Rick Tocchet has officially parted ways with the Vancouver Canucks as coaching vacancies across the league continue to skyrocket at the end of the 2024-25 season. Back in Philadelphia, the Flyers are looking for their next bench boss, and Tocchet, the former Flyer, has been linked to the job.
Tocchet holds a head coaching record of 286-265-87 over 638 games between the Lightning, Coyotes and Canucks. He has only made the postseason twice in nine seasons, one of which was the pandemic year with the Coyotes where they were dispatched by the Avalanche in five games in the first round (which they wouldn’t likely have made if not for the pandemic bubble expanding the playoffs to 12 teams instead of the typical eight) and the other came in 2023-24 with the Canucks where they were eliminated in the second round by the Oilers.
He won the Jack Adams award in 2023-24 after carrying the Canucks to a 50-win season, quite frankly his only notable achievement as head coach. He did win two Stanley Cups as an assistant with the Penguins in 2016 and 2017.
He’s respected by the “old boys’ club” which is kind of a red flag in of itself, but having the personality to communicate between front office and players isn’t nothing. But that theory gets put to the test when you consider the very public feud between his players over the last year. J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson had a spat that ultimately resulted in one of them getting traded and the other had an abysmal year and may not be far behind Miller out the door.
Considering the communication disaster that unfolded between Tortorella and guys like Sean Couturier, Morgan Frost and Cam York over the last few years, maybe faux communication skills isn’t an appealing quality to bring right now.
But his on-ice style is similar to that of Tortorella’s as well- boring, slow, dump and chase, lowly ranked offense, and getting bogged down defensively. Not exactly a seismic shift of a game plan for a team that desperately needs one.
Obviously, the connection between Tocchet and the Flyers is the fact that he spent 11 seasons with the organization through the mid 80s to early 90s and again in the early 00s. He was interviewed as a candidate on the last go-around before they hired Tortorella, but that was a different front office regime.
Based on the recent hiring patterns of the current Hilftery/Jones/Briere era, it does seem to bode well for the likelihood of your employment if you pulled an orange and white jersey on at some point in your career. It’s hard to imagine they’ll start considering real credentials this time if they could avoid it. It’s dumb and stupid pandering nonsense at a time when they should be making real franchise-altering decisions, but hey, all this shell of a organization has left is focusing on days gone by.
The reality is Danny Briere’s job is going to depend on this hire. Theoretically it should be taken pretty seriously.
Firing John Tortorella was Briere’s get out of jail free card. He can pin all the mistakes of the last two years on him and send the boogeyman to pasture. But that was their ace in the hole. Torts wasn’t hired by Briere. Now, everything that comes next falls square on the shoulders of this current regime, thus the thinking that this hire needs to be a big one.
The Flyers have largely struggled to pick a direction over the last few years (and much of the last decade, but who’s counting?) and Briere’s end-of-season presser didn’t exactly give a ton of hope that they’re ready to commit to one thing or another, but the head coaching hire is a great place to start, and who they ultimately pick will set the stage for offseason battle plans.
If they want to compete, they should be looking at someone like Mike Sullivan, who has won two Stanley Cups in the last decade. If they want to rebuild properly they should be considering someone like David Carle, who has a pretty strong track record leading younger players to success.
Quite frankly successful lower level coaches with small stints of pro experience are most intriguing. Guys like Pat Ferschweiler or Todd Nelson may be the most worthwhile candidates.
Digging through the bin of re-treads and walking away with a random, middle-of-the-road dude just isn’t what the Flyers need right now. They need to pick a guy that has a résumé of leading teams to their desired goals.
And Tocchet isn’t the only coach that falls into this “just a guy” category by the way. He just so happens to highlight the class because of his past ties with the team. Jay Woodcroft, Bruce Boudreau, Claude Julien, Dan Bylsma, Greg Cronin, the list goes on and on. Any random dude that hasn’t done anything notable in over a decade, or in some cases at all, should not even be in consideration.
If the Flyers hire a mid-tier coach and have another disastrous offseason in 2025 leading to another bottom-ten finish in 2025-26 what does the front office think is going to happen? It’s not going to be well received by an already weary fanbase.
Hiring a sub-par coach that keep the team stuck in the mud and gets canned in a couple years based on nothing more than the fact he played for the organization in the 80s will be a terrible look for Briere, and could ultimately be his downfall as GM. He’s got to put his big boy pants on and swing for the fences, breaking out of his comfort zone for the first time.
While the Flyers may not have a perfect recent track record for doing things most people would deem as “smart,” if there was ever a time to do the right thing, it’s now, and Rick Tocchet just doesn’t fit the description at the moment.
By: Dan Esche (@DanTheFlyeraFan)
photo credit: nhl.com
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