Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella gave an interesting update on the team's goalie situation this year. He revealed that the team knew Carter Hart was in trouble coming into the season, complicating their plans.
The head coach made a shocking revelation during his media availability today when he revealed that the team had discussions over the summer about what would happen with Carter Hart. Hart has been missing from the team for some time now since the London police summoned him for his role in the 2018 Hockey Canada scandal at the World Junior Championship. Apparently, the Flyers were well aware of the fact that they could lose Hart this season.
"Let's face it: things got thrown into a really weird situation when we lost Carter. But having said that, we had discussions in the summer about the situation w/Carter, & figured something was gonna go on, right? We've got to be honest about it."
This revelation does make the team's decisions a bit odd. They knew they could lose their number one netminder and yet they still didn't add another goalie. As a result, Tortorella was forced to rely on Samuel Ersson. While Ersson has not been good this season, the head coach placed no blame on him either as he noted that he's played far more than what was expected from him at the start of the season.
Torts on Ersson & the goaltending: "Everybody throws the numbers that are out there. And the numbers are bad. But we're not even talking about these games meaning anything for us, if Erss doesn't play the way he's played. Then I throw Ivan into the situation, coming in... who knows where the hell he came from, and he has to play a game. We have Erss penciled in at maybe playing 18 to 22 games this year. Look at where he is now. So there's no blaming."
Still though, the Flyers goaltender situation is simply remarkable given everything ew know about Hart. New goalie Ivan Fedotov has also had an extremely unusual path to the NHL. Now it seems that the goaltending might cost them the season as the team has fallen out of a playoff spot with just a few games left in the regular season.
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