Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella stands behind his bench during the first period of an NHL hockey game against the Pittsburgh Penguins Monday, Dec. 23, 2024, in Pittsburgh. (AP Photo/Matt Freed)
The Philadelphia Flyers fired coach John Tortorella on Thursday with nine games left in another losing season for a franchise that hasn’t been in the playoffs since 2020.
The Flyers are last in the Metropolitan Division at 28-36-9 for 65 points under the notoriously brusque Tortorella. The Flyers suffered their sixth straight loss Tuesday, 7-2 to Toronto.
Tortorella, who won a Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004, said after the game he was not “really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now.”
“But I have to do a better job,” he said. “So this falls on me, getting the team prepared to play the proper way until we get to the end.”
The Flyers will get to the end without him.
The Flyers named Brad Shaw the interim coach, starting with Thursday’s game against Montreal.
“John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set a standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer,” general manager Danny Briere said. “John’s passion on the bench was only equaled by his charitable work in our community. As we move into the next chapter of this rebuild, I felt this was the best for our team to move forward. I’d like to thank John for his tireless work and commitment to the Flyers.”
The Flyers have lost 11 of their last 12 games and won only six times over the last 25 games — a massive blow for a rebuilding team that had mild playoff hopes entering the season.
Tortorella, who brandished his reputation as a fiery, no-nonsense coach on a team still mostly full of young 20-somethings finding their way in the NHL, went 97-107-33 for the Flyers and was fired with one year left on his contract.
The Flyers haven’t won the Stanley Cup since the last of their two straight championships in 1975. They last played in the Stanley Cup Final in 2010.
Briere championed the job Tortorella did last season as he guided the Flyers to the last game of the season with meaningful hockey to play. The Flyers were widely predicted by experts, fans and oddsmakers to finish near the bottom of the NHL.
Briere preached patience over playoffs again this season, even with the ascension of rookie star Matvei Michkov, who has lived up to the hype with 51 points in 71 games. The 66-year-old Tortorella did come under scrutiny this season when he healthy scratched Michkov or benched him for long periods, explaining it was part of a tough-love approach toward the Russian’s development.
His resume was about as good as it gets in the NHL when he was hired in October 2022: a Stanley Cup winner with Tampa Bay in 2004; a conference final in 2012 with the Rangers; the master motivator who lifted the Columbus Blue Jackets from perennial losers before he was hired into four straight seasons in the playoffs.
The Flyers have been dragged down by years of poor drafting, inadequate talent evaluation and churned through six coaches in 10 years before Tortorella was hired. Briere, a former Flyers standout, was named general manager in spring 2023 and promised he would revamp the organization from top-to-bottom and boldly proclaimed the team was set for a rebuild — a term management had long loathed publicly using.
The long road toward the playoffs goes on — only without the coach known as Torts on the bench.