‘A New Era of Orange’ for the Flyers begins in earnest Thursday. Will things be different this time?

There are five words in the new slogan the Flyers have dubbed the new generation of this 56-year-old professional hockey franchise.

And if reading the words “A New Era of Orange” still makes you roll your eyes, well, get used to it. It’s everywhere, both literally — visibly in the marketing and advertising materials the team produces — and figuratively — the core messaging embedded into almost everything the front-facing triumvirate leading the club says when talking about the future of a once-proud, once-winning franchise that has won one playoff round in the last 11 seasons.

But what does it really mean, especially to the man hired to lead it all?

“It means a lot,” said Keith Jones, the team’s new president of hockey operations. “It means not forgetting about the past, taking some of those elements that were real positive things, and moving forward. It’s about a fresh start for us as an organization, which started with the words that we used last year in talking about a rebuild.”

Jones, who played the final three years of a nine-season professional hockey career in Philadelphia before launching a successful broadcasting career, is referring to the Friday in May when the Flyers, in front of a massive video board that debuted the new slogan, finally committed to the future. Or at least publicly changed the way they planned to talk about it.

Comcast Spectacor CEO Dan Hilferty proclaimed that day that the Flyers were “going to do it the right way” and “be calculated in everything we do.”

Hilferty was up front, too: “We all are aligned that this effort, this new era, will take time,” he said.

It’s in the name. An era does not equal a quick fix. It’s defined by Oxford as “a long and distinct period of history.” And Merriam-Webster defines it as “a period of time beginning with some special date or event.”

The organization, under Jones, general manager Danny Brière, and head coach John Tortorella, has spent the last five months since May 12 showing what the words in the new slogan mean in their words and actions.

Apathetic Flyers fans can be forgiven if they’re skeptical, wanting to see results before they believe in the direction. After all, there isn’t a timeline on any of this. But for the first time in a while — at least in the last decade — there seems to be some positive vibes in Voorhees about where things could be heading. And there’s at least some reason to believe the Flyers might actually be turning the corner, though it might take a bit of time to see it look that way on the ice.

That’s kind of the point.

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Jones is a hockey player by nature. So getting ahead of himself and not staying on track won’t be a problem, he says. How can you think about the rebuild in the form of a timeline when the focus is just on the next game?

Jones was a worker, too. So building something the hard way is sort of in his genes. He was drafted in the seventh round of the NHL draft — 141st overall — in 1988, a tough forward from Brantford, Ontario, about 70 miles from the U.S. border at Niagara Falls. He was a late bloomer. It wasn’t until his junior and senior seasons at Western Michigan University that he really broke out. He was a grinder in the NHL during his nine seasons. He finished his playing career with nearly triple the amount of penalty minutes (765) as points (258).

It’s not a stretch to say that he’s more famous for what he did after hockey than what he did playing it. He spent the past 20 years in broadcast roles, from starring alongside Angelo Cataldi on the WIP Morning Show to being one of the lead studio and game analysts on the networks that carried nationally televised NHL games.

How does the guy known most around these parts for cracking on-air jokes on a morning drive show get the keys to the whole thing?

The Flyers viewed his post-career experience as a plus. He has built relationships around the league. He has watched a lot of hockey. Add his personality into the equation — the man is usually smiling — and it all sort of makes sense in a way that seems so perfectly Flyers.

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“Teamwork,” Jones said when asked in May what his qualifications were to take on a job with a description that includes “leading the strategic direction of the hockey operations side as well as collaborating on the business side.”

Collaboration is “something I’ve done in every job that I’ve had in my life,” Jones said.

While Jones is in charge of a lot of things that don’t directly impact the product on the ice, when it comes to the things that do impact that product, the result of the collaboration with Brière and Tortorella will be what makes or breaks the Flyers’ future.

“This guy here has followed the league and his job for years,” Tortorella said of Jones, “... Talking to coaches, GMs, understanding player systems, all that. That is so important to get his view. We’re going to have some arguments along the way, and that’s healthy.”

Some of those arguments may have even happened over the last week when the Flyers made the final decisions on their roster after a multi-week training camp that included exactly what the Flyers wanted it to include: young players pushing for roster spots.

“It was interesting,” Brière said of the first run through making cuts with the new leadership group. “It was fun. I had a blast. Some decisions are tougher because you’re affecting the life of many people so you want to do it the right way and treat people fairly.”

That those decisions even existed was a good enough sign of progress.

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What’s a rebuild without drafting and developing? In this league, there isn’t such a thing. It’s a department the Flyers haven’t had a ton of success in. The Flyers had combined mediocre drafting with no real sense of direction on where the NHL club was going.

But they finally seem to be trending in the right direction.

The current roster has a handful of recent developmental breakthroughs. On defense, Cam York, Egor Zamula, and Emil Andrae appear to be successes. Up front are Joel Farabee, Morgan Frost, Noah Cates, Tyson Foerster, and training camp dynamo Bobby Brink. While it’s possible none of them turn into bona fide NHL stars, they could be complementary pieces on a winning team. That’s something, at least.

As far as stars go, all signs point toward 18-year-old Matvei Michkov, this past draft’s seventh overall pick, fitting that bill. The same can be said about last year’s fifth pick in the first round, Cutter Gauthier, 19, who is poised to have another big offensive season at Boston College.

While the Flyers have missed the playoffs in the last three seasons — a fourth is likely on the way — they have also stockpiled draft picks, with 19 between this year’s draft and next, nine of them in the first three rounds.

Developing those picks is crucial, as it always will be. Assuming the Flyers can hit on a few of them, they can add talent to a promising young group that includes four top-six forwards age 24 or younger and a defensive corps where three of the eight players on the current roster are 23 or younger.

The obvious reaction to all of this is, “OK, so how long will it take?” And that’s a good but unanswerable question.

“I’m not putting a timeline on that,” Brière said when asked about when the team expects to be back in the playoffs. “I’ve said it before, the players will decide that. Everybody develops at their own rhythm. We’ll see how they go. We have our own idea, but I don’t want to put that out there.”

Brière has insisted multiple times that the Flyers are not tanking. Success, though, won’t be judged by where the Flyers finish in the standings. It will be judged by development and how the team positions itself for the future. But positive steps from younger players — like Brink making his roster push and Foerster and Andrae making the team — does at least impact the timeline in a measurable way.

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“I think it helps give us more clarity, but we’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the future as we go along,” Jones said. “We owe it to the players who are playing for us to make sure that we’re putting our best foot forward, giving them every opportunity to prove that they are going to be a part of this. I think that’s kind of the way we’ll look at it.”

How’s all of this playing for guys like Sean Couturier, a veteran who is signed here through the 2030 season?

“I’m OK with the rebuild process and what we’re going through,” he said. “Obviously I’m 30 and haven’t really won anything, so I’m anxious to start winning and making long playoff runs and winning a Cup.

“I guess it’s part of the process. But as players and coaches, we can determine how fast this rebuild can be. A lot of people think of a rebuild as three, four, five years. It can take a year or two and we’re back there. I think that’s going to be the goal and there’s not too many expectations and I think we can kind of use that as a motivation and maybe surprise a lot of people.”

Tortorella didn’t need a new slogan, he said, to know what was going on here during his first season in Philadelphia.

“In my mind, we were rebuilding last year,” he said. “I don’t care what we said, or what was allowed to be said or whatever. In my mind, we were rebuilding. I’m going to the second step of this here.”

The coach — mostly known for his reputation of being demanding to players and tough to deal with to media members — seems genuinely into all of this. He was pretty open during training camp about wanting to see it all shake out, about the opportunity some of the team’s prospects had to make an impression, about enjoying the puzzle and making it all fit.

“I think it’s a perception out there that is not quite right about Torts,” Brière said.

The perception is that Tortorella is too reliant on veterans. It may have been true in the past, but this situation feels different. The Flyers aren’t supposed to win this season. Heck, there’s an argument to be made that they don’t even want to win this season, though they certainly wouldn’t make that argument publicly.

» READ MORE: From April: John Tortorella spent this season testing his players. Not everyone responded to his liking.

“He’s excited about this, about working with the young guys,” Brière said of Tortorella. “He doesn’t care if it’s a veteran or a young guy, he’ll use a player that is deserving, the players that he feels [are] ready for it. Rookie or not, they’ll get the chance.

“Look at how he used Noah Cates last year. He put him in really tough matchups all year long, and he wasn’t afraid to. So I think there’s — don’t tell Torts I said that — I think there’s a wrong perception of him out there. I think he likes it, maybe. He’s great to work with, he wants to work with the young guys. He’s excited about this chance to build a team with young guys.”

The Flyers saw marked improvement from the likes of Owen Tippett, Frost, Cates, and York over the course of last season, and there are more opportunities for similar growth from them and others this season.

Historically, Tortorella’s teams usually make strides in Year 2. He took the Lightning to the playoffs in his second full season before winning a Stanley Cup in his third. The Rangers missed the playoffs in Tortorella’s first full season and then played in the next three postseasons. They could probably build a Tortorella statue for the way he got Columbus to the postseason in the 2016-17 season after taking over seven games into the 2015-16 season.

Don’t expect that big of a leap in 2023-24 for the Flyers, or any statues, but multiple players — and Tortorella himself — have expressed how much different this camp felt compared to last. They all know each other better. They all have a better sense of the direction the organization is heading.

“I think he’s in a perfect place in his life and we’re going to benefit from that,” Jones said. “He wants to really push to make sure that we’re putting the right type of team on the ice moving forward. A team that fits the city, a team that plays to the details of the game correctly. He’s really a coach that drives that home but is also an excellent coach when it comes to culture.

“We’ve made some changes. Some subtle, some less. And I think our team as a group has really come together. That’s probably what excites me most.”

There was a last part of Jones’ answer on what the “new era” means to him.

“It’s also an opportunity to reset with our fans, our focus, and making sure they’re the priority,” he said. “We’re going to do all of those things.”

Only time will tell if those words ring true. And there will be plenty of nights at the Wells Fargo Center along the way when the seats are half-filled. But for the first time in a while, there’s reason to believe in the sincerity of the sentiment.