Flyers

Report: Torts Not Going Anywhere

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Apr 11th, 2024 · 10:18 AM EDT

---

Dreger:

We can all appreciate the speculation. And when it comes to John Tortorella and the stories that follow, there’s always speculation. As for his future as head coach…a Flyers management source says “Torts is not leaving the bench”. He still has the fire…no question about that.

— Darren Dreger (@DarrenDreger) April 10, 2024

This is borderline post-worthy, if we’re being completely honest. Why? Because there was a small portion of Philly sports fans calling for Torts’ job and an even smaller portion (miniscule, really) who thought that it would actually happen.

But Dreger is the first big national guy to come out with anything at all regarding Torts’ job status, so that’s shareable. I don’t know how you fire the coach of a team that has no expectations and was not predicted to win anything. A team with a dearth of talent in a rebuilding season. Not a single person thought the Flyers would sniff the postseason this year, so it’s hard to see how a coach would be fired for not achieving a goal that wasn’t set before the campaign even began.

If Torts gets fired, it’ll be because he’s worn thin on the team, or the message isn’t being received, or because Danny B builds a roster decent enough to have expectations which are then not met. Or, he slides into the front office instead and the Flyers bring back Craig Berube, aka CHIEF. That’s the hot rumor floating around out there, but whether it actually has legs remains to be seen. Otherwise, it would take some sort of strife behind the scenes to pull the plug on Torts now, because the on-ice results certainly aren’t shit can-worthy.

For what feels like the umpteenth time, Torts took a team with no expectations and overachieved. He got 43 points out of Ryan Poehling and Garnet Hathaway. There’s no Nathan MacKinnon on this team. There’s no Nikita Kucherov or Connor McDavid or Artemi Panarin or David Pastrnak. The Flyers don’t even have a Kevin Fiala or Zach Hyman. Philly’s top point scorer is in a six-way tie for 58th. Joe Pavelski is a million years old and still had more points than anybody on Torts’ roster.