After witnessing a miserable January that saw the Philadelphia Flyers quickly fall out of the top eight in the Eastern Conference, fans know that it\u2019s going to take a miraculous surge coming out of the Olympic break for the club to qualify for the postseason. A sixth straight year without playoff hockey is the likeliest outcome.<\/p>\n
So, yeah, there\u2019s understandable frustration, and these days it\u2019s pointed in a lot of directions, from the front office to behind the bench to individual players such as Sam Ersson and Sean Couturier.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s plenty to dissect about what\u2019s going wrong and what \u2014 and who \u2014 is to blame for the Flyers\u2019 struggles. Some are valid, and others are perhaps a bit too reactionary. In other words, what is fact and what is fiction about this Flyers season so far?<\/p>\n
Rick Tocchet was the wrong hire<\/p>\n
Fiction, right now. Tocchet is a little more than half a season into his tenure as Flyers coach, and factoring in the state of the roster, the club\u2019s 25-20-11 record is probably in line with where many expected it would be, and maybe even a bit better. Considering they\u2019ve dropped eight consecutive games past regulation, don\u2019t have a reliable backup goalie and lost their best two-way forward in Tyson Foerster<\/a> for the season after just 21 games, what Tocchet has done so far has been commendable. Guys such as Jamie Drysdale, Trevor Zegras, Cam York, Owen Tippett and Bobby Brink have all looked better under Tocchet than they did last season (and so did Foerster before his shoulder injury).<\/p>\n We\u2019ll see where it all goes, of course. There are no guarantees this is going to work. Everyone knows the tenure of NHL coaches these days is short. But Tocchet\u2019s seat is not remotely warm at the moment, in the first year of his five-year contract.<\/p>\n There are no high-end prospects in the system beyond Porter Martone<\/p>\n It\u2019s not without some merit. I\u2019m not sure anyone in the Flyers\u2019 system other than Martone could be branded a surefire everyday NHL player at this point. Some of the shine has worn off of Jett Luchanko, who played mostly as a depth forward for Canada\u2019s World Juniors team this year. Since getting traded to Brantford<\/a>, Luchanko has 20 points (5 goals, 15 assists) in 21 games, which is a decent sum, but doesn\u2019t exactly scream future star. The same could perhaps be said for Jack Nesbitt, the No. 12 pick in the 2025 draft, who has 41 points (16 goals, 25 assists) in 42 games for Windsor.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s much too early to brand these guys, or any of the other prospects still in their teens, as busts. Jack Berglund, drafted in the second round in 2024, is exceeding expectations at this point after a strong showing at the World Juniors for Sweden. He could end up having more upside than both Luchanko and Nesbitt.<\/p>\n If there was ever a reminder that trying to project prospects is often a fool\u2019s errand, consider Denver Barkey<\/a>. No one \u2014 including general manager Daniel Briere \u2014 expected him in the NHL so soon. In the lead-up to training camp, it was Alex Bump that everyone was focused on as likely to make the opening-night roster. Instead, Barkey has forced his way into the lineup and could be a fixture in the top nine for a long time.<\/p>\n Sam Ersson\u2019s time with the Flyers should be up<\/p>\n Fact. For the second straight season, Ersson\u2019s numbers are downright dismal. He hits the Olympic break with an 8-10-5 record, 3.51 goals-against average, and a league-worst .856 save percentage. Despite Dan Vladar giving the Flyers reliable goaltending<\/a> just about every time he\u2019s in the net, the Flyers\u2019 .877 team save percentage is 29th in the NHL. They have their backups to blame for that.<\/p>\n Perhaps the club has something planned to address its goaltending coming out of the break, even if it\u2019s simply giving a longer look to Aleksei Kolosov (who has yet to show he\u2019s ready for the NHL). But if the Flyers keep running Ersson out there every third or fourth game, that could be a sign that they\u2019re fine with punting on the season.<\/p>\n The Cutter Gauthier trade was mishandled<\/p>\n Almost certainly fiction. Cutter Gauthier\u2019s emergence as a high-end goal-scoring winger for Anaheim has surely been a painful development for Flyers fans. He could hit 40 goals this season, with 25 in 55 games so far. But to simply say the Flyers shouldn\u2019t have traded him is to forget how this all went down. Gauthier cut the organization off cold turkey. He declined to meet<\/a> with Patrick Sharp and John LeClair, who attempted to talk with him after a game at Boston College, and when Briere and president of hockey operations Keith Jones flew to the World Juniors in Sweden just before the trade, they, too, were shunned.<\/p>\n Is there a world in which the Flyers could have simply waited out Gauthier while living with the chance he could eventually depart as a free agent? That\u2019s just not realistic. Word was bound to get out at some point that Gauthier was disgruntled, and that would have made the situation even worse for everyone involved.<\/p>\n Briere still did a decent job here, considering the circumstances. Drysdale is having the best season of his career and looks like a legitimate top-four defenseman. They got a prospect in 2025 second-round pick Jack Murtagh, too. And, don\u2019t forget that if the Flyers hadn\u2019t traded Gauthier to the Ducks, they probably wouldn\u2019t have acquired Zegras on the cheap last summer.<\/p>\n Sean Couturier is washed up<\/p>\n It\u2019s not trending in the right direction, but that\u2019s also overstating it.<\/p>\n Couturier hits the break with zero goals in his last 29 games. His diminished playmaking ability and finish around the net suggest that his contract \u2014 $7.75 million AAV for the next four seasons after this one \u2014 is going to become an albatross for Briere sooner rather than later. Couturier has dropped down the depth chart lately, too, centering the Flyers\u2019 fourth line for the past four games.<\/p>\n That said, Couturier still has value. He can win draws, kill penalties, is defensively responsible and is still respected in the dressing room. His best days are behind him, to be sure. But if he\u2019s the Flyers\u2019 fourth-line center for the next season or two, allowing some of their center prospects more time to develop, it\u2019s not going to be the end of the world.<\/p>\n They are ruining Matvei Michkov<\/p>\n Fiction. Michkov\u2019s struggles lie almost exclusively with Michkov, who arrived at training camp \u2026 well, you know already<\/a>. Michkov is going to have to commit himself to the gym and training this summer and be ready to come into camp and put all of this season\u2019s unpleasantness behind him. This video breakdown<\/a> of Michkov\u2019s struggles from a former NHL video coach recently caught my eye, and it\u2019s worth a watch if you want to see specific examples of which facets of his game could be improved (even if a few of them may be nitpicking a bit too much).<\/p>\n There\u2019s been a bit too much made of Michkov\u2019s playing mostly the left wing for the past few months rather than the right wing. This isn\u2019t like switching from quarterback to linebacker. If Michkov was doing all of the little things he was supposed to be doing on a more regular basis, he\u2019d have more of an impact, no matter the side.<\/p>\n Michkov has all the tools he needs to succeed. Everyone saw that in the second half of last season. The Flyers maintain that he is still committed to becoming a star. Next season will reveal whether that\u2019s still realistic, and at that point, it will be up to Tocchet and the coaching staff to maximize him.<\/p>\n Christian Dvorak\u2019s 5-year extension was a mistake<\/p>\n Too early to say, but the topic is certainly debatable. If the Flyers continue to fall out of the playoff race after the break, they might regret not having Dvorak to dangle as trade bait ahead of the March 6 deadline. Just about every contending team in the league is looking for another center, and Dvorak, having a career year, would have gotten the Flyers a nice haul in a trade.<\/p>\n The Flyers will likely have to overpay in a trade for a high-end center or center prospect at some point. Had they gotten another first-round pick and a prospect for Dvorak \u2014 as they did in the Scott Laughton trade last year \u2014 that would have given them more ammunition to try and pull something off in the 2026 offseason.<\/p>\n That said, the Dvorak extension isn\u2019t a disaster, even if it seems a bit too long at five years. He\u2019s a well-rounded two-way player who has fit in nicely with this group and does a lot of the little things that don\u2019t end up on the scoresheet. His presence on the roster could help the Flyers keep his good friend Zegras around on a reasonable extension, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After witnessing a miserable January that saw the Philadelphia Flyers quickly fall out of the top eight in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,1789,99],"class_list":["post-472393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}