REPORT: John Tortorella HEALTHY SCRATCHES Flyers best player tonight's game

PUBLICATION

Ryan
December 17, 2022 (4:39 PM)

SHARE THIS STORY

This past summer the Philadelphia Flyers hired John Tortorella to help turn this franchise back into a winner.

The team finished 29th last season, but management believed it was only due to the team being drastically affected by COVID19 and other injuries.

They started off this season fairly well, but these past few weeks have not been kind and now they are sitting second last in the Metropolitan division.

There is absolutely no doubt that Tortorella is an amazing coach, he is one of the winningest American born coaches of all time. When he was brought into the Flyers organization, the Flyers wanted to implement a more 200 foot system, which is exactly what Torts' style is.

Earlier this season, we saw Torts bench star players Kevin Hayes and Travis Konecny for not working hard enough during the game. One thing players learn fast about Torts is that if you're not working hard, he doesn't care how much you make, he will bench you.

Tonight the Flyers host the New York Rangers who are on a 5 game winning streak, and they will be doing so without their leading scorer.

Today Tortorella announced that Kevin Hayes will be a healthy scratch for tonights game:

Flyers coach John Tortorella on scratching Kevin Hayes, the leading scorer on a team averaging 2.39 goals per game: "I can't keep looking by things because we're worried about scoring." pic.twitter.com/lARlJeSzFp� Adam Kimelman (@NHLAdamK) December 17, 2022

So far this season, Hayes has scored 29 points in 31 games, which is very good for being on a losing team. But Tortorella is all about sending messages, and if he believes this will improve the teams play, he is not afraid to make sacrifices.