The temptation after one win is to turn it into a referendum and call it settled. The Flyers beat a Senators team that had been playing well, Matvei Michkov and Porter Martone each scored and set up a goal, and Philadelphia avoided a ten-game losing streak that would have put Rick Tocchet in a category of NHL coaching ignominy nobody wants to be first to share twice. Everything beyond that, the idea that this win vindicates playing the kids and buys the coach a stay of execution, is opinion. Mine is that it's half right.
Start with what's true. Michkov and Martone were the two best Flyers on the ice, and it wasn't close. Michkov set up Martone's tying goal and then scored the go-ahead goal himself on the power play, reaching 50 career goals faster than anyone in the organization since Matt Read over a decade ago. Michkov did exactly what a team desperate for secondary scoring needed him to do, and it's fair to ask why it took nine losses for him and Martone to get the runway to do it.
What gets left out when the story becomes "kids save season" is that Dan Vladar was better than both of them. Twenty-five saves, one goal against on a 2-on-1 that wasn't really his fault, and a save percentage that made him the best player on the ice by any statistical measure. A 29-year-old journeyman goaltender stood on his head, and the kids did enough offensively to make it matter, which is how the Flyers actually won. Credit the youth movement if you want. Just don't treat the guy between the pipes as a footnote.
The lineup decisions that kept two of your most talented young players from driving play for nine losses were Tocchet's, and a coach doesn't get credit for finally trying the obvious thing in his tenth game. If playing Michkov and Martone like first-line talents is the fix, the fix was sitting on the bench the whole time. The choices before it are the real problem.
The idea that this win changes his job security is fantasy. His situation was settled long before Saturday's result. He's one year into a five-year deal reportedly worth over five million a year, he took this roster to a playoff series win last spring, and reporting before this game already had the front office saying there was no appetite for a coaching change. None of that was contingent on beating Ottawa, and none of it changes now that they did.
His job security was decided independent of this one game against a team Philadelphia had already split a series with this season. What Saturday bought him is cover: a talking point for a fan base that watched a franchise-record winless start and wanted someone's head. The contract was always going to protect him longer than any losing streak could threaten him, and a single win over a good team doesn't undo nine losses any more than it proves the kids are finished products. It does prove that when Tocchet stopped getting in his best young players' way, they played like it. That's on him twice: for the delay, and for needing a near-historic humiliation to force his hand.
