On the latest edition of Flyers Talk, Jordan Hall and Jim Jackson shared their thoughts on Sean Couturier’s move to fourth-line left winger in Saturday’s home opener.
When John Tortorella took over the Flyers, the team was coming off a dreadful, 57-loss season in 2021-22. A month and a half into his work behind the bench, the Flyers had lost 10 straight games, territory that had become familiar for the organization.
Tortorella knew the Flyers had little to no respect around the league.
He wasn't perplexed by it.
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"You've got to eat that s---," the head coach said in November 2022. "Don't complain about it. You've got to eat it. That's part of growing."
And Tortorella still sees a lack of respect with the Flyers as they've started Year 3 of his tenure. While they've improved, legitimately vying for the playoffs last season, the Flyers are seen more as a rebuilding team than a contender.
Perhaps they felt that reputation in their schedule to start the 2024-25 season. The Flyers had a season-opening four-game road swing that sent them to Western Canada and Seattle. After wrapping up the trip Thursday night in Seattle and flying home Friday, they had to quickly readjust to Eastern Time with their home opener Saturday night.
The Flyers weren't sharp and were outplayed in a 3-0 blanking to the Canucks.
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"It's no excuse, but the National Hockey League works this way," Tortorella said Monday after practice. "When you have no respect in the league, as we do not, you get the schedule that you get. I don't want to put all the blame [with] our home opener on that, but that's a tough game, that's a tough game for us. Having said that, I don't think we're dead on even in the games we've played prior."
The Flyers lost three of the four games on their trip and are now 1-3-1 after dropping the home opener.
"I think we've had some good minutes, but we've been very inconsistent just as far as the checking forward and just the hardness of our game," Tortorella said. "Five games in, I'm sure a lot of coaches and teams are trying and struggling to find their identity, too. But we just don't have a lot of time, we need to get at it right away and get back to where our standard is."
A player that should help the Flyers with their pace and physicality is Nick Seeler. He'll make his season debut Tuesday when the Flyers host the Capitals (6 p.m. ET/ESPN). The second-pair defenseman missed the Flyers' first five games after taking a puck to the peroneal nerve in his right leg on Oct. 1.
"I've never experienced something like that — leg just kind of shut off for a while," Seeler said. "But it feels a lot better."
The sensation returning to his leg and foot was a longer process than expected.
"The numbness was the whole outside of my right leg and into my foot," Seeler said. "That took a week and a half, two weeks to start feeling normal. And then we've just been working on stability, just those muscles because you're not able to use them necessarily properly when your foot and leg are numb. ... It has progressed pretty well here in the last couple of days."
Dating back to last season when he missed time in March, the Flyers have gone 5-8-3 and surrendered 4.07 goals per game and 13 power play goals without Seeler.
"Everything's done quick with him," Tortorella said. "It's a part of our game that, after five games — I don't want to overstate it, we still have a lot of things to work on — but that's a part of the game we have to get better at and he'll certainly help us."
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