Better luck next year: The Philadelphia Flyers are not terrible, but their goaltending sure is

But what else is new?

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 next team to be eliminated from Stanley Cup Playoff contention: The Philadelphia Flyers.

On the surface it would be very easy to look at the 2024-25 Philadelphia Flyers, see a team that has missed the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season, suddenly fired its coach late in the season, and is on pace to significantly regress in the standings from a year ago and see a total failure of a season. Maybe it is. But I am not entirely sure of that.

What it has been is the continuation of one of the fiercest and longest-running rivalries in the NHL: The Philadelphia Flyers vs. competent goaltending.

We already kind of dug into the Flyers a little bit recently when we looked into the firing of head coach John Tortorella, and how it was a matchup made in both heaven and hell. Tortorella did a lot of positive things during his time with the Flyers. He took an undermanned roster that is short on impact talent, is not all that great on paper, and had it defending and controlling the pace of play like a team that should be going to the playoffs.

Even now, with four games remaining in their season, they are across the board a top-10 team in pretty much every scoring-chance/possession-related metric during 5-on-5 play.

• Expected goals against per 60 minutes: 3rd in the NHL

• Expected goal share: 8th in the NHL

• High-danger scoring chances against per 60 minutes: 1st in the NHL

Even if you break it down into more recent splits, like the past 10 games or the past 25 games, it all remains the same.

They simply do not allow a ton of chances relative to the rest of the league.

That is good. That is ultimately what you want to see from your team.

Tortorella, for all of his flaws, at least established some sort of identity and got this team to play hard and got a team full of players to embrace being Philadelphia Flyers.

He was simply never going to be cut out for spending this many years not winning games.

And the team was not likely to win enough games given the one big flaw the roster still has.

Let’s talk about all of that.

What went right this season