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Feel However You Want About Rick Tocchet, but Head Coach isn’t the Most Important Flyers Job
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There’s been no shortage of opinions on the Flyers’ hiring of alumnus Rick Tocchet, who moves from bucolic British Columbia to scenic South Philadelphia and Voorhees NJ for his next head coaching gig.
On one hand, we cry foul because the organ-eye-zation brought in another former Flyer, while on the other hand realizing that Tocchet won the Jack Adams two years ago and also claimed a pair of Stanley Cups as an assistant on Mike Sullivan’s Pittsburgh staff. Tocchet also won a playoff series with the Coyotes, which is a feat in and of itself. Sure, it was the “qualifying round” during the COVID-shortened season, but Tocc’s Yotes beat a decent Preds team before getting waxed by the Avalanche in the second round. Note that Arizona/Phoenix/Utah has only made the postseason one time since Barack Obama’s first year of his second term.
Keep in mind, the Flyers have tried thinking outside of the box in addition to recycling alumni. Dave Hakstol didn’t exactly pan out. Alain Vigneault and John Tortorella didn’t have any prior connections to the organ-eye-zation. Dan Hilferty is working his first job in hockey. The overarching, decade-long results have been underwhelming, but not always patterned based on whether or not the current coach or GM was a “good old boy.”
But my hot take is this –
It doesn’t matter who coaches the team, because this team isn’t going to win anything, at least not now. What we initially thought was a two-year rebuild is going to be a three-year rebuild at the very least, spurred first and foremost by the Hockey Canada scandal and departure of the first franchise-looking goaltender since Ron Hextall stood between the pipes. Carter Hart’s exit was a huge blow to the foundation setting, and now you’re looking at a team that doesn’t have a cornerstone goalie, center, or defenseman, depending on how you feel about Travis Sanheim and his ceiling. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got Rick Tocchet or Scotty Bowman behind the bench, because they’re not bringing home a Cup any time soon.
If it’s generally accepted that a rebuilding team needs a rebuilding coach, then maybe Tocchet wasn’t the best hire. If he can help bring along Matvei Michkov and these young guys while establishing a culture and identity, then great! Mission accomplished for now. But the most important guy in the org continues to be GM Danny Briere, who has overseen a fluid teardown and compiling of assets while getting a lot of bad contracts off the books. Danny moved Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost in a salary dump that will see Andrei Kuzmenko’s $2.75 million expire. The Tony DeAngelo and Cal Petersen money amounted to almost $5 million this year, now that’s cleaned up. There is one more year of Kevin Hayes, Scott Laughton, and Cam Atkinson retainer and buyout money hitting around $6.7 million and then you’ve got the injury situations with Rasmus Ristolainen and Ryan Ellis to navigate from there. But otherwise it’s clean, the cleanest the Flyers’ cap outlook has been in quite a long time, and according to PuckPedia there’s a projected $24.7 million in cap space going into this coming season. At some point in the very near future they will be able to re-enter the free agency pool in efforts to make a splash, and maybe having Tocchet as coach is something that helps attract high-end talent to Philadelphia.
A reminder as well, that while the NHL Draft Lottery could have turned out better, the Flyers own picks 6, 24, and 25 in the first round and 36, 40, 45, and 48 in the second round. They have seven first rounders over the next three years and six second rounders. They’ve got enough ammunition that Rambo and his over-the-shoulder bullet chain would blush.
So I don’t know if Rick Tocchet is the right guy for the job, but what I do know is that Torts was not. I also know that head coach isn’t the most important job in the organization at the current moment. That falls on Danny Briere, who has to continue this rebuild, make the right draft picks, rejoin the free agency fray, and essentially now do the hard part. He’s succeeded so far in gutting the house, but now it’s time to pick out the new flooring and some decent finishes. He needs to build a roof deck that doesn’t leak, unlike the cheap crap the Philly homebuilders are using now.
Even more important is the concept of patience and patronization. Flyers fans have been waiting 50 years for a Stanley Cup and it can sometimes be seen as condescending to once again tell committed supporters that this team is 2-3 years away. But, in truth, we’ve never seen a committed rebuild like this one after years of refusal to do so, and that’s good enough for casuals like me.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com