Should Flyers Management Start Looking for a Possible Replacement for Torts?

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Let me start this article off by saying that at the time of his hire, I do believe the Flyers made the right decision when they chose their current Head Coach, John Tortorella. I mean, he came with a pedigree that consisted of a Stanley Cup Win and two Jack Adams Awards, not to mention the fact that his brash, no-nonsense coaching style was exactly what this team needed at the time to help them weed out some of their locker-room cancers. You know, the players that had been around this team a little too long and, therefore, had grown comfortable with the state of mediocrity they were in, especially if it meant that after the regular season, they could get an early start on their summer vacation plans.

But the team is no longer at the start of a rebuild. This franchise is now three years into this renovation. The problems are long gone, and new management has been put into place, which has made significant efforts to get their club younger and faster by bringing in quality draft picks like Matvei Michkov and Jett Luchanko, to name a few. They also continue to set themselves up for the future by accumulating a multitude of other top-tier draft pick compensations that they will hopefully utilize during the 2025 draft this upcoming summer in an effort to continue to restock their once-barren farm system.

Still, even though management was able to gift Torts the young 19-year-old superstar in the making (Matvei Michkov) who leads all Rookies this year in goals and points, the team finds themselves amongst the league’s bottom dwellers winning just three of their now ten games played. So despite them having just won for the first time in Boston since 2011, I feel they are in trouble. If you look at the standings, you will see that the Bruins are dead last in the Atlantic Division. And the Flyers are only a point ahead of the league’s worst team, the San Jose Sharks.

So, with that being said, I think Tortorella has served his purpose here, and the team should be at least starting to look for his possible replacement. Do you disagree with me?

Well, let me provide you with some facts. With 2025 right around the corner, it means that it has been close to 21 years since Torts last raised a Stanley Cup. And it’s been seven years since he last won a Jack Adams award for being viewed as the league’s best coach. Even then, mind you, after winning 50 games during the regular season with the Blue Jackets, John’s team only managed to win one post season game before being knocked out of the playoffs and sent home packing.

Now, I’ll give him credit. It is pretty impressive that he has been able to achieve the honor of being named the Head Coach of five different organizations in the NHL throughout his career, not to mention him winning over 745 regular season games during that same time. Still, it doesn’t change the fact that over his three years in Philadelphia, he has only managed to obtain an abysmal .486 win percentage, which if you look at his stats is by far the worst of any team, he has previously coached or been fired from over his 23-year career.

In saying that, I don’t know about you, but I expect a little more this far into the rebuild. I mean, last season, this team, without Michkov or any other true superstar on the roster, held down a playoff position for over 110 straight days before succumbing to multiple injuries on the back end that led to their abrupt fall from grace.

So, with virtually the same team coming back, I ask you, what’s the problem? And what is the coaching staff willing to do about it? The answer: Nothing! So far this season, when asked by the media, Tortorella just chalks the team’s inability to win games up to their youth—reiterating on multiple occasions that the team is young and going to struggle at times, which I get to a point. But if that is true, why is he not trying to implement a plan of action to prevent that problem from happening?

And why, after back-to-back seasons of finishing with the league’s worst power play percentage, did he not choose to fire his assistant, Rocky Thompson? Granted, the PP has been better this year thanks to #39, but what happens when Matvei’s English gets better, and he will then be expected to actually have to listen to this guy who made a career out of punching in the face of his opponents, let alone the fact that he never even scored a goal in the NHL or the fact that he never saw any playing time while his team was on the man advantage. Let it be known that Thompson’s systems have not changed; the team is just benefiting from Michkov’s pure talent and current language barrier.

So, I ask you, with the team’s youth movement now well underway, should we still be employing a coach who historically has always favored veteran players over inexperienced youth?

Or should we bring in a coach with some fresh ideas and lots of experience coaching young men to glory?

Suppose you agree with the latter statement. Here are a couple of names I would suggest the Flyers at least start kicking the tires on.

Todd Nelson

Nelson is currently the Head Coach of the American Hockey League Hersey Bears. A team that is coming off a season where they won over 77% of their regular season games (53 to be exact) and then went onto the playoffs where they were able to repeat their success from last season, which garnered them back-to-back Calder Cup Championships. For his efforts, Todd was also lucky enough to be asked to coach in back-to-back AHL All-Star Games, as well as being named the AHL Coach of the Year last season, where he was given the (Louis AR Pieri Memorial Award).

But I assure you Todd is not just some overnight success. Serving as a Head Coach back in the early 00’s for the UHL’s Muskegon Fury, Nelson was able to coach the team to back-to-back Championships. He won an AHL Championship serving as an Assistant Coach for the Chicago Wolfs back in 2008 and added another Calder Cup Championship in 2017 when he was serving as the Head Coach of the Grand Rapids Griffins.

Still, with all those years of success and over 400 wins accumulated coaching in the minors, Nelson is not new to teaching at the highest level. In the past, he served as an assistant for the Atlanta Thrashers, Edmonton Oilers, and the Dallas Stars.

With all this being said, I think it would be well deserved if he were ever to be afforded the opportunity to be the next head coach of the Flyers.

Rand Pecknold

Another worthy candidate for the Flyers’ top spot, if it were ever to come available, would be the NCAA’s current active leader in wins, Rand Pecknold of the Quinnipiac Bobcats. Rand has spent the past 30 years building this now colligate powerhouse from the ground up. And it should be known that he has been able to do so with a fraction of the budget that some of his fellow Eastern College Athletic Conference coaches have.

Still, with less funds and no flashy gimmicks in place to get top-tier talent to come to the little town of Hamden, Connecticut, to play for him. Pecknold has managed to accrue an incredible 642 career wins. He’s done so through developing a keen eye for prospects who are willing to play a complete 200ft game and be defensibly responsible. Players that are going to be there to learn how to be a successful member of a team and not just focus on their individual point totals.

This method has allowed his previous teams to reach multiple Frozen Four Tournaments and earned them a National Championship in 2023.

Now, while others have tried in the past to lure Rand away from the team, he has poured so much of his blood, sweat, and tears into. A chance to coach a historic franchise such as the Flyers may just prove too enticing to pass up.

Dale Hunter

The last name that I would suggest the Flyers check into the availability of would be the OHL’s Dale Hunter, who coaches for one of the Flyers’ most trusted spots to select young talent from, and that would be the London Knights. Now, Dale, who served as the captain for the Washington Capitals for a great many years, retired back in 1999 from the NHL and, almost immediately upon doing so, became part owner of the Knights, where he has been the Head Coach ever since.

During that time, Dale has managed to pile up well over 900 regular season wins in the OHL, as well as winning four league championships, with the latest actually coming last year, where he got the chance to coach both the Flyers center prospect Denver Barkey and their defensive prospect Oliver Bonk.

Hunter knows what it takes to win in the NHL, and when you compare his hard-nosed, gritty play style and his relentless will to win, Dale seems like he would be a perfect fit to slide into what hopefully one day soon will be a vacant coaching position on South Broad Street.

As I said, I respect John Tortorella as a coach. In fact, he is just the kind of coach that would have fueled me to prove him wrong back in my playing days. But let’s face it, today’s kids are not built the same way some of us Gen X’ers were, which is why Torts’ old-school coaching style never seems to allow him to retain a job for any considerable amount of time. So, with a new influx of youth being brought into the Flyers lineup already, along with the possible addition of up to six players to be taken by the Flyers in the top 64 picks this summer, why not go ahead and replace this struggling relic with someone who has been spending the last 20 years providing tutelage to today’s future pros.?