Ultimately, the winner of the Philadelphia Flyers–Washington Capitals game at Wells Fargo Center last Tuesday, April 16, meant nothing to the home team. The Flyers’ playoff fate was sealed the moment David Perron beat Cayden Primeau with a slap shot through traffic with five seconds to go in a game between the Detroit Red Wings and Canadiens 450 miles away in Montreal.
That was of no consolation to Morgan Frost. The Flyers center didn’t play for the final 30 minutes, benched by coach John Tortorella.
“Obviously, you want to be out there. Especially in a game like that, an important game, it’s pretty devastating to not play,” Frost said on Wednesday. “At the same time, I have a lot of respect for Torts, and I think he’s a great coach, so if he felt that’s what he needed to do to try and win that game, I understand it. I think those last couple games I could have played a little bit better.”
The question of whether the 24-year-old Frost is in the Flyers’ long-term plans is again on the frontburner. For a while, it looked like he had worked himself out of the early-season doghouse in which he was a frequent healthy scratch, posting a team-leading 20 points in 24 games from Jan. 5 to March 2 and keying the Flyers’ attack. But he finished the season with just one goal and one assist in his final 11 games, culminating in his not getting much of a chance to make a difference in a season finale that, when it began, the Flyers had to win to keep their slim playoff hopes alive.
It’s been well-documented that Frost’s season took a turn for the better after he initiated a meeting with Tortorella in early January. It was something Tortorella had apparently been waiting for. The coach has an affinity for those kinds of confrontations, as some of his former players spoke about with The Athletic in March.
Frost, who has one year left on his contract at $2.1 million, didn’t seem to think that his benching in the final game would set the player-coach relationship back.
“If you’re basing it off of one game, I don’t think so, no,” he said. “I’d like to think not. I think I’ve grown a lot in terms of learning how to handle things with him and interact. I think there’s going to be some more going on there, but at the same time, no, I don’t think so.”
Still, Frost — who called 2023-24 the “best season” he’s had in terms of his overall health — suggested there was some team-wide mental fatigue late in the season, coinciding with their rough patch that included an 0-6-2 losing streak. There was no shortage of noise around the Flyers in the second half of the season, and Tortorella has admitted he might not have been pressing some of the right buttons while the team was in its doldrums.
“I think in general for our team, kind of towards the end there where the pressure started to build, I think a little bit of mental fatigue kicked in,” Frost said. “Obviously, there was a bunch of guys grinding through whatever they were feeling.”
Morgan Frost (right) was benched for the final 30 minutes vs. Washington last Tuesday. (Eric Hartline / USA Today)
Farabee may have been one of them. The 24-year-old forward concluded the season with just one point, a meaningless goal late in the Flyers’ 9-3 loss to Montreal on April 9, in his final 12 games. He started the Flyers’ final three games on the fourth line and 13 of the final 14 in a bottom-six role.
That made it more difficult to get his game going.
“Obviously, any year after the All-Star break the games get a lot harder, and teams are fighting for playoff spots. The game changes a bit,” Farabee said. “I think my role on the team, too, when you’re playing third and fourth line sometimes you have to give up some of the offense to focus on the defensive game side of things. … I take a lot of responsibility for a lot that stuff, and definitely need to be a lot better.”
So was Farabee, who has four years left on his contract at a $5 million salary-cap hit, frustrated playing down in the lineup?
“Yeah, I mean, obviously, I personally would love to play as much as I can,” he said. “Whatever role I’m given that night I try to just do to the best of my ability.”
For a while, Farabee was one of the Flyers’ more consistent scorers. He led the team in even-strength points on Jan. 25 with 34 in 49 games, one more than Travis Konecny. But after Feb. 8, his offense dried up with just five goals and nine total points over his final 31 games. Consequently, his playing time declined.
General manager Daniel Briere on Friday left open the possibility that the Flyers could execute a hockey trade or two in the offseason. Despite overachieving this season, the organizational plan of slowly building in the hopes of becoming a yearly contender has not changed.
He also touched on both Farabee and Frost. The latter seems to be in better standing.
“I was really impressed with how Morgan Frost handled situations this season,” Briere said. “He’s shown a lot of maturity, didn’t want to create waves, waited for his turn and, when he had the chance, really stepped up and was a really good player for us. So maturity wise, Morgan was great.”
As for Farabee, Briere lumped him in with Noah Cates, who finished with 18 points in 59 games and admitted to an “identity crisis” this season as he tried to balance adding more offense to his game while remaining defensively proficient.
“I think both of these guys maybe didn’t develop quite as much as I would have hoped for,” Briere said. “I think there’s more there with those two guys. They can take a bigger role on the team.”
Tortorella didn’t speak much on individual players in his final press availability on Friday but was blunt in his evaluation of the roster as a whole. The organization is still in a transition period, despite coming so close to a playoff berth.
“We are a ways away. We have so much work to do with this team,” he said. “There are holes on this team. It’s going to take more time. I’m telling you that right now … We’re staying with the process, or it turns into a team just spinning its wheels in the mud again.”
Tortorella, Briere, president of hockey operations Keith Jones and everyone else in the Flyers front office will hold meetings over the next little while to determine what’s next. Many players will remain, but some will inevitably move on.
What they learned over the final few weeks when the Flyers’ season was on the line will influence those discussions and the ultimate decisions to come. What they think of Frost, Farabee and others will be reflected in whatever moves are made.
“That’s why it was important to be playing these games,” Tortorella said. “And some guys just weren’t able to get it done. Do you make a decision, they just can’t handle it? Is that who they are? Or do you continue working with them?”
“I have my thoughts,” Tortorella continued. “Some of it’s good information for people, some of it’s not so good for others.”
(Top photo of Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost: Brian Fluharty / Getty Images)
