Tortorella out as head coach of Philadelphia Flyers

This is gonna sound crazy, but the coach who, just the other night, said, "I'm not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we're at right now," has been relieved of his duties.

Or he's stepped down. Or kinda both.

At this point it's a distinction without a difference, because the end result is that John Tortorella is no longer the coach of the Philadelphia Flyers.

The lack of curiosity about what it takes to coach a team having the kind of season the Flyers (28-36-9) have gone through is understandable. They're worst in the division, second-worst in the conference, and fifth-worst in the league. Frustration is only natural. 

Now, most people who noticed what the Flyers were rolling out in goal this season could have told you this was coming. But the thing about hiring Tortorella to coach your team is that you are paying him to wring more out of a bad roster — which the Flyers undoubtedly have, amid a rebuild that's now going on longer than they thought they were signing up for — than most other coaches could. You don't have to like his style, but the results in Tortorella's career speak for themselves. Real stat: The Flyers have the fifth-best score-and-venue-adjusted expected-goals percentage in the league at 5-on-5 this season. They also have a very good team defense on the PK, currently 10th in xGA/60 when they're shorthanded. But the power play stinks (dead last in expected goals per hour and, consequently, third-worst in power-play percentage) and they can't get a save (.872 team save percentage), and here we are.

Again, this is by design, and you have to say a heart but mournful "good luck" to Brad Shaw because it's not like they're gonna suddenly find another gear now that the guy who's infamous for being overbearing and kind of a jerk about stuff is no longer in charge. This is a roster problem, and it was supposed to be. They are trying to be bad and here they are. Now, if you're trying to be bad, I don't know why you hire Tortorella in the first place. But if you want to say the goaltending was a calculation, to essentially put a restrictor plate on the number of loser points Tortorella-coached teams tend to compile? I think you'd have to say that was the right move for a team that felt it needed to tank, and also that it worked perfectly. Again, not sure why you keep this guy around as the coach in that case, unless the organization didn't want to pay him to sit at home for two years.

On the other hand, if the Flyers thought — as many of their fans and local media people did, for some reason — that a Tortorella-coached team would insulate their goalies from being as bad as they had the potential to be, that's a big oopsie. This was always the most likely outcome on that front, even if that .872 number is clearly on the low end of what you would expect from any two or three NHL-caliber goalies in 2025. ("NHL-caliber" might be the thing you'd quibble with at this point.) In fact, the Flyers are currently on track to post the worst team save percentage in the advanced-stats era, which dates back almost 20 years at this point.

More to the point, though, the problem with Tortorella giving that not-so-good quote about the state of the franchise is that there are some aspects of where the team's at that are his fault. Matvei Michkov, for instance, was always going to be in this organization longer than Tortorella — for as good a coach as he is, it's really really really obvious his particular style ages like sour cream in the Sahara. And Michkov absolutely hit a wall this season, as far back as December; after starting with 11 goals and 17 assists in the first 27 games of his career, Michkov only has 9-14—24 in his last 44 games. Around that same time, Tortorella started reining in his minutes, though they've begun to expand once again as the team slipped deeper into the lottery-pick zone. And again, there was never gonna be a universe where Michkov was allowed to really cook because this is the coach who goes on national TV and complains about guys scoring lacrosse goals, so that too is just baked into the incompatibility of what Tortorella does versus what the Flyers need. And obviously that's only one guy, but it's an instructive microcosm of the whole situation.

So I think the only thing to say is, "Fair enough." Tortorella shouldn't have wanted to coach the Flyers in their current state. The Flyers shouldn't have wanted him to keep coaching the team the only way he knows how or, apparently, is interested in knowing.

Everybody gets what they want, or perhaps just what they need. Hard to be upset about it.