Philadelphia Flyers captain Sean Couturier has been playing some of his best hockey since his return from back injuries last year.
His recent stretch of games has seen him slowly winding back the clock with 20 points in his last 30 games and forming a formidable trio on a newfound first line with Matvei Michkov and Travis Konecny.
With John Tortorella no longer behind the bench, it could perhaps loosen the shackles off the veteran and let him be a lot more free than he’s been in the last calendar year.
After missing half of the 2021-22 season and all of 2022-23 due to a back injury, Couturier returned to the ice ahead of the Flyers season opener in 2023 and looked no worse for wear to start the year.
He started the 2023-24 season with 10 goals and 30 points in his first 41 games to go along with a +12 in 19:59 ATOI. He looked almost every bit the same player that we had seen playing a complete two-way game over the previous 3-4 seasons.
Unfortunately, things took an unlikely turn and he finished the year with 1 goal and 8 points in his final 33 games to go along with a -22 and just 15:00 ATOI. Within that span he was named team captain, was healthy scratched or benched a few times, was demoted to the bottom-six, and suffered through a minor injury.
It was a situation that had drawn on long enough for the mild-mannered Couturier to speak out to the media about his treatment. Tortorella welcomed it but also shut it down immediately, keeping things icy between head coach and captain.
Usually to get into Tortorella’s doghouse, a player would have to make egregious mistakes off the puck like missing his defensive assignments or just overall lackadaisical play. However, that never happened with Couturier and it seemed entirely production-based, which in it of itself was fine – but up to a certain point.
With the Flyers firmly entrenched in a playoff spot at the time, Tortorella kept Couturier in his bottom-six spot instead of expanding his role and potentially helping him get out of the offensive rut he was in.
This season was more of the same but whenever Couturier did play more than 17-18 minutes a night, he was incredibly productive, just to go back to riding the pine as a bottom-six centre.
In a 16-game span between the end of October and the end of November, Couturier scored 6 goals and 13 points in 16 games to go along with a +3 and close to 20 minutes a night. His TOI was chopped off by over 4 minutes a night in the proceeding 20 games and he tallied just 1 goal and 6 points.
Notably, there was a stretch of 7 games where he saw just 11 minutes a game, including 3 games within the 10-minute range. He’s since come out of it with 7 goals and 20 points over his last 30 games to go along with a +7 and over 17 minutes of ice time, in which he’s cleared over 20 minutes in 4 of the last 11 games and has come within less than a minute of reaching the 20-minute mark another 3 times.
Last Thursday’s win over Montréal – their first game without Tortorella – was a prime example of everything that embodied Couturier’s game during his prime years. He was hard on the forecheck, was in your face defensively, was winning draws, creating an abundance of scoring chances, and finishing his plays while helping his linemates succeed.
He might not have the speed or the skill level to totally keep up with the likes of Michkov and Konecny, but what he does have is a boatload of experience and hockey IQ that can help the speedy and flashy wingers elevate their games.
Couturier and Michkov have shown chemistry before but for whatever reason the former was taken away from the latter amidst the Flyers lineup shuffles. Finally back together and they’ve been a very dominant line – alongside Konecny – and probably the only trio doing anything noteworthy in the last few weeks.
We’ve seen snippets of what they can do over in recent games between Chicago, Toronto, Montréal, Buffalo and Nashville, and it’s certainly an interesting choice for the coaching staff having kept them removed for as long as they did.
Couturier might never return to the exact same form as we witnessed in 2017-18 and 2018-19 when tallied over 30 goals and 70 points but he’s shown he can play at a 60+ point pace if given the opportunity, which was severely lacking under Tortorella.
Ironically enough that might’ve been the first stone to be cast between Daniel Brière and Tortorella. Up until that moment they seemingly had a fantastic relationship to a point where Tortorella was sitting in the management box at the end of the 2021-22 season.
But within Brière’s press conference last week, he made a few comments about how things had unravelled over time and it was finally time to move on from. Add in his treatment of certain players like Michkov and Cam York and the end was near.
Ending the season on a high note – or at least continuing his current stretch of play – will be paramount for the captain. All of his analytical data are back to the norm, which is a positive sign for the defensive maestro, but if he can turn back the clock even just a little and get back some of that offensive touch, he can retake a top-six role without question and lead the Flyers from the front.
