Yahoo Sports John Tortorella Explains Reasoning Behind Constant Line Shifts
The Philadelphia Flyers have gotten off to a rocky start in the 2024-25 campaign, only winning one of their first seven games, and struggling to produce offense despite having a number of skilled forwards at their disposal.
In an attempt to light a fire under his current offense, head coach John Tortorella has been mixing up his line combinations—a lot. The decision to constantly be shuffling around the lines has prompted confusion and ire amongst viewers, who can't seem to understand why Tortorella insists on keeping his forwards on a carousel instead of letting them develop some familiarity and chemistry with each other.
Related: Flyers' Constant Line Shuffling Stalls Offensive Chemistry
The Flyers' bench boss explained that there is a strategy to switching up the lines so often, clarifying that "with the line combinations, it's not like I'm a mad scientist back there just trying to throw things around. Especially in the situation where, right now, we're struggling offensively."
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While he wishes that he "could just roll with it" when he sees something working, the persistent offensive struggles have left him needing more from his forwards.
"If I try something different after a powerplay or after penalty killing and I see something there, I say, 'Man, maybe I'll stay with that,'" he said. "So with me, with line combinations, I wish I could just roll with it. But when you're struggling offensively and you see something work in certain situations, I'm gonna stick with it. There's all sorts of situations that come in there."
Make no mistake, though—there is a strategy to all this, even if frustrated fans don't always see the vision.
"Don't misconstrue that I'm back there just throwing people all over the place," he said. "The only decision I make with the lines is I'm trying to help the team. When the team struggles offensively, I think I need to. If I didn't, you'd probably say, 'Why the hell has he not changed the lines?'"
Megan DeRuchie-The Hockey News
Tortorella argued that he has given certain combinations a fair amount of ice time, but if it's just not coming together quick enough, the Flyers aren't currently in a position to be patient and hope that something blossoms.
"I go by feel," he explained. "[For example], I have hung in there with [Owen Tippett] and [Matvei Michkov] quite a bit, [but] I just don't see it working... I just watch it and I adjust to what I see is going to help the team."
He acknowledged that the team still needs to do better on scoring, but pointed out that, in a situation like this, there is no clear-cut solution that will magically fix everything.
"Do I make the right decisions? I don't know," he conceded. "I certainly haven't made enough here because we still aren't scoring. There's no true answer to it."
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