From the final stretch of the 2022-23 regular season all the way through training camp, I might’ve written 7 or 8 pieces on what the returns of Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson would do for a John Tortorella-coached Philadelphia Flyers team. If Tortorella was able to instill changes with the team he had last season, just think what he’d be able to do with Couturier and Atkinson back in the fold.
In return, I read through a lot of the comments and it wasn’t surprising to see so much negativity. In fact, I don’t blame them for it either. Chuck Fletcher had the opposite effect of the Midas touch and everything that could have gone wrong from 2020 to 2023, did in fact go wrong. Injuries piled up, top players underperformed, and the coup de grace was the eventual trade of Claude Giroux that ended a lengthy era of Flyers hockey.
Aside from the drafting, Fletcher did a few things right:
1) trading for Cam Atkinson has proven to be a solid move
2) unloading Giroux for Owen Tippett + a 2024 first round pick has paid off
3) hiring John Tortorella was the exact move needed to turn things around on the ice
I’m not exactly sure why accountability was such an issue when Craig Berube, Dave Hakstol, Alain Vigneault, and Scott Gordon were behind the bench, but when the going got tough, the Flyers folded like a cheap tent. It wasn’t just an observation made by the media or the fanbase, the team, it’s coaches, and the front office echoed those same sentiments year in and year out – yet somehow reverted back to their old ways time and time again.
It’s almost like a broken record every time you hear an opposing coach or the top players from the opposition speak pre-game, mid-game, or post-game, but the Flyers are hard to play against, they will out-work you, and at times their forechecking will be dominating.
2 key factors to their early season success have been the all-situation-playing veterans in Couturier and Atkinson. They were out for well over 550 days and with their lengthy absences came the worrisome cries that they weren’t “good” anymore, that they’re “one injury away”, or that because the Flyers were so bad last season – mostly due to lack of talent that can easily be supplied by Couturier and Atkinson – they weren’t going to be able to help the cause.
Couturier is a 12-year veteran, somehow he is still only 31-years-old, turned his career completely around in 2017-18, and became a top-20 centre in the league before his back injuries. He scored 104 goals and 252 points in 276 games between 2017-18 and 2020-21, while winning 56.6% of his draws, carrying a 156:132 takeaway to giveaway ratio, and finished at a clip of 13.8%. In the 416 games and 6 seasons prior to 2017-18, Couturier scored 70 and 191 points. A massive turnaround for the former first round pick back in 2011.
Back injuries are brutal and sometimes very hard to overcome but then when you look around the league and see players like Jack Eichel coming back from his neck issue and returning to form with the Vegas Golden Knights and leading his team to a Cup; it’s entirely possible. Couturier suffered a setback on top of everything else but the solid, two-way, playmaking, power-forward, centreman hasn’t looked out of place to start the 2023-24 season.
Couturier’s season to date:
@ Columbus: 1 assist, plus-3, 2 shots, 20:39 TOI
@ Ottawa: 0 points, even-rating, 1 shot, 20:00 TOI
vs. Vancouver: 1 goal, plus-1, 4 shots, 22:53 TOI
vs. Edmonton: 2 assists, plus-3, 2 shots, 19:56 TOI
Through the first 4 games of the season he has played 18.7 minutes on the power play and 10.2 minutes while shorthanded.
His faceoff percentage isn’t close to his career average just yet, but he has paced the forwards in TOI in every game to date, and has once again given the Flyers a legitimate 1C in their lineup.
Patrolling the ice alongside Couturier is his partner in crime in Atkinson. The former 40-goal scorer showed off in style in 2021-22 as he scored 23 goals in his first 61 games before succumbing to a drought that coincided with the departure of Giroux and his season-ending injury. The shoot-first mentality was everything the Flyers needed and lacked, his aggressiveness on the penalty kill was a breath of fresh air, and his energy was never-ending.
Between 2013-14 and 2018-19, Atkinson scored 170 goals in 465 games, which included 6 straight seasons of 21+ goals. From 2016-17 to 2018-19, Atkinson scored 35 goals in 82 games, 24 goals in 65 games, and 41 goals in 80 games and broke past the 60+ point barrier twice. With Tortorella behind the bench in Columbus from 2015-16 to 2020-21, it came as no surprise that he was one of his head coach’s favourite players.
Under Tortorella, Atkinson scored 154 goals and 290 points in 408 games, was a plus-13, had 29 game-winning goals, 1,298 shots at a success rate of 11.9%, an ATOI of 18:30, 179 hits and blocks, and 205 takeaways to 169 giveaways. Everything he excelled at in Columbus, he brought with him to Philadelphia and he became a building block of what was to be a new core.
Unfortunately the team slipped through the cracks, he suffered a season-ending injury that subsequently killed his 2022-23 season, and in that time several core players were ousted in Giroux, Ivan Provorov, Kevin Hayes, James van Riemsdyk, and of course the coaching staff and front office.
Atkinson’s season to date:
@ Columbus: 1 goal, even-rating, 3 shots, 16:11 TOI
@ Ottawa: 0 points, even-rating, 2 shots, 16:57 TOI
vs Vancouver: 0 points, even-rating, 3 shots, 19:26 TOI
vs Edmonton: 2 goals, plus-2, 4 shots, 18:36 TOI
Through his first 3 games of the season, Atkinson has played 17.3 minutes on the power play and 8.6 minutes while shorthanded.
It has to be prefaced that it is just the beginning of the season and we still have 78 games remaining on the docket. However for all the negativity and the skepticism that was surrounding the Flyers veterans, they have squashed all of them and then some with their blistering start.
After their scintillating performance against the Connor McDavid-led Edmonton Oilers, John Tortorella gave us an insight on Couturier’s mindset. McDavid was visibly frustrated, didn’t register a shot on goal, and had his pocket picked by Couturier while the Flyers were shorthanded that directly led to Sean Walker’s shorthanded tally.
“He played every shift against him (McDavid), except one. And they scored…played every shift, and if I didn’t give him a shift. He’d be looking over his shoulder at me wanting to get back out there. He’s coming.”
This is exactly what the Flyers were lacking for well over a year and a half and his playing style coincides with Tortorella’s system and coaching; a literal match made in heaven. The prevailing thought from 2022-23 was that if Tortorella loved Noah Cates and Scott Laughton as much as he did, imagine what he’d do with Couturier and Atkinson
So far, so good in my books.
The Flyers took what they learned from Tortorella last season, added Couturier and Atkinson to the mix, young and hungry prospects have entered the fray, and Carter Hart has been pretty formidable to start the season. The 2023-24 Flyers are not only fun to watch but when they’re on their game, they’re apparently, and very nearly, unstoppable.
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