Flyers

Mathematician John Tortorella Believes in Subtraction Before Addition and Thinks the Spoiler Role is Bullshit

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Mar 21st, 2023 · 3:10 PM EDT

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Let’s get it back to the Flyers.

It’s March 21st, the NHL regular season is mercifully almost over (less than a month), and Torts graced us with a couple of great soundbites this week.

In reverse chronological order, he thinks playing “spoiler” against the Panthers (or anyone else down the stretch) is bullshit:

more words of wisdom from John Tortorella pic.twitter.com/VUa7oGoweP

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) March 21, 2023

He also said publicly that you have to get rid of bad players before adding good ones, via Jordan Hall at NBC Sports Philadelphia:

“I’m looking at some of the encouraging things and that comes to our young players and where some of them have grown and some of them haven’t. Some of the veteran guys haven’t. So that’ll be discussed,” Tortorella said Monday. “But for me, the next step with this organization is you don’t start adding players until you subtract players. I think there needs to be some subtraction here. Those will be in discussions at the end of the year.”

Not gonna name names, but there are plenty of candidates for subtraction. That’s up to Danny Briere now, working with Torts. Lots of moving parts in the front office. It’s an organ-eye-zation in transition. Stay tuned.