The Flyers are close to announcing Rick Tocchet as their next head coach, Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet confirms Wednesday. ESPN’s John Buccigross implied yesterday that things were moving in that direction.
It’s far from an unexpected move from general manager Daniel Brière and the rest of the front office, who were linked to Tocchet almost immediately after firing John Tortorella late in the regular season. Friedman said Monday that things were moving slower than expected for Tocchet landing a new role after not having his option picked up by the Canucks but that he remained high on the list of Philadelphia’s preferred candidates.
Tocchet returns to some familiar stomping grounds in the City of Brotherly Love. He played parts of 11 of his 18 NHL seasons as a player there, ranking 16th in franchise history in scoring with 508 points in 621 games as a Flyer. His now decades-long coaching career hasn’t yet taken him back to Philly, though.
He walks into a familiar situation with the Flyers, who are not quite out of the woods of their rebuild but have aspirations of being so in short order. As was the case in his most recent stops in Arizona and Vancouver, Tocchet assumes control of a forward group with a young, foundational piece in Matvei Michkov, supplemented by some veteran anchors in Sean Couturier and Travis Konecny.
Tocchet brings nine seasons of experience as an NHL head coach to the Flyers’ bench. He’s posted a career 286-265-87 (.516) record in 638 regular-season games, including a Pacific Division title and Coach of the Year honors with the Canucks just one year ago. He began his career with a year-and-a-half stint with the Lightning in the late aughts before resurfacing as Arizona’s head coach in 2017.
While it’s the first big offseason move for the Flyers, it can’t be their only one if they’re serious about improving their record in 2025-26. Their coaching hire’s impact will be virtually invisible if they can’t find a fix to their goaltending situation, which tanked Philly’s otherwise decent control of scoring chances at 5-on-5 last season. The trio of Samuel Ersson, Ivan Fedotov, and Aleksei Kolosov – all of whom remain under contract for next year – combined to allow a staggering 42.5 goals above expected, per MoneyPuck.
Tocchet’s support staff also remains up in the air. The Flyers also let go of two assistants and their skills coach after the season ended. Brad Shaw, who took over as interim head coach for the final few weeks of the season, is expected to stay on as an assistant, Kevin Kurz of The Athletic said last month.
Image courtesy of Nick Turchiaro-Imagn Images.
Well that changed fast. An article this morning said he may go back to tv because of lack of interest haha
Curious what the Flyers believe Tocchet will do to turn things around in Philly?
He’ll be limited in what he can do without an influx of talent across the board. Let’s see how the draft goes and who else DB can bring in from outside the org to help. Just turning around the goaltending situation should provide a boost, BUT the defense in front of the goalie needs significant improvement as well. At a minimum, he should be able to light a fire under Tippett after the poor performance he had in ‘24-25.
Test
bleh
My guess is he would’ve taken the Penguins job if offered (family reasons), but this is a good fit as well.
Outside of this being the most Philly thing they could do, why Tocchet? They need a coach that can develop young players if they actually want to be contending for anything one day. I don’t look at any of his previous stints and think of many development success stories.
career coaching stats are worse then mike yeo