It was simple for John Tortorella Tuesday morning.
To the usual question of a team poised on the playoff plank — a position the Flyers have become quite accustomed to in recent years — he was ready with a wholly anticipated response.
“We’re trying to win every game and that’s how we’re approaching it,” Tortorella said. “And we’re trying to approach it one game at a time. That’s the only way I know how to do it. You win a few games and you’re right in the hunt. If you lose a few, you’re in the cellar. That’s how the standings are. But we’re still in it.”
Certainly, Tortorella knew then that his team had every chance to keep winning that night.
See, the Penguins are reeeeaaallly bad now. It didn’t help them that 38-year-old Evgeni Malkin is playing at about half speed with an ouchy knee, and has one goal since New Year’s Eve.
Or that 37-year-old Sidney Crosby, still averaging better than a point per game this season and the best player in the NHL for much of the last 20 years no matter how many goals Alex Ovechkin has scored, is left to try to do too much on every given shift.
The Penguins, who host the Flyers on Thursday night and have fallen four points behind the suddenly (sort-of) streaking Flyers while holding the dead-last position in the Metropolitan Division, aren’t as bad as they showed in their 6-1 loss at Wells Fargo Center on Tuesday night. Nor are they even close to good enough to avoid a third consecutive playoff miss.
But while Tortorella vaguely and mistakenly referenced a four-game win streak at one point in a Wednesday media availability — the Flyers have actually won three in a row, but Thursday’s game will mark their third meeting with the Penguins over the last four games, so what’s the difference? — he’s been around too long for optimistic guessing games.
It would be a cosmic disturbance among the Vegas gods if the Flyers would manage to make the playoffs for the first time in five years in April. Not that upsets don’t happen.
“It’s simple for me,” Tortorella said. “You prepare your team every day, and you try to win each and every hockey game, and then we’ll see where we are.”
By Wednesday, Tortorella knew right where his team was, at 26-26-7 for 59 points after 59 games. That’s hockey’s version of .500. And know that .500 in this sport doesn’t translate to postseason bidding.
Such as it is, the Flyers’ task for the remaining 23 games remains tall.
After their easy Tuesday victory over the Pens they were five points out of a playoff spot in the East, and with another Penguin date pending.
Yet they still had played a game more than the other guys on the playoff bubble. So with the NHL trade deadline looming a week from Friday, speculation might ramp up that the Flyers will be buyers instead of their usual selling mode.
At first, Tortorella leaned on coachspeak when asked about that Wednesday, and the rumors that Rasmus Ristolainen and Scott Laughton were trade candidates. He literally said at one point that he was done talking about such stuff. And then he talked some more.
“Who’s trading Ristolainen?” Tortorella said. “To me, it’s a friendly contract for us. … Since I started here he’s our most improved player.”
All well and good, except that Tortorella eventually seemed to move to a position of support for moves to be made. Carefully, of course. And yes, he knows that such things are general manager Danny Briere’s job.
“We have to improve our team,” Tortorella said. “Danny is listening. He has to listen because we’re in that stage. We have to improve our team. Scotty’s loved here, but you can’t fall in love. Risto is always a target, where if you end up trading him (on Friday at the deadline), then on Saturday you’re thinking, ‘oh (crap), I need a big right-handed defenseman.’
“You’re always looking for a big, right-handed defenseman. … You can’t fall in love, because if there’s something that really is a good situation for the timeframe that we’re at with our team right now, I’m sure Danny’s going to really look hard at it.”
Briere has already hinted that for the first time since he replaced Chuck Fletcher, he might be willing to be a real player when the annual July free agent sweepstakes begin. That might be sweet news to Tortorella’s ears, who has toiled with this club’s mantra of building from within since signing a deal with the organization in 2022.
John Tortorella is a championship head coach in this league. He has improved the Flyers (albeit slowly) since then.
But this club has some young forward talent now with Matvei Michkov, Owen Tippett, Tyson Foerster and others, and via the trades of Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee, will be able to forge the kind of payroll cap room it hasn’t enjoyed for many years.
It also has a very long way to go before truly contending. But starting with this trade deadline and the July 1 commencement of the free agency season, it would likely best serve the players, the coaches and yes, the fans, to infuse some real talent and experience into the mix.
Seems that Tortorella came close to lobbying for just that on Wednesday. In his own way, of course.
“I think the trade deadline is a dangerous situation,” he said. “I think free agency is a time of year where you can screw up your team for years, because of the money being spent at that time. … But we have to get better.
“When you try to get better, there are going to be some casualties, and we can’t worry about ‘he was loved in the room.’ You can’t. You have to assess everything that’s going on, because we have to keep moving forward.”
Contact Rob Parent at rparent@delcotimes.com
Source: Berkshire mont