John Tortorella spoke to the media about sitting Matvei Michkov for part of the first period in the Flyers’ 3-1 loss to the Devils.
VOORHEES, N.J. — Travis Konecny would be lying if he said the subtractions weren't discouraging.
In the span of five weeks, the Flyers traded five players: Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost at the end of January and Scott Laughton, Andrei Kuzmenko and Erik Johnson ahead of last Friday's deadline.
Laughton was an alternate captain who had spent parts of 12 seasons in Philadelphia after making his NHL debut with the Flyers as an 18-year-old. Farabee and Frost had also never played anywhere else.
"It's tough," Konecny said Tuesday morning. "Not only trying to settle in and just kind of let that stuff go, but just emotionally, too. All of them, great guys, big pieces in the locker room. For the most part, those guys were here for a long time and a lot of best friends. You don't lose the friendship, but it's different, you don't have it day to day, it's tough.
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"Then you see teams around the league going for it and building, you see how much better the teams get compared to you, it's frustrating. You want to be on that side of it."
Such is life in a rebuild. The Flyers are trying to piece things together to finish the 2024-25 season. They enter Tuesday's home game against the Senators (7 p.m. ET/NBCSP) having lost four straight, all at the Wells Fargo Center, by a combined score of 17-6. They're closer to the bottom of the Eastern Conference than the second wild-card spot.
"Listen, it's a different lineup," John Tortorella said. "Five guys are gone and I'm telling you right now, it was the right thing to do as far as what happened at the deadline. It was the right thing to do in the situation we were in. But it puts us in a spot where there are a lot of moving pieces here, a lot of people playing out of position. The message is the same: we're trying to be as positive as we can and play with as much energy as we can."
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As an alternate captain celebrating his 28th birthday Tuesday, Konecny has seen a lot change with the Flyers. Only three players remain from when the team last made the playoffs in 2020. Konecny is one of them and Sean Couturier and Travis Sanheim are the others.
Back in March 2023, when Danny Briere took over under an interim status, Konecny was on board with a rebuild. He has seen the reality of it around this time of year.
"It is what it is, it's just part of it, we're doing what we can, we're doing it the right way," Konecny said. "We've always just been in a weird spot, ever since I got here, it's not like at the deadline we've gone out and grabbed somebody big. I just look forward to when that's part of our season and part of what we're going to be doing."
Couturier, the team's 32-year-old captain, has been hopeful that the players would dictate the timeline of the rebuild. He overcame two back surgeries in 2022 and hasn't played a playoff game in Philadelphia since 2018. So there's an internal pressure to be a contender again.
"It's tough, especially I think my situation, you're getting older and there's less time to win really," Couturier said. "It's frustrating, but I trust in what Danny's doing up there and getting the right pieces in place for the future. Hopefully things turn around quick here."
The Flyers have 17 games left this season.
"I think we're kind of looking for ourselves right now a little bit," Couturier said. "New additions, losing players, it kind of looks like a little bit of a different team right now. But we'll get on track here. We've just got to kind of rush things up a little bit, we're running out of time here, so we need to get going."
Tortorella's the type of coach that will consider every game important. His challenge after the deadline is now making the new mix work. And the Flyers will continue to evaluate for down the road.
"It's the right call I think by Danny, I think it was really good at the deadline," Tortorella said. "But then you put the lineup on the board and you look at it and say, 'We've got to figure out a way to play now.' There certainly needs to be patience with this here, but there's still teaching going on."
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