Better Luck Next Year: The Philadelphia Flyers will shut you down, but now they need the offense

They also need a repeat performance from Dan Vladar.

Welcome back to Better Luck Next Year, a series that will focus on each team as they get eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention and the Stanley Cup Playoffs. What went wrong, why it went wrong, what (if anything) went right, and what is next. We continue today with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Other than actually winning the Stanley Cup, I’m not sure Philadelphia Flyers fans could have had a more exciting and satisfying season than the one they had in 2025-26.

• A franchise icon returned to the organization as head coach (Rick Tocchet), and led them to a surprising playoff appearance and their best regular season record in a decade.

• Once there, they eliminated their long-time arch-nemesis, Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, in the first-round after jumping out to a 3-0 series lead and completely sucking the life out of everything.

• They welcomed a potential star onto the NHL roster late in the season in Porter Martone and watched him make an immediate impact in the stretch run of the regular season and the playoffs.

• While the offseason has been quiet, they at least showed an exciting level of aggressiveness by offer-sheeting Leo Carlsson in an effort to land a No. 1 center and potential franchise cornerstone to join Martone and Matvei Michkov. It didn’t work out in the end, but they did what they could, and took a step that most teams have been too terrified (or unwilling … or unable) to take. If nothing else, it shows they know what they still need and might be bold in an effort to get it.

How much did Flyers fans enjoy all of it, and specifically the first three points?

The team received a standing ovation and raucous cheer after losing in the second round of the playoffs.

You don’t get many of those season-ending responses in Philadelphia. This Flyers core might not get it again. Now the bar and the expectations have been raised, and that brings pressure. That brings a demand for more winning. But sometimes everybody recognizes a team that probably overachieved, exceeded expectations, and gave you a legitimately fun ride. It’s actually quite endearing in today’s ring culture to see fans appreciate that, and recognize a season that doesn’t end in a championship can still be a lot of fun.

Now it’s time to build on that.

In terms of offseason activity, tangible additions to the roster have been few and far between.

• Joseph Woll replaces Samuel Ersson as their No. 2 goalie (and that’s honestly a potentially big upgrade, as we will discuss in a minute).

• Noel Accairi was added for bottom-sixth depth, which is actually hilarious given his interactions with Trevor Zegras during the 2025-26 season.

• Most of their offseason focus was held up by waiting on Anaheim’s decision on what to do regarding the Carlsson offer sheet.

The roster, as of now, is largely the same as it was at the end of the season, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because there are some big positives happening here.

While Tocchet received the lion’s share of the credit for the team’s turnaround, a lot of their actual on-ice performance was virtually the same as it was under John Tortorella over the previous two seasons. I am sure there were structural changes and differences when it comes to the X’s and O’s of the whole thing, but the actual results, and the actual style of play, were pretty much the same.

Defensive. Not a ton of sustained offensive zone time. Counter-attacking and rush-chances. More defense.

And again, that’s not necessarily a bad thing in some areas.

In the previous two years under Tortorella, the Flyers were, by pretty much every major piece of objective data, one of the NHL’s best defensive teams during 5-on-5 play.

That remained the case in 2025-26 under Tocchet.

They were not just a good defensive team in terms of limiting chances. They were legitimately one of the NHL’s best.

So what changed to produce the dramatically different results in the standings?

As is the case in most situations where a head coach gets credit for turning things around in one year, it was largely the goaltending.

Dan Vladar, in what might have been one of the more shocking developments of the season across the league, brought a level of consistency and competence to a position that had been a major headache for Tortorella and the organization over the previous two seasons.

Vladar was not only outstanding, he helped validate the Flyers’ strong defensive play by turning it into results that people would respect and notice. He not only helped get them into the playoffs, he was arguably one of the biggest difference-makers in their first-round series win against the Penguins.

He saved 13.8 goals above expected during the regular season (all situations), good enough for 10th-best in the entire league, and 8.5 above expected in the playoffs, good enough for second-best among playoff goalies.

He rocked in a way that was completely unexpected.

Just look at the team’s 5-on-5 performances in each of the past three seasons in terms of expected goals for and against, expected goal share, goals scored and goals allowed, goal differential, and team save percentage (league ranks in parenthesis).

(Data via Natural Stat Trick and MoneyPuck)

Offense? Virtually the same, and in terms of generating chances, it may have been a little worse.

Chances allowed? Nearly identical.

Expected goal share? Again, nearly identical.

The difference was the goaltending went from the absolute worst in the sport to just plain … good. And that was really all they needed given how good they have been, and still are, defensively.

It would have been even better if they had anything that resembled a competent backup option.

When Vladar was the goalie of record, the Flyers played at a 106.6-point pace.

When he was not, they played at an 84.5-point pace. Ersson and Aleksei Kolosov combined for an .867 all-situations save percentage and were minus-20.5 in terms of goals saved above expected. They were objectively awful and nearly undid all of the positive work that Vladar put in.

Between the 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons there was not a single team in the NHL that had a larger negative gap between their expected goals against and actual goals against (5-on-5 play) than the Flyers. There was also not a team that was even remotely close to them.

Just for perspective, here are the 10 teams that had the worst difference between expected goals allowed and goals against during 5-on-5 play.

Look at the gap between them and the next worst team. Staggering. Goaltending absolutely sabotaged them for two full years, and probably was the biggest thing that cost Tortorella his job from a results perspective.

That’s what happens when you are top-three in expected goals against and literally 32nd in team save percentage.

All they needed was somebody to be competent in net.

Vladar gave them that and then some.

Now they need him to do it again.

And get a little more scoring punch from the young forwards.

Let’s talk about all of that a little more, as well as what went right, what went wrong, and what is next.

One of the biggest things that went right, aside from the defense and Dan Vladar, was the shootout skills of Trevor Zegras.

What went right