from last year, Fletcher has made only minute changes to the roster ahead of the coming season. But even if the Flyers’ top players rebound, it’s hard to see playoff hockey returning to Philadelphia anytime soon.
KEY ADDITIONS & DEPARTURES
Additions
Tony DeAngelo, D
Nicolas Deslauriers, RW
Justin Braun, D
Adam Brooks, C
Cooper Marody, RW
Departures
Oskar Lindblom, LW (SJ)
Martin Jones, G (SEA)
Keith Yandle, D (UFA)
OFFENSE
The Flyers boast a veteran-laden forward group with questionable upside. Claude Giroux is long gone, having signed a three-year deal with the Ottawa Senators this summer after being dealt to Florida at the 2022 trade deadline. If the Flyers fancy themselves playoff contenders — and they certainly don’t seem intent upon rebuilding (yet) — they’ll need to replace Giroux’s offense in the aggregate.
Cam Atkinson, James van Riemsdyk, and Kevin Hayes are all talented offensive players. They’re also on the wrong side of 30 with relatively unwieldy contracts and declining production. Travis Konecny, Joel Farabee, and Morgan Frost are younger and also skilled, but there’s no future franchise cornerstone here. For now, the Flyers are in a bit of a pickle — especially after they reportedly didn’t bother pursuing hometown superstar Johnny Gaudreau in free agency.
Sean Couturier is an excellent two-way forward who is under contract all the way through 2030. He’s also coming off an injury-plagued season in which he scored just six goals in 29 games. Couturier is reportedly fully healthy after undergoing back surgery in February and will need to return to his Selke Trophy-winning form for the Flyers to have any hope of being competitive in 2022–23.
Fletcher’s biggest forward acquisition of the summer? Nicolas Deslauriers, a 31-year-old grinder who scored 13 points in 81 games last season. For reasons unknown, the Flyers elected to give him a four-year contract with a modified no-trade clause. Adam Brooks and Cooper Marody are intriguing potential depth pieces, but they’re hardly emblematic of Fletcher embarking upon his promised “aggressive retool.”
Of note: Farabee is listed at the No. 1 left wing spot on our projected lineup, but he could miss the start of the 2022–23 season after undergoing neck disk replacement surgery over the summer.
DEFENSE
Philadelphia’s defensive corps somewhat resembles an island of misfit toys. Once again, there’s no superstar here — and the question marks are even bigger.
Ryan Ellis appeared in just four games with the Flyers last season. The former Nashville Predators mainstay has five years remaining on his contract, but his status remains unclear as training camp looms. New head coach John Tortorella — more on him later — recently said he doubts Ellis will start the season with the Flyers.
Marquee acquisition Rasmus Ristolainen kicked off his Flyers tenure with another underwhelming season, indicating his previous struggles weren’t just a product of the Buffalo Sabres’ systems. While Travis Sanheim looked like a legitimate top-pairing defender, Ivan Provorov had more of an up-and-down year — and he capped it off with some spice at his end-of-season media availability.
“No matter what I say, you guys are going to give me your own grades. It doesn’t matter, you’re all experts in hockey, so you’re going to give me all your super experienced grades. I don’t think my opinion really matters to you guys.”
– Ivan Provorov on evaluating his season pic.twitter.com/BjDuQmG4hu
Perhaps it’s only fitting the Flyers were the team to acquire Tony DeAngelo this summer. The notoriously incendiary defender has been a polarizing figure on and off the ice over the years, scoring a lot of points during his tenures with the New York Rangers and Carolina Hurricanes but also struggling mightily in his own zone. It’s difficult to imagine DeAngelo solving a ton of problems in Philadelphia, but he’ll certainly be interesting to watch.
GOALTENDING
It feels like Carter Hart has been in the NHL forever, but he only just turned 24 and bounced back in 2021–22 after posting a dreadful .877 save percentage in 27 games with the Flyers the year prior.
Hart made 45 appearances with the Flyers last season, winning 13 of them and recording a respectable .905 save percentage. It’s a minor miracle he finished above .900 given the shortcomings of the Flyers’ defensive group.
The Flyers originally intended to have Ivan Fedotov compete for reps behind Hart in 2022–23, but those plans changed when Russian authorities detained the 25-year-old goaltender as he attempted to travel to the United States over the summer. Instead, it appears Felix Sandstrom and Troy Grosenick will battle for the backup spot this season.
Both Sandstrom and Grosenick saw a ton of action in the American Hockey League last season. Grosenick, 33, posted a sparkling .933 save percentage and a 16–6–4 record in 30 games with the Providence Bruins; Sandstrom, 25, has spent his entire professional career as a Flyers prospect and went 16–18–5 with a .902 save percentage in 44 games with the 2021–22 Lehigh Valley Phantoms.
COACHING
John Tortorella, who left ESPN in June to sign a four-year deal to coach the Flyers, is already intimately familiar with Atkinson and Hayes from his previous tenures with the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Rangers.
This isn’t the first time Tortorella has joined a team in crisis. He lasted six years in Columbus after taking over at the helm of an 0–7–0 team in 2015, ultimately helping the Blue Jackets make the playoffs in four consecutive seasons. He won the 2017 Jack Adams Award with the team and remains the winningest head coach in Blue Jackets history.
But before that, Tortorella flamed out in spectacular fashion as head coach of the Vancouver Canucks. After winning the Presidents’ Trophy in 2011 and 2012, the Canucks bowed out in the first round in 2013 and hired Tortorella with the goal of a quick turnaround. But Tortorella’s Canucks were even worse than the previous edition, missing the playoffs entirely for the first time since 2008. Tortorella lasted just one season in Vancouver, during which he memorably feuded with star goaltender Roberto Luongo and attempted to fight then-Calgary Flames coach Bob Hartley during a game.
There’s really no way to predict how much success Tortorella will find in Philadelphia. He’s one of the most successful, controversial, and quotable head coaches in NHL history. Anything could happen.
ROOKIES
Top 2022 draft pick Cutter Gauthier is off to Boston College, where he’ll likely spend a year or two before joining the Flyers. But even without Gauthier in the picture, the Flyers should be able to give plenty of intriguing prospects significant NHL minutes in 2022–23.
Chief among them is Bobby Brink, who made the jump directly to Philadelphia in the spring after scoring 57 points in 41 games as a junior with the national champion Denver Pioneers. The 21-year-old winger might start out with AHL Lehigh Valley this year, but don’t be surprised if he’s on one of Philadelphia’s top three forward lines in the end.
Noah Cates, Isaac Ratcliffe, and Wade Allison are all at least five inches taller than the 5’8″ Brink, and they also received cups of coffee with the Flyers in 2021–22. Cates had the best run of them all, scoring five goals and nine points in 19 games down the stretch. He could give Zack MacEwen a run for his money in training camp.
On defense, the Flyers have a trio of prospects who should push for minutes this year. Cam York likely has the inside track toward locking down a spot on the third pairing — we have him pencilled in next to Justin Braun for the time being — while Ronnie Attard and Egor Zamula will likely receive call-ups throughout the season.
BURNING QUESTIONS
1. What is Owen Tippett’s ceiling? The main piece heading back to Philadelphia in the Claude Giroux trade, Tippett has yet to consistently show why the Florida Panthers made him the No. 10 pick in the 2017 NHL Draft. The 23-year-old winger scored 10 goals and 21 points in 63 games split between Florida and Philadelphia last season. You can bet the Flyers would be over the moon if Tippett turned into a top-six forward for them.
2. Will James van Riemsdyk be traded? JVR is entering the final season of his contract after leading the Flyers with 24 goals in 2021–22. At age 33, he’s almost certainly not a long-term piece. Fortunately for Fletcher, van Riemsdyk does not have a no-trade clause in his contract, and it’s not hard to imagine a decent-sized bidding war forming if the Flyers were to retain half of the 6’3″ winger’s $7 million cap hit.
3. Can the Flyers extend Travis Sanheim? The 26-year-old defenseman was one of the few bright spots on the 2021–22 Flyers, scoring 31 points and averaging 22:58 in 80 games. He’d be a good building block for pretty much any NHL team. If the Flyers and Sanheim are unable to find common ground in contract talks, he’s almost certainly become one of the top players on the trade market.
PREDICTION
The Flyers will be hard-pressed to replicate their 61-point showing from last season, but we certainly don’t think they’ll return to the playoffs.
With Giroux gone, no significant additions made at forward, and the DeAngelo acquisition the only major change on defense, expect the Flyers to miss the playoffs by double-digit points for the third consecutive season.
Will the Flyers pivot toward a full-scale teardown during the season? It’s certainly possible … but they might have to replace Fletcher first. Atkinson, van Riemsdyk, Provorov, and Sanheim could be the first to go in such a scenario.
Either way, the Flyers should be fascinating to follow in 2022–23.
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