Flyers Hit the Ice at Training Camp

Ian Laperriere and Danny Briere watched intently alongside Sami Kapanen and Jason Smith on the front office balcony overlooking the ice at Flyers Training Center on Thursday as the John Tortorella Era got underway with the first day of the 2022 Flyers Training Camp. The four former Flyers players all now hold different roles in the organization, but on this day they had something in common.

They were all very, very glad to be retired.
Beneath their perch, a dedicated weekday-morning crowd of Flyers fans turned out to watch an opening day clearly focused on conditioning. The camp is broken up into four groups for the first few days, and each group was treated to 45 minutes of endurance work designed to set a tone for the type of team Tortorella plans to lead this year.
A little bit down the way from Laperriere and Briere stood Flyers legend Bill Barber, who's been through these as both a player and a coach and was part of the Tampa Bay Lightning organization when Tortorella led them to the 2004 Stanley Cup championship. What would have happened at a camp like this in the 70s with Barber and his Broad Street Bullies teammates?
"Pukin", he said with a laugh, harkening back to the days when training camp was used to get players back in shape after a summer off.
The pucks were the only group that had the day off on Thursday. There weren't any in sight, save for one being used as a doorstop in the entry to the team's press conference room. The coaching staff didn't have their sticks with them - they didn't need them. They did have a rope, being used encouragingly, to accurately maintain the distance between the two nets that were being skated around rather than being shot at. The only board battles involved players leaning on them, some for extended periods of time. On a couple occasions it appeared there were players stretching at center ice; on second glance, it was more like writhing.
"I'm getting tired just watching this," said legend/radio color commentator Steve Coates from the safety of the corner balcony.
The hockey starts Friday. The entire camp will get in an hour-long scrimmage over the course of the day - two groups will play at 9 AM and the other two will play at 1 PM - undoubtedly mixed in with some more fun cardiovascular activity on and off the ice. They perhaps can't push all the players too far - there are games to play, after all, and that starts Saturday night when the Flyers host the Boston Bruins at Wells Fargo Center. Systems will come, as well special teams work and everything else that goes along with a new coaching staff coming into an organization. But the events of Thursday were meant to lay the foundation for all of those things, as the approach to everything the Flyers do will be done with the intensity that Tortorella encouraged from center ice on this first day.
"It's not to pound our chest and just bury them," Tortorella said. "We want to test them, and it develops a camaraderie. They kind of look at you and say 'You're not going to get to me.' That's the kind of attitude we're trying to develop. It's a will."
Despite the nature of the proceedings - including the notion that the guys in groups 3 and 4 got to the rink early enough to see what 1 and 2 were doing, and thus had to deal with the anticipation - the unmistakable optimism of the first day of camp was in the air. The difficulties of last season are in the past and the Flyers are eager for the opportunity to move forward.
"It's a clean slate for everybody," said Flyers president & general manager Chuck Fletcher. "John has made that very clear to the players. We know there's a lot of skeptics. A lot of people don't believe we're a good hockey team. Our players are eager to prove them wrong."
That's not to say there aren't a couple clouds dimming the sunlight. Fletcher discussed the team's injury situation, headlined by setbacks to the status of Sean Couturier and Ryan Ellis. After back surgery last season, Couturier was feeling 100 percent until he recently experienced "nerve irritation in his glutes") - a medical term for pain in the ass, which is certainly what this situation is in the minds of many - and over the last week, Fletcher said, Couturier's discomfort escalated to the point that he is now in the process of seeking a second opinion before plotting a course forward. As for Ellis, his immensely complicated injury, identified Thursday as a torn psoas muscle, has the Flyers planning for another season without him and could be career-threatening.
So what now? That answer likely lies within. The Flyers have a large group of players drafted within the last six years whose time, Fletcher says, has come.
"I think it's really important to find out what we have," Fletcher said. "You can take a player like Travis Konecny - is he a 50-point guy or is he a 70-point guy? Let's push here a little bit and see what we have. We have to demand more out of some of these players. They're not just our future anymore - some of these kids are our present. If [Couturier] is out an extended period of time ... there's opportunity for other players to step up. There's opportunity for Morgan Frost to step forward. There's opportunity for Scotty Laughton to play at center. There's opportunity maybe for a Tanner Laczynski. We need to find out about Tanner Laczynski. To me, that's the main storyline of this camp - let's see what we have. Let's see how good these kids are."
So while there are certainly many questions to be answered, and while there are those around the city and the game who remain skeptical, Tortorella doesn't want his team to worry about any of that. His focus as camp moves on will be on forming a group that plays his way, which is a way Flyers fans should appreciate.
"No disrespect, but we shouldn't listen to the noise," Tortorella said. "We can't change the perception by me talking to you or the players talking to you. The only thing we can do is put our head down and work, and change the perception by how we present ourselves. I just want us to present ourselves as a team that identifies with Philly. I think it's a city that it's so easy to look at it and say let's go that route. That's one of the things you can control as an athlete, is how hard you work. So why not go that route?"
That route started Thursday morning.