History says John Tortorella’s teams break through in Year 3. Will the Flyers do the same?

The look on Danny Brière’s face said it all.

Surprised. Excited. A twinkle in his eye at the possibilities. “All right, that’s good news,” the Flyers general manager said with a chuckle and a smile when talking with The Inquirer about John Tortorella’s track record of building year-to-year. But then reality set in and the smile dissipated just as quickly as it came.

“We don’t feel we’re quite there,” he continued.

The “there” is where John Tortorella-led teams go in his third full season behind the bench. His third full season in Tampa Bay? He lifted the 2004 Stanley Cup. His third full year on Broadway with the New York Rangers? The Eastern Conference Finals in 2012. In Columbus? The first playoff series win in franchise history, via a 2019 sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Lightning.

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“It’s almost like you’re on a diet,” said former NHL forward Tim Taylor, who played for Tortorella in Tampa Bay from 2001-07. “You start losing weight and you don’t see it in the first 10 days, 14 days. Three weeks go by you see a little bit, and then a month goes by, and then you’re two months in, and then you see it. And [you] keep doing the same stuff, and you notice huge differences. And that’s kind of what Torts is. He goes into an organization, and he chips away and tries to get the players to put buy-in and be all on the same page.”

Of course, statistically, things fluctuate. In Year 1, New York’s power play had an 18.3% conversion rate (13th). By Year 3 it had slipped to 15.7% (23rd). Although the Lightning and Rangers saw their goals-against average drop each year, the Blue Jackets’ rose from a strong 2.35 (2nd in the league) to 2.82 (11th) across two years.

But what Tortorella does best is chip away inside the room. He builds relationships, maybe not always between him and the players but between the guys that go to battle every day. This is why defenseman Erik Johnson, after being around for just 17 games last season, opted to stay in Philly despite being an unrestricted free agent on July 1. It’s why winger Garnet Hathaway signed a two-year extension despite having a year to decide his next step.

“By the third year, Torts can kind of grind the guys down into being moldable the way he wants them to play,” said NHL analyst Mike Rupp, who played for him with the Rangers in 2011-12. “And now when you have that, and everybody’s kind of on the same page, pulling the same rope, it makes it much easier to [execute] the X’s and O’s and the style that you want to play can be more effective.”

“One of the things that I think is John’s strength is that nobody’s exempt from the standard. He doesn’t care how much money you make or how many goals you scored, or what your salary and accolades and trophies are. He just wants everybody to buy in.”

Sitting in front of the media following the first on-ice session of training camp — the dreaded rope skating test — Tortorella spoke about the significance of Year 3 for the Flyers. He noted that in the first year, the focus was subtracting guys, “really good people ... [but] they did not fit with our hockey club.” He did not mention names but at the end of the year, guys like defenseman Ivan Provorov and forward Kevin Hayes were traded while defenseman Tony DeAngelo /was bought out. As Taylor said, the first year is a culture shock.

Last year, the bench boss focused on developing the kids. Checkmark on that as 20-somethings like Cam York, Tyson Foerster, and Owen Tippett reached another level in their games, and players on the other side of 25, like Travis Konecny and Travis Sanheim, had career years offensively.

But while players did take steps, they also learned to win. As his former players said, you may not win them all but there’s momentum building — and the Flyers improved from 31 wins in 2022-23 to 38 last year.

So what about Year 3?

“You’ve got a team that’s all playing the same way and understand and respect the culture, and they all want to be a part of it. ... They’ve all come under one umbrella,” Taylor said. “You’re slowly bringing guys in the first year; the second year, bring them more. And then once you have guys under the umbrella, they’re yelling at the other guys, ‘Why you guys standing out there getting wet when it’s all nice and cozy in here?’ Why don’t you guys join them?’”

The Flyers’ training camp docuseries, now in its third season, is called The Standard. It’s not just a random word. There are several definitions for ”standard,” but this probably fits best: something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example. Tortorella is all about setting a standard with his teams of playing the game “the right way, which includes with maximum effort, defensive structure, and intelligence away from the puck.

“One of the things that I think is John’s strength is that nobody’s exempt from the standard. He doesn’t care how much money you make or how many goals you scored, or what your salary and accolades and trophies are. He just wants everybody to buy in,” said Jarmo Kekäläinen, the former Blue Jackets GM who hired Tortorella in 2015.

“The requirements are the same for the star players and the guys doing some of the dirty work on the lower end of the ice time and role and salary [ladders]. So I think players at the [lower] end appreciate that, that he treats everybody the same way, and that’s something that brings a team together. When everybody sees that, OK, doesn’t matter what star status you may have, you’re still going to have to obey the rules and work the same way as everybody else.”

Another key characteristic in Tortorella’s teams is belief. The grizzled bench boss has a lengthy track record of galvanizing teams through an “us-against-the-world mentality. Even when his teams aren’t necessarily underdogs, Tortorella has a way of convincing them they are.

“He would always talk about the training camps, and I always found it kind of funny, because it’d be March, and he’d be like, ‘You guys are in better shape. We did the skating test.’ We did that test five-and-a-half months ago, that does nothing for me right now,” Rupp said.

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“But I get what he’s trying to do. You just got to keep telling yourself that we’re different. We’re different because we demand more from each other. And I think it goes a long way whether you feel like that on a night-to-night basis, that puts you in a mindset that you’re at least, you know, feeling like we’re a different breed. And I think that helps.”

A different gear. Another gear. The Flyers couldn’t find it last season when they hit a wall in the form of an eight-game losing streak that cost them a playoff spot. But now they have that experience to lean on, to learn from, and to build on. With Tortorella, it’s not always about the X’s and O’s. Like his rope test, it’s about mental toughness. He doesn’t care about the scores, “It was all about making sure you guys were prepared,” Taylor recalled Tortorella telling him.

Tortorella is calculated and doesn’t want anyone to get comfortable.

“It was Game 1 which, we had the international games to start off the season, and I played one period ... and I didn’t do anything overly egregious in a bad way, didn’t do anything good,” Rupp recalled. “Our team was struggling in the first period. So we came in between periods, and he came right at me. I’m like, I’m the new guy, played one period for you, and he’s like, ‘This isn’t why I went out to get you. If this is what it is, tell me now.’ So I realized real quick, he was going to push my buttons from Day 1.”

It’s setting the standard. You have to make sure you come prepared to work, to act like a pro, and to be a team. He won’t let any person or player slip. “He’s like a terrier,” Kekäläinen said.

Enter Matvei Michkov.

The Russian phenom and fellow teen Jett Luchanko are the only changes to the lineup this season. Neither guy was on the Flyers’ radar to be here; Michkov was drafted in 2023 and not expected to be on U.S. soil for two more summers; and Luchanko was just drafted 13th overall in June and only turned 18 in August.

How they impact the Flyers’ timeline is still to be determined. But Luchanko has shown poise and an NHL-level of responsibility as the centerman for Bobby Brink and Joel Farabee. Michkov is a talent unseen in Philadelphia for decades. As Tortorella said recently, “We are starving for the type of plays that he can make, the instinctive plays that he can make.”

Could Michkov, and Luchanko if he stays past the nine-game audition afford Canadian Hockey League players, speed up the timeline? Possibly.

Already boasting one of the league’s best penalty-killing squads last year, ranked fourth, the Flyers’ power play should be vastly improved with Michkov and a healthy Jamie Dyrsdale on one of the units — although, Tortorella teams are not necessarily known for being among the league’s best in this facet. And the vision the 19-year-old budding star possesses should elevate the already elite game of his opposite winger Konency, while also helping to balance out the forward lines.

The major question mark heading into t Friday’s season opener against the Vancouver Canucks (10 p.m., NBSCP) is between the pipes. Tortorella said the new goaltending tandem of Sam Ersson and Ivan Fedotov “scares the crap out of me.” But it’s not because he thinks they are bad, it’s because of the unknown.

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What Tortorella has built in the room will only help to build a strong presence in front of the netminders. “It creates this discipline, that motivation that your peers within the locker room are pushing on you to be better, because he’s pushed those guys to make you better,” Taylor said.

And if you don’t think Tortorella isn’t focused on his third year at the helm, think again.

“Year 3 is such an important year in a program because of human nature,” Tortorella said before training camp. “We know one another now and you don’t want to cheat but you kind of give sometimes. ... Those are the things I’ve got to coach myself and coach with the team. have to coach them differently. I’ve had them three years, I have to respect that they’ve improved.”

Meanwhile, Brière knows his team isn’t ready to be called a Stanley Cup contender just yet, as he noted, they are starting further back than the Lightning and Rangers did with Tortorella.

But he is laying the foundation and building a future that, even just for a moment this week, allowed Brière to dream big.