John Tortorella brings up Carter Hart, charged with sexual assault, in Flyers’ future plans

Philadelphia Flyers head coach John Tortorella was blunt about what his team needs moving forward. According to Jordan Hall of NBC Sports Philadelphia, Torts claims that the departure of Carter Hart last season left the position in turmoil and must be fixed in the near future. Back in January, the head coach had already expressed how big of a blow it was when Hart was no longer on the team’s lineup.

“When Carter left, that threw this into turmoil,” Tortorella had said then. “It is what it is, we’ve lived with it, we continue to live with it and we do the best we can.”

On Monday, Tortorella reiterated the absence of Hart and pointed out the Flyers’ inexperience between the pipes in Samuel Ersson, Ivan Fedotov and Aleksei Kolosov, who have a league-low .873 save percentage this season.

“I’m not laying blame, but that goaltending position, we have to fix that,” he said. “You do not win in this game without good goaltending. It has not been good. I say that and then I come back with, how can we expect it to be good when we have such inexperience at that position?”

As you may remember, five players were charged in the 2018 World Junior alleged sexual assault, including Hart, Alex Formenton, , Dillon Dube, Cal Foote and Michael McLeod. They were all charged with one count of sexual assault in the 2018 World Junior alleged incident that allegedly occurred following a Hockey Canada gala in Ontario in June 2018. Court documents from 2022 revealed London police believed they had reasonable grounds to accuse five players of sexually assaulting a young woman in a hotel room.

It did not take long for respective NHL teams to cut ties with the players, which included the Flyers letting go of Hart.
The goalie has reportedly kept training, but when he attempted to leave Canada back in September in order to get to Tennessee to focus on training, he was blocked by US Customs officers. The goalie has been trying to revive his career following the time he was exposed as part of the 2018 Team Canada scandal and while Torts feels a goalie like him is needed in Philly, there is no way Hart is making an NHL return, at least until the trial plays out next month and we get a verdict.

Hart made 25 starts for the Flyers in the 2023-24 season before he left to deal with much bigger issues. In total, Hart played 227 total games for the Flyers, including 218 starts. He was a second-round pick by the Flyers in the 2016 NHL draft.

The Flyers, who again on Tuesday called up Kolosov, will have to fix this in the offseason and it will be interesting to see what they can do to improve in net.