The NHL trade deadline came and went, and this year, the Philadelphia Flyers made three trades, including Andrei Kuzmenko, Scott Laughton, and Erik Johnson, leaving the orange and black. Garnet Hathaway is another player who didn’t get traded but isn’t playing due to injury.
There is no doubt the Flyers team as a whole got younger, but that doesn’t mean they got better. To help fill the voids of the recent players who were traded, Emil Andrae was called up for the rest of the season, and for the weekend’s slate of games, Olle Lycksell and Rodrigo Ābols got the call-up as well.
Philadelphia lost to the Seattle Kraken on Saturday and the New Jersey Devils on Sunday. The Flyers are also 0-11 on the power play throughout this homestand. This team is struggling. Following Saturday’s loss, defenseman Travis Sanheim said he believes this team needs to regain its confidence. However, it goes deeper than that.
Undoubtedly, the team lost veteran talent within Laughton and Johnson and Hathaway (out due to injury). While it might be frustrating for fans to see the team not make an aggressive playoff push, this is a good thing, as this team is still in the midst of an active rebuild.
This season’s goal wasn’t to go to the playoffs but to get a solid draft pick. The Flyers have seven draft picks throughout the first two rounds. Gaining a high draft pick will help with the future of the team. The other key issue that GM Danny Briere touched on following the deadline is the lack of cap space.
During Sunday’s game against the Devils, Matvei Michkov was benched after New Jersey’s first goal. After the contest, Tortorella wouldn’t explain why he benched Michkov. The outrage from fans shouldn’t be directed at the head coach following through with what he said at the beginning of the season.
During training camp, Tortorella said this wouldn’t be the “Mich-show” and would protect Michkov from the media. Agree or disagree with his decision. Since he’s been in Philadelphia, he keeps what he says to players within the locker room.
This season, Michkov was healthy and scratched a few times, and he played even better following the scratch. While fans might go to a Flyers game to see Michkov, that’s not on the head coach’s mind. He’s thinking of how he can best develop these young players.
If something happened off-ice, whether in film study, weight room, or anything kept behind closed doors, and Tortorella felt Michkov needed to be benched for a bit, then he was doing his job. Michkov won’t develop if he’s protected due to his status. He is still a rookie and has much to learn.
The Flyers welcome back their former captain Claude Giroux and the Ottawa Senators Tuesday night. Followed by the Tampa Bay Lighting on Thursday and closing out the homestand with the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday night. It will be a tough stretch of games to finish out the season, but the bigger picture is more important for this organization.
