Sean Couturier’s health, Travis Sanheim’s play among the Flyers’ 5 biggest question marks

According to John Tortorella’s math, to achieve a greater result, a team actually has to start with subtraction rather than addition.

This offseason, Flyers general manager Danny Brière has worked the numbers and done a little bit of both. He has subtracted players who weren’t jelling with Tortorella, like Ivan Provorov, Kevin Hayes, and Tony DeAngelo. He has made minor adds through free agency, signing veterans Marc Staal, Garnet Hathaway, and Ryan Poehling, and he also has made additions for the future through acquired draft picks and prospects.

» READ MORE: Flyers are awarded draft pick for not signing former first-rounder Jay O’Brien

However, there still are a lot of X’s in the equation.

Everyone from the Flyers front office has been clear that the rebuilding process will take time. Even if dramatic results aren’t expected next season, there are certain things the Flyers need to work out to secure success down the line.

Here are five of the biggest questions for the Flyers entering next season, all of which could have a long-term impact on the organization:

The Couturier questions seem to have dominated the last two years. Will he come back from back surgery this season? Will he return next season? Will he ever play again? Will the Flyers let him get a few games under his belt at the end of the 2022-23 season? The answer to all those questions was no.

Now, the question, once again, is: Will he return, this time for the 2023-24 season? The Flyers seem to think the answer is yes (they also thought that ahead of last year’s training camp), but assuming they’re right, the question shifts to whether he will be able to return to form after missing the last 134 games.

The Atkinson questions only date back one season. As with Couturier, there were questions about whether he’d return last year before the team finally ruled him out after neck surgery in December. Atkinson scored 23 goals in 73 games the season before his injury.

Now, the Flyers are waiting to see if they will get not one but two impact players back. While both are top-six-caliber forwards who would add a level of skill missing from the current lineup, their impact goes beyond what they can do on the ice. Couturier, a former Selke Trophy winner, would be the most veteran Flyer, and the younger centers said they learned a lot from practicing alongside him last season. Atkinson, in addition to being a leader, is the player most familiar with Tortorella, and the locker room clearly missed having a liaison between the players and the tough coach.

Neither player’s timeline — Atkinson’s 34 and Couturier turns 31 in December — matches that of the Flyers’ rebuild, but even rebuilding teams need veterans to show youngsters the way. And if Atkinson comes back strong enough, he also could be a trade piece down the line.

In just eight NHL games, Tyson Foerster gave fans and Tortorella something to be excited about. Foerster recorded three goals, seven points at the NHL level and backed it up with a strong AHL campaign. But is he ready to carry that momentum into a full NHL season?

Foerster isn’t the only young player in that position. Owen Tippett had a career season with 27 goals, but he had posted three years of underwhelming play before it. Morgan Frost exploded over the second half of the season with 16 goals and 40 points over the final 54 games but comes with his own inconsistency questions. Finally, can Joel Farabee get back on track after two down seasons?

» READ MORE: Evaluating Danny Briere’s first offseason as Flyers general manager

That doesn’t mean those players’ successes are flukes. However, it’s hard to predict whether they will continue their upward trajectories.

For a team that’s rebuilding, the growth of these players is critical. If players like Tippett and Foerster prove worth the hype and Farabee and Frost find consistency, the Flyers could be in a better spot than anticipated.

As promised, Brière didn’t chase after big names in free agency given the team’s position. But he did add a few veteran depth pieces at reasonable prices. It raises the question: When do the Flyers expect their young players to contribute?

While the Flyers traded away top defenseman Provorov, they got an NHL blueliner, Sean Walker, back in the trade. Defenseman Justin Braun retired from the NHL and DeAngelo was bought out, but the rest of the room remains the same with Cam York, Travis Sanheim, Rasmus Ristolainen, and Nick Seeler all set to return.

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On top of that, the Flyers gave three prospects, Egor Zamula, Ronnie Attard, and Adam Ginning, looks last season. So with the addition of the 36-year-old Staal, they have a surplus of options, including veterans in Staal, Walker, and Seeler who could make it harder for players like Attard, Zamula, and Emil Andrae to earn minutes with the Flyers.

The math for the forwards is similar but not as extreme. The Flyers ousted one forward in Hayes but signed two new ones in Hathaway and Poehling. On top of that, they are excited about prospects Foerster, Elliot Desnoyers, and Bobby Brink. That’s not to say players from last year couldn’t lose their jobs, but the forward lines seemed pretty set without the addition of Hathaway.

Speaking of Sanheim — he might be returning, but he was a big name in trade rumors this offseason prior to his contract kicking in. That’s because he and Tortorella did not hit it off last this year.

Tortorella repeatedly bemoaned Sanheim’s lack of aggression, saying he saw a monthlong flash of it and now will not settle for anything less from the defenseman. And Sanheim certainly showed less than expected with inconsistent performances and fewer offensive contributions. He ended the season with 23 points, eight less than last season. The Flyers also were significantly out-chanced with Sanheim on the ice.

Tortorella’s displeasure with Sanheim reached a critical point in February when he sat Sanheim for his homecoming game in Calgary with family and friends in the crowd. Sanheim’s offensive production picked up after that, and his plus-minus improved, but Sanheim still seemed like a prime candidate for Brière’s Tortorella-inspired locker room clean-out this offseason.

However, no deals were made by July 1, which is when his hefty eight-year, $50 million contract kicked in along with his no-trade clause. Unless another team wants him and he likes what it says, he and the Flyers are stuck with each other. Which makes Sanheim a big key to the Flyers’ future success.

Sanheim is a top-four defenseman, a veteran and a respected voice in the locker room. Not so long ago (pre Tortorella), Sanheim was named the team’s best defensive player, which helped earn the generous extension. Will he be able to get back to that form and justify his contract? And, just as importantly, will he and Tortorella find common ground?

» READ MORE: Ranking the Flyers’ top 5 prospects after the 2023 NHL draft

Goaltending has been a question for the Flyers for generations. It finally seemed as if they had found an answer in Carter Hart, but his status is now uncertain pending the results of a Hockey Canada investigation into an alleged sexual assault involving Canada’s 2018 World Juniors team. All Hart has said to this point is that he is “cooperating with the investigation.”

The uncertainty surrounding the investigation comes at the same time the Flyers finally found a level of certainty in who Hart is on the ice. The young goaltender had struggled with consistency through his first four seasons, but a number of factors including the pandemic, injury, and poor defense in front of him played into it. The Flyers still weren’t good defensively last season, but Hart battled through it and was often the only reason the Flyers were competitive.

Two offseason moves by the Flyers made the situation even murkier. First, they acquired goalie Cal Peterson from the Los Angeles Kings in the three-way Provorov trade. Petersen, 28, has had a rough go of it lately, but he was looked at as a potential starting goalie not so long ago (hence the three-year, $15 million contract). The Flyers took on Petersen’s salary in order to land a second-round pick and prospect Hege Grans, but could they also resuscitate Petersen’s game?

Then the Flyers signed Samuel Ersson to a two-year, $2.9 million contract extension a year before he became a restricted free agent. While Ersson was Hart’s backup only while Felix Sandström was hurt, he impressed in his 12 games and stood out in the AHL.

On top of that, the Flyers drafted back-to-back goalies in the second-round of this year’s draft, and signed Belarusian netminder Alexei Kolosov to his entry-level deal.

That raises eyebrows about both Hart’s status as well as Sandström’s. In addition to Hart’s situation, there’s the question of whether he’s the franchise goalie or a trade piece, given that he is in the final year of his contract. And with so many backup goalies, there’s a question of what the pecking order is as well as whether one of them could replace Hart long-term.