Travis Sanheim and Joel Farabee are the latest Flyers in John Tortorella’s doghouse. What’s next?

TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Travis Sanheim may not be clairvoyant, but he certainly understands how coach John Tortorella sends messages to his players when they aren’t performing up to his standard. Repeatedly.

In the wake of the Flyers’ 6-2 loss to the Vancouver Canucks on Feb. 18, Sanheim was a healthy scratch for the Flyers’ Feb. 20 road game against the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome, where he played junior hockey for the Calgary Hitmen and had family and friends in attendance. The 26-year-old defenseman said in the aftermath that he wasn’t entirely sure why he was held out (one could presume it at least partially had to do with the two goals he was on the ice for against the Canucks), but regardless, he emphasized that it’s on him to heed Tortorella’s wake-up call.

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“You’re not going to like each other every single day of the season,” Sanheim said on Feb. 24. “There’s going to be hard times. There’s going to be times where he’s going to sit me. There’s going to be times in the game and he’s going to have to be hard on me and I’ve got to be able to take it and respond.”

It turned out that those hard times were right around the corner.

After Sanheim was called for a defensive-zone tripping penalty in the first period of the Flyers’ eventual 5-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Tuesday night, Tortorella glued him to the bench for the entire second period. The penalty wasn’t the sole issue, as Sanheim turned over an attempted clearing pass in the Flyers’ zone moments beforehand, then mishandled the puck behind the net before tripping Lightning captain Steven Stamkos in the corner.

Sanheim had company on the bench — winger Joel Farabee, who committed a pair of minor penalties of his own in the first period, bookended the opposite side of the bench for the middle frame.

Two weeks earlier against the Flames, Tortorella also implicitly expressed frustration with the 23-year-old Farabee when he limited him to just 3 minutes, 14 seconds of ice time through two periods. After Farabee failed to pick up Flames center Mikael Backlund prior to a goal roughly halfway through the second period, Farabee stayed on the bench for the remainder of the game.

But on Tuesday night, Sanheim and Farabee returned to action in the third period, ultimately logging totals of 12:12 and 12:48 of ice time, respectively. Seeing as Tortorella had to send the same message twice to the same players in a span of two weeks, he expressed some concern after the game.

“Yeah,” Tortorella said. “I don’t know where I go there.”

Tortorella said he gave Sanheim and Farabee second chances in the third period because he wanted to see if they would answer the proper way. In the immediate aftermath, Tortorella said that he thought Farabee had a couple of scoring chances and got involved in the offense, but he needed to go back and watch the tape to get a better understanding.

Sanheim and Farabee weren’t the only Flyers players to err in the contest. Defenseman Tony DeAngelo earned a five-minute major penalty and a game misconduct for spearing Lightning winger Corey Perry late in the third period. Tortorella said immediately after the game that DeAngelo “may have crossed the line” with his hot temper (he said he wanted to watch the clip back), but added “that’s part of who Tony is.”

He suggested that Sanheim and Farabee could stand to benefit from taking a page out of DeAngelo’s book, one that’s riddled with past transgressions. DeAngelo has been suspended for two games as a result of the spearing incident.

“I want him to have his personality, to have that competitiveness,” Tortorella said. “A couple of guys that I did sit, I wish a little bit of that would rub off on them.”

Both Sanheim and Farabee declined to speak to the media after the game.

What’s next for Sanheim and Farabee, players who are poised to be long-term pieces of the Flyers’ future but have struggled under Tortorella? On the day of the Flyers’ Oct. 13 season opener, general manager Chuck Fletcher signed Sanheim to an eight-year, $50 million contract extension that starts next season. The extension came on the heels of a breakthrough season under interim coach Mike Yeo (seven goals and 19 assists in 57 games with Yeo at the helm) and prevented Sanheim from becoming an unrestricted free agent after this season, all before new bench boss Tortorella coached him in a regular-season game.

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This season, Sanheim hasn’t flashed as much offensively, registering four goals and 12 assists in 63 games. He is minus-eight with a career-high 36 penalty minutes. His advanced metrics are lackluster, too, ranking 160th among 196 qualified defensemen (minimum of 500 minutes TOI) in goals above replacement (-1.6), per Evolving Hockey. Last season, Sanheim ranked 22nd of 218 qualified defensemen in GAR (13.9).

Meanwhile, Farabee is in the first year of a six-year, $30 million deal that runs through the 2027-28 season. He underwent artificial disk replacement surgery in his neck in June and did not have a full offseason to get stronger, thus hampering his performance this season. He is averaging .42 points per game (nine goals and 18 assists in 64 games), which is his lowest clip since his rookie season (.40 points per game) and is down from last season (.54 points per game). Two seasons ago as a 20-year-old, Farabee notched a team-high 20 goals in just 55 games.

Tortorella may not have known where he wanted to go with Sanheim and Farabee immediately after the loss to the Lightning. In all likelihood, as the year winds down, they will continue to get opportunities to prove that they can be a part of the solution going forward and that this season is an anomaly for each of them.

What happens after that, however, is the more provoking question.

“I’ve said it all along, one of the biggest steps we have to take, and I think it’s the first step, is addition by subtraction,” Tortorella said after the trade deadline on March 4. “And some guys are fighting not to get on that subtraction part of it. And it’s a big 20 games for some people.”