The Philadelphia Flyers are making a coaching change. John Tortorella is out as the Flyers’ head coach ahead of their game against the Montreal Canadiens on Thursday night.
The Philadelphia Flyers announced that Brad Shaw will serve as the interim head coach for the remainder of the season.
The #Flyers announce Brad Shaw is taking over as Interim Head Coach.@DailyFaceoff
— Anthony Di Marco (@ADiMarco25) March 27, 2025
Seeing John Tortorella removed as head coach, whether he was fired or stepped down, can be debated, but the Flyers decided now was the time to make a coaching change.
However, his comments Tuesday night after the Flyers lost 7-2 did not help his cause.
John Tortorella: “This falls on me, I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season where we’re at right now…but I have to do a better job.”#Flyers pic.twitter.com/M3LJbWdadB
— Flyers Nation (@FlyersNation) March 26, 2025
Flyers General Danny Briere in a press release on Thursday: “Today I made the very difficult decision to move on from John as our head coach,” said Briere. “John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set a standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer. John’s passion on the bench was only equaled by his charitable work in our community. As we move into the next chapter of this rebuild, I felt this was the best for our team to move forward. I’d like to thank John for his tireless work and commitment to the Flyers.”
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Even though Tortorella was plugged in with what General Manager Danny Briere was doing and understood that it would be a long road and there would be a lot of pain, as Pierre LeBrun of TSN said on SportsCenter with Jay Onrait on Wednesday
He had understood for a number of months that this was probably coming this way, that once they started trading bodies and depleted their NHL lineup, this would be painful at the end of the season. This is meant to be the last great, painful year for the Flyers. It doesn’t mean that they’ll make the playoffs next year, of course not. Front office, John Tortorella, all knew that this was another year where they were trading away more pieces. There’s a bigger picture at play here. One of the things that Danny Briere told me was that he’s told others as well that they’re not interested in being a team that squeezes into the playoffs. They’re trying to build something with a longer vision, where they are a contender, taking a number of swipes at it.
However, Tortorella is a competitor. He wants to win. But how many times can he keep taking the blame for the team’s failures on the ice? Despite knowing what the front office was doing, he wanted to see progress, but the team was not showing it.
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As we know, Tortorella’s act can wear thin. Whether it was now or the end of the season, change was coming. The Flyers have decided to make a change. They only have another year left at $4 million to pay Tortorella.
Has another coach ever fired himself before?
“I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now,” John Tortorella said 36 hours before being fired by #Flyers.
That is one for the books.
He had one year left at ~$4 million.
— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) March 27, 2025
Now it is Brad Shaw’s time to see what he can do for the rest of the season. Shaw spent the 2021-22 season as an assistant coach with the Vancouver Canucks. He also served as an assistant coach for five years with the Columbus Blue Jackets. Shaw was on Tortorella’s staff from 2016-17 to 2020-21, which saw the Blue Jackets have a record of 193-133-46 over 372 regular-season games as the team made the Stanley Cup Playoffs four of the five years.
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Over that time period, the Jackets with Shaw on the staff upset the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round in 2019 and knocked out the Toronto Maple Leafs in the play-in round in the Bubble Playoffs in 2020.
The question will be whether the Flyers will push to bring Rick Tocchet back to Philadelphia. He has yet to get an extension in Vancouver.
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