The Philadelphia Flyers had been on a steady slide in the second half of the season. Up until New Year's Day, the team had a .500 points percentage and sat just two points out of a playoff spot. Since that point, their .386 points percentage was fourth-worst in the league and they went into Thursday night's game 10 points out of a playoff spot. It wasn't much of a surprise, then, that Head Coach John Tortorella was let go while assistant coach Brad Shaw was named as his interim replacement. We will see what the team decides to do with Shaw this offseason, but it seems very likely they go in search of a tenured NHL coach as the replacement.

It will be interesting to see how the team changes from here. Fantasy managers need to look no further than Sean Couturier last year, Matvei Michkov this year, or Cam York recently to see a player on the Flyers roster get benched for a game, multiple games, or have their role significantly reduced under Tortorella. Will that change? It would help with game-to-game consistency as far as fantasy managers are concerned.

Given that Shaw worked under Tortorella, and there are just nine games left in their season (eight after Thursday night), it'll be hard to see much of an impact due to a lack of sample. However, just getting players consistent ice time would be a nice change across the roster.

If there is one change that would be nice to see from the Flyers, it's how they play with a lead. When teams have a lead, they tend to go into a shell, giving up more shots than normal. However, those shots tend to be of lower-quality as the players focus on defence rather than offence. The Tortorella Flyers did not follow suit because when they went into a shell, they gave up higher quality shots against than they did otherwise (from HockeyViz):

Again, with under 10 games remaining and the team near the bottom of the Eastern Conference, any changes will be hard to discern between a genuine change in approach and small-sample noise. Overall, that is what makes it hard to see this change having much of an impact for the Flyers this season, and we'll re-visit their coaching situation when a permanent change is made in the offseason.