Flyers Hire Yogi Svejkovský, Jay Varady As Assistant Coaches

June 5: The Flyers made Svejkovský’s hiring official while also naming Jay Varady as an assistant coach, per a club announcement. Varady, 47, had spent the last three seasons with the Red Wings as an assistant coach and survived their in-season coaching change, but now finds himself on the move. He spent the four seasons prior in the Coyotes organization, including three years as the head coach for AHL Tucson and one year as an assistant on the NHL bench, during which he worked under Tocchet.

June 4: The Flyers are bringing over Canucks assistant coach Jaroslav “Yogi” Svejkovský to join ex-Vancouver bench boss Rick Tocchet in Philadelphia, Rick Dhaliwal of CHEK reports.

Svejkovský and Tocchet developed a “great relationship” during the duo’s three seasons together with the Canucks, Dhaliwal writes. While Vancouver didn’t grant permission for Svejkovský to interview elsewhere, it doesn’t appear they had much of a choice. Dhaliwal reports that Svejkovský had some form of an out clause in his contract to allow him to leave for Philly.

The former NHL right-winger had only spent one year behind the Canucks bench as an assistant with Tocchet. His prior two seasons with the NHL club saw him work as a skills coach, not working directly on Tocchet’s staff.

Svejkovský, 48, has been working in the Vancouver area since 2006, when he started as an assistant coach with the WHL’s Vancouver Giants. The Czech native transitioned into a skills coach role with the junior club in 2014 before leaving altogether four years later. He resurfaced as a skills coach with the Canucks’ AHL affiliate in Abbotsford in 2021-22 before getting the call to join the NHL staff the following season.

His responsibilities in Vancouver included supervising the power play, a significant issue for the Flyers for the last four years. Their 15.0% success rate this season was third-worst in the league, ahead of only the Islanders (12.6%) and Ducks (11.8%). The Canucks’ 22.5% conversion rate with the man advantage was still close to average at 15th in the league but a marked improvement over what Philadelphia’s been able to produce in the past few years.

Svejkovský will be the first assistant named to Tocchet’s staff. None of Philadelphia’s three assistants under John Tortorella last year are returning to the club.