The only "subtractions" were guys Tortorella dictated. Who had the least value, because everyone knew they were going to be forced out. The guys they should be moving don't get moved. It's not a rebuild. They should be building for the Michkov era, and so far they don't have much and they're content to pretend the team is fine. There's very little to distinguish last offseason from those that came before. Especially with signing Staal, and at the TDL spending to get a slob washed up dman for no reason at all. That first stage you described? That's the "easy" part of GMing, and the job the Flyers did considering it's supposedly a rebuild was not very solid. They either fail to understand the team's position and situation or they fail to be able to identify the obvious moves.
Everything from here on out is really hard, especially with a minimum of picks and letting all your assets deprecate. They refuse to move the people they need to move. Michkov will hit his prime surrounded by aging-out players at this rate. His career will be wasted like Giroux's. It's the exact same path; I remember when people here predicted that they'd regret not going full rebuild in 2011 and trading guys like Briere and Hartnell and Timonen along with Richards and Carter. Those posters were called negative, and I didn't agree with them. They ended up being right and I was wrong. Unlike the Flyers, I've learned.
Culture is useless. It's bullshit. It's an excuse this team trots out and glorifies chiefly to slam former players as they scapegoat them one after the other. Glorifying it, of course, feeds Clarke's ego because he always gets held up as the standard, and stroking Clarke's ego is the most important function of this team apparently. No team wins on culture. Many teams across sports win with terrible culture, in fact. Building for culture is a sign you're building to lose, because you're valuing players for non-hockey things. Build for effectiveness at playing hockey and culture follows. Trying to force culture always fails; it's a thing that has to happen on its own. The Flyers have been talking about rebuilding culture nonstop since they traded Richards and Carter so clearly they suck at it.
They haven't built a foundation. Everything should be in service of Michkov's prime. Anything established now will be dust and ash by then, anyway. What have they "built" now that will be vital then? A foundation would look like Michkov and the horde of young talent they plan on bringing up with him all on the same timeline to maximize the chance of winning. Not Tortorella's whining.