Flyers doing it John Tortorella’s way, and the players are buying in

CALGARY, Alberta — According to Merriam-Webster, buy-in means the acceptance of and willingness to actively support and participate in something.

It’s a term that is used often in hockey circles, and around the Flyers specifically because it is clear that the 22 players who make up the roster have done just that when it comes to what coach John Tortorella is selling.

The Flyers may have ended the 2023 calendar year with a 4-3 loss to the Calgary Flames, and four losses in the last five games, but they are a team that has become difficult to play. Entering the new year, they are tied with the New York Islanders for 11th in point percentage (.597), are averaging fewer goals against per game (2.72) than goals scored (2.94), rank fifth in the NHL in blocked shots (658) and have the fourth-best penalty kill (85.7) that is also tied atop the leaderboard for the most short-handed goals.

“I think teams know what to expect out of us every single night. We’re a hard-working team, that’s what we rely on to win us a lot of games. It’s something that we can control and it’s one of those things that if you’re not going to do it, you’re not going to play,” Cam Atkinson said. “Guys learn pretty quick, if you want to be successful, if you want to be a good team, everyone needs to buy in to that belief system. And ultimately, it’s coming into these games expecting to win. And we expect to win every single day.”

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The question that is raised then, is how do you get guys to buy in?

Tortorella became the eighth coach to reach the 1,500-game plateau on Friday when the Flyers played the Seattle Kraken. What’s kept him going all these years since he first stepped behind an NHL bench as a head coach in 1999, is his love for working with the athletes.

He’s worked with hundreds over the years between his stops with the Tampa Bay Lightning, New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks, Columbus Blue Jackets and now Flyers. But the generation of players he coached back at the start is quite different than the ones he coaches now. So how does a grizzled, my-way-or-the-highway veteran coach handle today’s hockey players and get that buy-in?

“My philosophy, you give them a minuscule of information,” Tortorella said. “You only have them for those few short seconds for them to even be listening to you. And I think where the evolution, at least in my mind, in my philosophy is I used to dot the I’s and cross the T’s, almost plan the game out when I first started. Now I think you need to allow them to make mistakes and they’ve got to live through the mistakes and not hold their hand through everything.

“They’ve got to find a way to figure it out. And so, it’s totally changed because the athlete is, they don’t want to listen. There’s other things going on and you only have them for a short time. So the things you give them, make sure it’s short and it’s the most important points you want to give them for each given game.”

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It’s a method that has seemingly worked. Of course, as Tortorella has stressed, the hockey season is long — not every game will be perfectly executed. He knows his team will make mistakes, but he is of the mindset that taking bumps is one of the best ways for this young group to learn.

“You can’t over-coach. We get in the way. We do. [If] we want to impose all our thoughts that are going on in our head to them, you’re going nowhere. It’s important that we have all the information, it’s just how much you give to them,” Tortorella said. “And I think as coaches you’re a Type-A personality, you want to control the situations and you want to fill them with all the thoughts. To me, it’s the wrong way to go about it. And I think they’ve got to live through some of the experiences and go through some of the pitfalls and mistakes they make to learn.”

It’s an interesting dynamic between the veteran coach and his young team. He has gotten the Flyers to buy in to his system of playing hard hockey while building a locker room that many players have said is one of the closest they’ve experienced playing the game.

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“I’ve had a lot of coaches, and he’s been most honest, upfront. His door is always open for conversation, if you have an issue, or vice versa, if you don’t like your ice time, or whatever it may be. He’s always open for conversation,” Atkinson said. “And he’s one of the few coaches that tells you, where you lie in the lineup and what you need to do to improve and that sort of thing. He holds everyone accountable, as the way it should be, in my opinion, and he’s done a good job with that.”

Atkinson gives Tortorella a lot of credit for how he has evolved his coaching style over the years. The two have worked together since Tortorella was hired a handful of games into the 2015-16 season by the Blue Jackets. The 34-year-old forward says the Flyers bench boss has done a great job of transitioning his coaching style because if you don’t, “you’re gonna be out of the league pretty quickly.” Atkinson said that Tortorella is maybe letting things slide a bit more than he did in the past.

It’s something that Sean Couturier has also witnessed. The veteran forward, who missed almost two years with a back injury and did not play under Tortorella last season, sees the buy-in — of guys putting their thought process and how they see the game differently aside and buying in to what the coach is saying — with the right results.

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“This is really like my first year really getting coached by him but, obviously, you hear all the stories in the past and the personality that he has and stuff. And, yeah, I can tell you he seems to have evolved anyway,” Couturier said. “He seems to be a little more, I guess, forgiving than maybe he’s known as.

“But he still finds a way to make guys accountable and, and make sure they understand the message. Which is good, I guess. Good for him adapting and evolving as the years go by. It’s obviously a different generation so things have to be made maybe differently than 10-15 years ago. But you know, good for him for adapting and, you know, still finding success as a coach.”