Sean Couturier about to get healthy scratched 34 days after being named the new Flyers' Captain

[egelband]

That so many people are upset about this but there is no hockey argument against it tells me it’s a good move.

 

[Alexander the Gr8]

The Jackets overachieved with Torts, now the Flyers are. How is that not tangible?

The Jackets went to the second round once after their GM went all in and acquired Duchene at the deadline. That’s it.

The Flyers may or may not make the playoffs this year. They’ve played above expectations, but they’re rapidly coming back to Earth.

I’m not impressed by his accomplishments. His tenure in Vancouver was a disaster. The best stretch of coaching he had after the 04 Cup was his tenure as the Rangers’ head coach, 10-15 years ago.

 

[ryan callahan]

Don't see why fans get their panties twisted for this. If you are captain, you should be accountable just as much as the 4th line center playing 9 minutes/games. Half a dozen captains around the league deserve the same treatment but get away with princess treatment.

 

[Goose]

The Flyers aren't overachieving because of Tortorella whatsoever. The Flyers are vastly improved this year because of three things:

1. Sean Couturier coming back and playing at a much higher level than expected for most of the year
2. Sean Walker and Cam York playing like top 4 defensemen
3. Travis Sanheim and Travis Konecny playing like top pairing/line players

Giving Tortorella credit for this year is complete fantasy by people who aren't paying attention to the Flyers at all.

I have no clue about the Flyers this year, and I'm lukewarm on Tortorella at best, I know I'd never want to work around the guy, but I don't know how you can claim the Flyers success has nothing to do with him.

He improved the Flyers decently his first year on the job, and he's in the hunt with a team that's clearly in rebuild mode after losing Provorov and their second-leading scorer in Hayes.

I get why people don't like him, but he's an effective coach. Well, for a few years at at time, but that's true of most coaches.

 

[PeE eL DuBoiS]

I wish Keefe had the balls to do this when Matthews or Marner decide to coast for a few games.

 

[Ryuji Yamazaki]

Tortorella is a moron

 

[plank]

John Tortorella is a Hall of Fame coach and motivator.

You are not.

 

[sxvnert]

Flyers up 2-0 at the end of two.

 

[plank]

3-0

 

[Winston Wolf]

I have no clue about the Flyers this year, and I'm lukewarm on Tortorella at best, I know I'd never want to work around the guy, but I don't know how you can claim the Flyers success has nothing to do with him.

He improved the Flyers decently his first year on the job, and he's in the hunt with a team that's clearly in rebuild mode after losing Provorov and their second-leading scorer in Hayes.

I get why people don't like him, but he's an effective coach. Well, for a few years at at time, but that's true of most coaches.

I'm not even saying that Tortorella has no positive attributes or hasn't done good things this year. However, all of the points I outlined have much more to do with the Flyers' success this year than Tortorella does. It's frankly not even close.

Provorov and Hayes are both clearly additions by subtraction. Hayes might have even been movable without a massive value sink if Tortorella didn't completely destroy his value. Moving Provorov out has finally given Sanheim the opportunity to show what he's capable of.

He'd be a fine coach if he didn't have a massive ego and actively attempt to sabotage players. He's scratched Morgan Frost (the Flyers' most talented player) for absolutely no reason for long stretches of the season. The guy is a hound on the puck and is constantly forcing turnovers, but once Tortorella doesn't like you, it's over. The only way Frost got out of the doghouse is by coming to his office and confronting him by demanding to play.

Lots of people in here actively comparing Couturier to guys who float or thinking that he's in any way deserving of being scratched. This is nothing more than Tortorella playing head games and demanding Couturier kneel before him and show fealty.

 

[Rafafouille]

What a surprise, the kids respect their coach for benching a veteran who's been a ghost for a couple months now and come up big. Who would've thought. The only thing dishonorable in that story is Couturier sulking instead of saying that he understands the move and that he needs to get his act together.

 

[Doomhammer]

Flyers played like they wanted to win and had some fire.

Torts coaching this Toronto team would be amazing to watch, but I'm happy to see the Flyers continue to play like this.

 

[KaraLupin]

HALF A SEASON TOO LATE

 

[CanadienShark]

I'm curious to see how this plays out. It's an interesting way to motivate the young guys. Couturier is a pro through and through and should handle it with class. It's not a typical strategy, but things have gotten stale anyways.

 

[KaraLupin]

I'm not even saying that Tortorella has no positive attributes or hasn't done good things this year. However, all of the points I outlined have much more to do with the Flyers' success this year than Tortorella does. It's frankly not even close.

Provorov and Hayes are both clearly additions by subtraction. Hayes might have even been movable without a massive value sink if Tortorella didn't completely destroy his value. Moving Provorov out has finally given Sanheim the opportunity to show what he's capable of.

He'd be a fine coach if he didn't have a massive ego and actively attempt to sabotage players. He's scratched Morgan Frost (the Flyers' most talented player) for absolutely no reason for long stretches of the season. The guy is a hound on the puck and is constantly forcing turnovers, but once Tortorella doesn't like you, it's over. The only way Frost got out of the doghouse is by coming to his office and confronting him by demanding to play.

Lots of people in here actively comparing Couturier to guys who float or thinking that he's in any way deserving of being scratched. This is nothing more than Tortorella playing head games and demanding Couturier kneel before him and show fealty.

Except Couts has looked slow af since All Star break, for an already slow player, he looked decent coming back after being out for so long. But he looks absolutely tolled right now.

This is the same as Brink hitting the wall in the first half of the season and being sent down. He had no other attributes to bring to the game.

This is not the Couts of before surgery where if he was on an offensive slump he still played a great 2 way game. His body is too shot for that to be possible right now.

 

[DelZottoHitTheNetJK]

I don't wanna hear the Torts slander. Look at the roster he has and they're in the playoffs plus top-10 in xGF%.

Does he get a weird hair up his ass with certain players? Definitely. Does he similarly develop a fetish for really bad players? Yes.

Every coach does that, though. The guy knows how to get results.

Couldn't agree more. He won't win it but he far and away deserves the Jack Adams this year.

Also.. looks like this "insane" strategy worked out. Flyers were desperate for a win and the lineup he put out there got them one against a good team.

Say what you want about Torts but the guy will do whatever it takes to win a hockey game at whatever the cost

 

[Chainshot]

So it worked. Buttons pushed.

 

[MessierII]

1 goal and -15 in his last 16 games. Seems justified no?

 

[Koivu11]

 

[Ghost of Murph]

It's almost like Torts knows a thing or two about coaching hockey.

 

[MS]

1 goal and -15 in his last 16 games. Seems justified no?

First 41 games 10-20-30 +12

Last 23 games 1-5-6 -18

The guy hit a wall after missing most of the last 2 seasons through injury.

The mistake Tortorella made was actually not healthy scratching him earlier and load-managing him to get him through the season effectively. They should have planned to dress him in 60 games this season and rest him in B2Bs. But literally every single coach and every single team makes this mistake with veteran players because hockey culture says that REGULAR PLAYERS MUST PLAY IN EVERY GAME and it's an insult to take a day off.

 

[tiburon12]

Is the "not answering your question" at the beginning directed at SanFillipo?

 

[Appleyard]

He did not deserve to be scratched really...

has not been himself recently, but has still been amongst Flyers best ~6-7 forwards. He got injured in January, missed a few games and was playing through injury either side of that... from what I know a lot of players would have missed more time. Has not quite been himself in OZ especially since.

BUT:

Has played very well defensively (2.00 ExGA/60 this month while ofc matching up mainly vs other teams best players)
He works his ass off and always has
His overall playdriving given the way the team has been over last few weeks has been "fine" too... ~49% CF, ~48.5% ExGF... better than team average.

But he has had awful PDO (0.872)

The timeline is really the strangest part.

Torts apparently barges into the Flyers FO and demands Couturier be made captain...
next game cuts his ice time from 18 minutes he has averaged over the previous 5 games to under 13 minutes...
has not played him more than ~16 minutes since...
he played ~4 games on 2nd line after the initial game of ice time cut, in the 4th game vs the Pens he set up two goals...
next game he is skating in the bottom six...
only has one point since...
last ~4-5 games he played he had been stapled to 4th line in all but 1 really...
game before he was scratched he helped create a goal for Nick Deslauriers with some dogged play, almost sparked a comeback... but Couturier did not see ice after the shift where he set up the goal...
scratched next game.

 

[Reality Czech]

20+ years ago this barely would have been a story but I guess now we've gotta overreact about everything these days.

Underperforming hockey player gets benched, more at 11

 

[Appleyard]

20+ years ago this barely would have been a story but I guess now we've gotta overreact about everything these days.

Underperforming hockey player gets benched, more at 11

14 years ago John MacLean and the Devils healthy scratched Kovalchuk...

it made national news, every hockey outlet ran a story and it rattled on for days... it certainly had a thread here.

Of course, Kovalchuk was a better player than Couturier... but was not the teams captain.

Something so novel being a story is not really surprising, how many times in NHL history has a captain been a healthy scratch? Let alone a captain who was only named captain a month ago.