Carter Hart, the backbone of the Flyers future, is back among NHLs best goalies -

When the 2021-22 season mercifully came to a close, Carter Hart had only one goal: clear his head.

So for the first time since before the pandemic, he packed his bags and headed west with his best friend, Nolan Volcan, for a much-needed two-week break from the sport that otherwise consumes his life.

“It’s kind of turned into a yearly annual trip at the end of the year,” he told The Athletic. “(We) just kind of take a break after the season, recharge the batteries, and not think about hockey. You need to do that.”

Instead, Hart and Volcan — a childhood friend and former captain of the Seattle Thunderbirds in the WHL — focused on decidedly non-hockey-related activities: golfing, playing football on the beach, relaxing and enjoying the weather in California.

“You go out there and just, you don’t think about hockey at all. You don’t think about training or nothing,” Hart said. “You just take a break, check out, and then when it’s time to get back and train and prepare for the season, you’re that much hungrier and ready to go, and anxious to get going.”

No more thinking about the ugly .877 save percentage in 2020-21 that put a halt to any talk of his inevitable coronation as the NHL’s best young goalie. No more dwelling on the 31 losses in 2021-22 and the Philadelphia Flyers’ descent into NHL bottom-feeder. Just a full-fledged reset, heading into what stood as the most important season of his career.

It’s not quite fair to say that the recharge has Hart back to his former self. Because as a goaltender, he’s now better than ever.

Given the last two seasons of Hart’s NHL career, it’s easy to forget exactly where he stood when the 2020 bubble playoffs came to a close.

He had just concluded his first full season as an NHL starter, at an age (21) when most netminders are still toiling away in college, overseas or in the AHL. His .914 save percentage may not have gleamed at first glance, but a deeper look under the surface showed how shiny it truly was.

Out of all regular starting goalies, only Connor Hellebuyck (+19.86), Corey Crawford (+7.44) and Tuukka Rask (+7.31) stopped more shots above expected given the volume and quality of the shots faced (via Evolving-Hockey’s Goals Saved Above Expected metric) than Hart (+7.25) in 2019-20. He was one of the league’s best starters — and don’t forget, he was 21.

But Hart’s real coming-out party appeared to be the Flyers’ first-round matchup later that summer against the Montreal Canadiens.

In an unprecedented, odd atmosphere (no fans in the stands, following a five-month pause) and facing his childhood idol — a top-of-his-game Carey Price who had just carried Montreal to an upset victory over the Penguins in the play-in round, Hart outdueled the far more established netminder. Despite the Flyers skaters in front struggling to carry play as they had over the final month and a half of the regular season and throughout round-robin play, Hart made sure his club would not fall as Pittsburgh had, delivering consecutive shutouts in Games 3 and 4 to give Philadelphia a series lead they would never relinquish.

Price finished the series with a stellar .926 save percentage. Hart? He posted a .936 over the six games, and a .926 across the playoffs as a whole.

Hart, it seemed, had arrived, not just as a premier young goalie but as one of the best netminders on the planet. However, as Hart appeared to be the clear-cut starting goalie of a team with Stanley Cup contention in its sights, suddenly both situations became tenuous.

“I think any athlete goes through different challenges over the course of their career,” Flyers goalie coach Kim Dillabaugh said. “They happen at different times and different situations.”

Hart didn’t merely have a bad season in 2020-21. It was one of the worst statistical goaltending seasons of the past 10 years.

No nominal starter since 2013-14 has posted a lower save percentage than Hart’s .877 that season. And over that time, only Jimmy Howard in 2019-20 — who was ultimately usurped on Detroit’s depth chart that year by Jonathan Bernier — allowed more goals over expectation per game (via GSAx) than Hart did in 2020-21. Essentially, every 60 minutes of play, Hart was permitting one more goal against than he should have let in.

Hart actually didn’t start the season terribly, even if a third-period emotional meltdown from the normally calm Hart on Jan. 23 versus Boston raised eyebrows. In fact, general manager Chuck Fletcher even publicly praised his goalies (Hart and then-backup Brian Elliott) in early February for regularly bailing out the skaters’ shoddy defensive work. It wasn’t until a 7-3 loss on Feb. 21 to those same Bruins at Lake Tahoe — a nationally televised outdoor game in which the Flyers were severely undermanned due to a COVID-19 outbreak — that the wheels really began to fall off for Hart.

Given postponements due to the team’s outbreak and the already-compressed 2020-21 schedule, the Flyers played an incredible 17 March games in 31 days. Still gunning for an expected playoff spot and with a soon-to-be 36-year-old Elliott as backup, the Flyers had little choice but to keep throwing Hart out start after start in the hope that he would be able to stabilize his game on the fly.

He couldn’t.

The final March results for Hart: 10 appearances, nine starts, three early exits and a horrid .815 save percentage. There was no coming back from that, for Hart or the Flyers, who easily missed the playoffs in a season that began with dark horse Cup expectations.

Rumors flew regarding the reason for Hart’s dramatic regression: conflict with the coaching staff, technical changes to his style, an emotional meltdown. But when the season ended, Hart revealed what had really happened: like so many during 2020 and 2021, he had struggled mightily with the challenges of the pandemic.

“I think just this year was challenging for everybody,” he said in his 2021 exit interview. “Tough circumstances with COVID and everything. Some guys, it didn’t affect them, and others more than others. It was a little bit difficult this year when you live alone, and you just go back and forth from the rink to your apartment every day.

“You go home, and you’re just in your own thoughts the whole time because you’re just sitting in your apartment — alone,” he said.

By April, Hart’s teammates had recognized the situation, and were doing their best to help the youngster while still adhering to league restrictions, scheduling group dinners and checking up on him regularly. And while Hart’s season ended prematurely due to a knee injury before he could work toward improving his numbers, the unwelcome experience did reveal key life lessons to him in retrospect.

“I mean, there’s 20 other guys in that locker room that were going through similar things.” he said. “Really lean on your support system, whether it’s my family, my parents, my friends, my best friends, my teammates. During tough times, you can’t isolate yourself. You have to … that’s the time when you have to look for help, and it’s OK to ask for help sometimes. Because, like I said, we’re a team. I’m just lucky to have a good support system of people, with my family, friends, my coaches, and my teammates.”

“There’s so much for these players to deal with on a day-to-day basis,” Dillabaugh said. “And obviously, that was something none of us have ever been a part of, at any time in my lifetime, and obviously, in his lifetime.”

Hart entered the 2021-22 season ready to rebound. And while it’s been retconned by many who simply glance at full-season metrics as Hart’s second straight down year, last season’s reality was far more complex.

In fact, Hart actually was quite impressive during the majority of 2021-22. At the end of December, on a team that had performed so poorly (again) that head coach Alain Vigneault lost his job, Hart held a strong .918 save percentage and had stopped +8.64 goals above expected, ranking as one of the league’s better netminders through the first half. On a disappointing club, Hart was one of the few bright spots.

And that lasted through early March, with a 47-save gem of a victory over the high-powered Vegas Golden Knights serving as what appeared at the time to be the final proof that he had put 2020-21 completely behind him, and could thrive even on a mess of a team.

After that big win, however? The wheels came off again, as Hart posted a .875 save percentage and allowed 12.63 goals more than expected over his final nine starts. The result? Underwhelming full-season stats yet again (.905 SV%, -7.00 GSAx), and the narrative that Hart’s days as a top-tier young netminder were over.

Hart’s 2021-22 did ultimately come to another premature end due to injury. But that wasn’t the reason his game cratered at the end of the season, according to Hart himself. It was because, after five long months of blowout losses and coaching changes and loss after loss after loss, Hart finally let it get to him.

“I think just … we weren’t playing good hockey as a group, myself included. I think I was just getting down a little bit too much,” he said.

It may not have been exactly like the lockdown nature of the 2020-21 season, but the emotions were comparable. Yet again, Hart found himself trapped in his own head, in a spiral of negativity.

“We were losing a lot of games, and obviously that’s not very fun. But you can’t let that affect your day-to-day life,” he said. “And I think that’s one thing that I was kinda dwelling on too much, and dwelling on my emotions, and letting them affect me too much.”

Dillabaugh acknowledged the impact that consistent losing can have on a goalie, particularly a hyper-competitive one like Hart who still had yet to turn 24.

“I think we’re all human,” he said. “So we play the sport to win. We’re all competitive. So when you’re not achieving your goal every night of going out and winning hockey games, it does wear on you for sure.”

So when Hart went on his trip to California last summer, it wasn’t just a normal vacation. It was an attempt at a full reset, to clear his head from two straight very tough mental seasons.

“I just had to take a step back and realize, like, be more grateful,” he said. “Be more grateful for the fact that I’m in the NHL, I’m living my dream. I get to play hockey for a living. That’s pretty cool. Sometimes you can lose sight of that when things are tough, and you’re not winning games.”

When training camp began in September, Hart faced questions about the sexual assault allegations facing members of the 2018 Canadian World Junior hockey team. Hart was a member of that team and had yet to comment on the case, which involved a woman accusing eight players of sexual assault at an event celebrating the team’s gold medal.

Hart declined to answer, citing a league directive to wait until the conclusion of the league and police investigations that were launched after the incident became public knowledge in May 2022.

“Yeah, I mean, I can’t really talk about it right now. I wish I could,” Hart said. “I’m respecting the process with the NHL, fully cooperating with their investigation. But that’s all I can really say.”

Those investigations are still ongoing.

On the ice at camp, Hart was preparing to adapt to a new head coach, a new defensive system and a far younger team focused more on building for the future than the win-now club they appeared to be in 2020-21, when his downturn began. He was readying himself for another season with his club potentially near the bottom of the NHL standings.

This time, however, he had a different approach, centered around gratitude.

“Obviously losing’s not very fun. But I had to shift my focus and my attention to just being more grateful, grateful for the fact that I’m living my dream, I’m in the NHL,” he said. “We have a great group of guys in this locker room. I think that’s something that, for me, when I do get down, or whatever’s going on, I look back at that, and look at how hard I’ve worked to get to the point that I’m at, and all the people along the way that supported me. I’m grateful for that, and for them.

“I just had to realize, there’s a lot more to life than us as hockey players. That’s our whole world. But for me, I think I was just getting down too much, and letting it affect me off the ice a little bit.”

So far, that hasn’t been a problem in 2022-23.

Hart’s current .913 save percentage (entering Sunday night’s game) may not look like anything special at first glance. But just as in 2019-20, his play becomes more impressive the deeper one dives.

For starters, Hart’s current rate is well above the league average save percentage of .904, which would be the lowest full-season mark in the NHL since 2005-06, the power play-juiced first year after the lockout. But it’s really advanced metrics that tell the tale — specifically, that Goals Saved Above Expected stat. Per Evolving-Hockey, Hart has stopped a whopping 15.29 extra shots that should have been goals, good for third-best in the NHL. Another public site’s GSAx metric (MoneyPuck) is slightly less complimentary to Hart’s play and pegs it at 13.5 goals saved above expectation, still good for third among goalies.

In other words, on a team that has allowed a deluge of shots and chances against, Hart has been absolutely standing on his head.

And his teammates know it.

“I think he’s one of the most elite goaltenders in the league,” Flyers forward Scott Laughton said. “We definitely gotta play better in front of him and play in the offensive zone more. But he’s special, and we’ve got to do a better job in front of him, first and foremost.”

Veteran defenseman Justin Braun, who has watched him up close since 2019-20, echoed Laughton’s praise.

“Now you just kind of see him get more comfortable, more confident,” he said. “You see some of those quick-moving saves, he looks confident he’s gonna make them. Maybe the first couple years, he’s there, but (wouldn’t) make them. Now he’s really pushing hard to make those side-to-side movements. He knows he’s gonna get there.”

But Hart’s stellar play in 2022-23 goes far beyond technical and physical improvements. It was the mental side of his game that failed him in 2020-21 and at the end of 2021-22. This year, however, he’s never been stronger in that regard.

“Right now, I think he’s been obviously the backbone of our team,” head coach John Tortorella raved in early November.

But for Tortorella, it’s not just the on-ice play of Hart that has impressed him. Technical details of the netminding position elude him. It’s been his overall approach that has caught Torts’ eye the most.

Tortorella watched Hart from afar for years, and heard the stories of Hart’s off-ice issues. He sees a different goalie now — one who has grown and learned from the events of the past two seasons, and from handling the daily scrutiny of being a starting goalie in Philadelphia.

“The thing I like about Carter – it’s a tough place. It’s a tough city. It’s a tough city, but I think it ends up putting skin on you, and you become a pro quicker,” he said. “I think he’s handled himself really well here, and I know there’s been some ups and downs early in his career, where he was kinda force-fed in here. This year here, I think he’s calmed himself down, he’s just concentrated on trying to be the best he can be. I think he’s done a really good job of being a good teammate in a tough situation, with a team that’s trying to play better in front of him that still hasn’t.”

A perfect example of Hart’s improvements in this area — and the high regard in which his teammates hold him as a result — came in the wake of a tough 3-1 loss to New Jersey on Dec. 3. The Flyers had largely outplayed the Devils, but lost after Hart allowed two third-period goals — one a short side rebound to Jack Hughes, and one an ugly puckhandling miscommunication with Nick Seeler.

Hart didn’t hesitate to fall on the metaphorical sword after the game.

“Yeah, we played a great game, the whole 60. I think it just comes down to goaltending at the end of the day,” he said.

Hart’s accountability was notable, especially with his teammates lining up to absolve him from guilt.

“He’s been our best player all year. He’s our best player,” forward Travis Konecny said after the loss. “We know he didn’t want to (turn that puck over), and again, he’s been our best player. When something happens, we’ve got to pick him up. He does it every night for us.”

Hart, however, was not about to take the easy way out.

“I’ve got to be better. I got to make a few more saves, make some better plays, learn from it and move on. I will be better,” he said.

Two nights later, he was, stopping 29 shots to lead his club to a victory over the defending champion Colorado Avalanche.

“You have to have a short memory,” Hart said. “A puck goes in, that’s the game of hockey. Goals are gonna go in. But the next shot is where your focus has to be. You don’t want to be dwelling on the past, or worried about the future. You want to be as present as you can, and just be the game.”

So, how has Hart bounced back in 2022-23?

In truth, rumors of his on-ice demise were always greatly exaggerated.

Yes, his metrics the last two seasons were poor. But 2020-21 could largely be chalked up to a unique set of circumstances, a perfect storm of a brutally busy schedule in the midst of virtual isolation during a once-in-a-generation pandemic. On the other hand, 2021-22 saw Hart bounce back for months, only to stumble late due to finally being worn down by one of the most soul-crushing seasons in recent Flyers history.

All the while, however, Hart was making real progress. And it’s showing now.

“Numbers are numbers, and people use that to gauge performance. That’s the way our sport works, that’s the way every sport works — your statistics paint the picture on how people view your performance,” Dillabaugh acknowledged. “But that’s really only a small piece of the pie. We look at the big picture in terms of how we need him to continue to evolve and grow to be an elite goaltender on a nightly basis. His game has taken huge strides forward.”

But by Hart’s own admission, it was the mental side of his game that he needed to address more than anything else. That was Tortorella’s primary focus when it came to Hart from the minute he took over. He hasn’t been disappointed.

“When I first came here, I had some people talk to me about where he’s at teammate-wise and how he handles himself in certain situations, the ebbs and flows of a long season at that position,” Tortorella said. “I haven’t seen a hiccup in that part of his game, in the mental and the presentation of who he is. I haven’t seen a hiccup at all.”

As for Hart himself, his focus is on sustaining his strong start, and avoiding even the thought of complacency or the kind of collapse of confidence and composure that doomed his last two seasons.

“You can always get to another level, you can always get better,” Hart said. “Every day, that has to be your approach. One percent better. I remember in junior, our (Everett Silvertips) coach, Kevin Constantine told us: ‘You either get better, or you get worse. You don’t stay the same.’ And that’s the approach that you have to have, every single day.”

So is Hart now a better goalie than he was in August 2020, when he famously outdueled his hero Price?

“No question about it. Yep. 100 percent,” Dillabaugh said.

If he can keep this up, Hart’s next summer trip with his buddy Volcan will be less about clearing his head, and more about celebrating his best NHL season yet.

All statistics courtesy of Evolving-Hockey and MoneyPuck.

(Photo: Len Redkoles / NHLI via Getty Images)

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