The Philadelphia Flyers hired Rick Tocchet as the 25th coach of the franchise on Wednesday.
Tocchet returns to the Flyers organization behind the bench after playing 11 seasons for the team in his playing days.
Philadelphia’s coaching gig opened up when they fired John Tortorella on March 27. Associate coach Brad Shaw filled in on an interim basis until the end of the season, and the Flyers finished last in the Eastern Conference.
“I am very happy to welcome Rick Tocchet as our head coach,” Flyers GM Daniel Briere said in a news release.
“During this process, it became clear that Rick was the absolute right coach to lead our team. He has enjoyed the highest level of success both as a player and coach. Rick’s ability to teach and understand his players, combined with his passion for winning, brings out the best in young players at different stages of their development and has earned the respect and confidence of highly talented all-stars and veteran players alike,” Briere added.
This will be the fourth team Tocchet will lead behind the bench. He was the bench boss for the Tampa Bay Lightning, Arizona Coyotes and the Vancouver Canucks.
Tocchet is coming off a two-and-a-half-year stint with the Canucks as their coach. The team decided not to exercise its option to extend his contract, which allowed Tocchet to make his own decision about his future with the team. He ultimately decided to part ways.
Tocchet coached the Canucks for 200 regular-season games, earning a 108-65-27 record.
The 2023-24 campaign was his best of his coaching career. The Canucks finished the regular season on top of the Pacific Division, and Tocchet won the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year. He led the team to the second round of the playoffs, where the Edmonton Oilers eliminated them in seven games.
This past season was a massive drop-off, highlighted by a rift between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller. The Canucks ultimately traded Miller to the New York Rangers, and the Canucks lost a former 100-point scorer.
Vancouver missed the playoffs by six points. Nonetheless, Tocchet put the Canucks in a better position than when he arrived – he ended a three-year playoff drought, and he replaced Bruce Boudreau when the Canucks were fifth-last in the Western Conference.
With the Coyotes, Tocchet had a similar effect in terms of the team’s performance and achievements. They were a team in a similar position to the team he is now joining: a young, unproven squad that wants to take big steps forward in quick fashion.
Arizona finished last in the Western Conference during Tocchet’s first season in 2017-18. However, the Coyotes made a push the following season and finished one spot outside a playoff position.
One year later, during the shortened 2019-20 season due to COVID-19, Tocchet took the Coyotes to the playoffs. They defeated the Nashville Predators 3-1 in the best-of-five qualifying round. After that, they were eliminated by the Colorado Avalanche in five games.
In his final season with Arizona, the team finished one spot outside of a playoff position yet again.
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Tocchet’s first gig as an NHL head coach was with the Lightning, where he took charge for parts of two seasons. He was promoted in the middle of the season, replacing Barry Melrose. That Lightning team finished second-last in the NHL.
The next season was better for Tampa but not great, as they finished 12th out of 15 teams in the Eastern Conference.
Tocchet had multiple roles as an assistant and associate coach, including the Avalanche, Phoenix Coyotes, the Lightning and the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he won the Stanley Cup twice.
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