The highest point that the Flyers have reached in the last decade was the highest point that Carter Hart has reached as their goaltender. It was two-and-a-half years ago in the 2020 playoffs, in the pandemic bubble in Toronto. The Flyers had beaten the Montreal Canadiens in six games in the first round, and Hart had outplayed his idol, Carey Price, stopping 31 of 33 shots in the clinching Game 6 victory. In the conference semifinals, the Islanders beat the Flyers in a seven-game series that was as one-sided as a seven-game series can be. So for Hart, Montreal was the peak. That was it. That was as good as it has gotten for him here.
He does not look back at that time much, if at all. “I don’t even really think about it,” he was saying last week, and it’s understandable, for now, that he wouldn’t. He is in the middle of the regular season, tunnel-vision time for any athlete, and that single moment — the Flyers as the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed, a deep postseason run possible — probably feels too far away to touch. Hell, with the Flyers in the condition that they’re in, overmatched in the present, their future uncertain, so much apathy and anger swirling together in the atmosphere, that moment must seem a lifetime ago, and Hart is just 24. He has lived only one lifetime.
“We need to change things, for sure,” he said after a practice at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees. “I mean, we can’t keep being in this position every year, where we’re kind of on the outside looking in. Obviously, we still have a chance this year, and we’re going to fight to the end, but I think something’s got to change, and it starts with us.”
This is what pro athletes generally say when their teams are in transition or turmoil. They look for solutions inside the locker room first. But one could argue that Hart is a different case here: that he is the best and most important player on the Flyers’ roster, that he has solved the mystery — finding a franchise goaltender — that bedeviled them for decades, and that, if he were so inclined, he could air any concerns he might have about the Flyers’ direction to the organization’s decision-makers.
I told Hart that, if I were in his shoes (or skates), I might do just that. I might take a walk upstairs to share my thoughts, because I’d be worried about entering the prime of my career and having little-to-no chance of winning a Stanley Cup with this team.
“I just play the game,” he said. “I have a great agent, great teammates. I can’t look ahead at the future and what the future holds for myself and this team. I just have to worry about now. As a team, that’s all we have to focus on.”
For the players, yes. But for those who will chart the franchise’s course — and unless and until the Flyers replace Chuck Fletcher as their general manager, no one knows who those navigators will be — Hart’s value not only to the organization but potentially to other teams around the league has to be a primary consideration.
It’s easy to say that the Flyers already have their goaltender for the next decade and can set themselves to all the other tasks ahead of them: figuring out the front-office makeup and alignment, finding and developing young talent. Hart was terrific in 2019-20, awful the next season, solid and improving last season and this one, the quality of his play obvious to anyone who watches him each night.
“He’s been aces this year as far as his preparation, how he handles himself — a kid who came in early and, for me, maybe too early at a certain time in his career,” coach John Tortorella said. “I’m not sure of all the situations going on here at that time with this city of goaltending problems. But nah, I don’t think of that. I think he’s handled himself as a pro. He’s been consistently probably our best player throughout the year. That doesn’t even cross my mind. He has been a great professional, and his preparation is impeccable.”
Those very qualities, though, make him desirable to just about any team, not just the Flyers. What if trading Hart were to net the Flyers a haul of prospects and players who could be at the core of a long-term rebuild? The timing of such a move wouldn’t be right for a while, for a number of reasons, and it might never be. Which is fine. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with designating Hart as the one untouchable player on the roster. But the Flyers have sunk so low that they can’t close themselves off to any idea, no matter how silly it might seem now, no matter how silly it might have seemed just a few years ago.
And yes, this idea would have been inconceivable back in the summer of 2020, when the Flyers were one game away from the conference finals and their goaltender was why they were that close. Funny how things change, and how things don’t. “It was a weird time, playing without fans,” Carter Hart said. He didn’t appear to recognize that his words applied just as well now as they did then.
