Tortorella Keeps Flyers Accountable in Loss

John Tortorella said he needed more from 2-3 of his players - and we have a good idea of who those players are because they were benched in the third period last night.

The five game win streak comes to an end for the Philadelphia Flyers. They didn't play terribly, but a few costly mistakes lost them the game. In the end they fell 3-2 to the New York Islanders - despite out shooting them 36-25.

Cam York and Joel Farabee scored the Flyers two goals. The Flyers poured it on in the second and third periods, where they had 28 of their 36 total shots.

John Tortorella wasn't getting enough from everyone in his lineup, and a keen observer on X (Twitter) noticed this:

Scott Laughton and Nic Deslauriers barely saw the ice in the third period. Part of that could be shortening the bench in order to claw back on the scoresheet. As a player though, don't you want to be one of those players the coach puts out there to get the team back into the game?

Noah Cates, Marc Staal and Nic Seeler also didn't take a shift in the last six-eight minutes of the third period. Let's take a quick look at the ice time that these players usually get and what they got last night.

Last Night:

Judging from the season average compared to what they played last night, only one player stands out as having lost a substantial amount of ice time - Laughton.

Seeler's ice time has been up and down all year and last night he played a few seconds off his season average, not exactly earth shattering there. Staal is just getting back from missing 14 games, so his ice time could be attributed to that.

At the end of the day, Tortorella needs a complete effort from every member of his team for them to be successful, no matter if they are coming back from injury or a fourth line player.

To not get a shift in the last eight minutes of a game means that you weren't doing your job. Hopefully the message came across loud and clear to these players and they put out a better effort in the next game.

Ice time is a currency that all players speak in, and fortunately for the Flyers, it's a currency that Tortorella isn't afraid to hold back from certain players.

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