Rick Tocchet’s been an NHL head coach for parts of nine seasons with three different franchises–now four, as he’s officially been named the next head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. His overall record isn’t that exciting (286-265-87), and he’s only taken a team to the playoffs twice, which isn’t all that promising or thrilling.
Most of the teams Tocchet’s coached have stunk, though. The Tampa Bay Lightning were in the depths of a rebuild from 2008 to 2010, and the Arizona Coyotes were a tire fire of a team–there’s a reason the franchise is in Utah now. The Vancouver Canucks are the only team that could be considered “good,” and for one year they were really good and won the Pacific Division. That Canucks roster was flawed, though, and those issues came into full focus during the 2024-25 season. The very public rift between J.T. Miller and Elias Pettersson that forced a trade, Thatcher Demko’s absence, and Quinn Hughes missing significant time due to injury all contributed to a somewhat shocking playoff miss.
All this to ask: Could this Flyers squad be the best roster Tocchet’s ever had as an NHL head coach? Let’s take a look at the teams Tocchet previously coached.
Tampa Bay Lightning, 2008-2010
Boy, were these bad teams. The only bright spots were young studs Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman–Stamkos potted 51 goals in 2009-10 as a sophomore, which was cool! A 53-69-26 record for Tocchet was less cool. The rebuild ultimately paid off for the Lightning a decade later, but these were the lean years, and Tocchet had to wear the losses. Neither team drove play (both had sub-50 shot attempt and expected goals share), and their goaltending over .900 both seasons wasn’t terrible.
Their biggest problem was a top-heavy roster: the only players to register over 50 points in either season were Stamkos, Vincent Lecavalier, and Martin St. Louis. In 2008-09, the only player to crack 30 goals was St. Louis; in 2009-10, it was Stamkos. This was a team that struggled to score despite some Hall of Fame talents, and they wound up bottom dwellers as a result. Stars are going to shine, but glass canons rarely win anything meaningful. It’s also worth mentioning that this was Tocchet’s first head coaching gig in the NHL; not everybody nails it out the gate, so we can grant some grace here.
Arizona Coyotes, 2017-2021
Tocchet had to deal with a rebuilding franchise in Tampa, but Arizona was a different beast entirely. Cheap ownership, no vision, and an unappealing organization made it difficult to field a good team in the desert, and Tocchet’s 125-131-34 record reflected that–and two of those seasons were shortened due to Covid. Across all four seasons, Clayton Keller scored the most total points: 65 in 2017-18 as a 19-year-old rookie. His 0.8 points per game that season was the highest as well, and second place belonged to Phil Kessel in the Covid-shortened 2020-21 season with 0.77 PPG (43 points in 56 games). At least with the Lightning, Tocchet got to watch a 19-year-old Stamkos win the Rocket Richard; the most goals scored by a Coyote was, once again, Keller with 23 in that 2017-18 season.
The only redeeming moment of Tocchet’s tenure with Arizona came during the 2019-20 Covid playoff bubble: the Coyotes somehow won a play-in round, then promptly lost in the first round to the Colorado Avalanche. How he managed that with a roster whose leading scorer was Nick Schmaltz with 45 points is part of what makes hockey so great: anything can happen in a small sample size. It helped that, between Darcy Kuemper, Antti Raanta, and Adin Hill in net, the team had a .922 save percentage overall.
Tocchet was dealt a bad hand with the Coyotes and made the most out of it. Carl Soderberg played a significant role — that’s all you need to know.
Vancouver Canucks, 2022-2025
Now we get to the first team that could be legitimately considered good: the Vancouver Canucks. Tocchet joined the team mid-season after the firing of Bruce Boudreau; Elias Pettersson was in the midst of a 100-point season, Quinn Hughes was breaking out, and “rookie” Andrei Kuzmenko finished with 39 goals. They couldn’t dig themselves out of their early season hole and missed the playoffs in 2022-23, but we all know what happened next.
Call it luck, call it a hot goalie, call it a PDO bender, call it whatever you want: the 2023-24 Vancouver Canucks were an absolute force. Even after you look past the league-high PDO, that team’s underlying 5-on-5 metrics were still top 10 in the league in nearly every category–they were a good team getting great luck, and it earned Tocchet his first Jack Adams award. It helped that Hughes established himself as one of the best hockey players on the planet, winning the Norris at season’s end, but there were some troubling trends elsewhere: Pettersson fell off hard late in the season, Kuzmenko essentially no-showed, and Thatcher Demko’s injury history reared its ugly head in the playoffs.
The highs of 2023-24 led to some devastating lows in 2024-25. The locker room drama between J.T. Miller and Pettersson finally came into public view (leading to an eventual Miller trade), Demko missed most of the season due to injury, and the team’s second highest scorers behind Hughes were Brock Boeser and Conor Garland with 50 a piece. Hughes, too, missed 14 games due to injury, and the Canucks looked mediocre anytime he wasn’t on the ice. In the end, Vancouver missed the playoffs, and the team’s got an uneasy offseason ahead of it with little clarity of vision for the future.
Philadelphia Flyers, 2025-????
So, how does the Flyers’ roster stack up to the previous stops on Tocchet’s coaching tour? It’s pretty clearly better than the Arizona Coyotes roster in any given year of Tocchet’s tenure there; hell, you could probably take the five best players on any of those four teams and the Flyers would still be better. Easy answer: the Flyers roster is better.
It’s more difficult to consider Tampa’s roster: they were a team in transition, and Tocchet oversaw the rookie seasons of Stamkos and Hedman–both future captains of the Lightning, and both heading to the Hall of Fame when their careers are over. He also had an ageless Marty St. Louis and still-in-his-prime Vinny Lecavalier in the lineup, and those teams still kind of stunk. This one’s a bit of a toss-up: Tocchet clearly had more stars in the making on that roster, but it lacked the sort of depth the Flyers have in the fold. I’m going to give it to the Flyers, because a budding Matvei Michkov could rival Stamkos in terms of star power, Travis Konecny provides St. Louis-esque scoring potential, and there are promising players at other positions throughout the lineup and in the pipeline.
The Canucks have the strongest case for being the best roster Tocchet has coached. Pettersson at his best is a 100-point top-line center, and Quinn Hughes and Thatcher Demko are perennial season-end awards contenders when healthy; the Flyers don’t have anyone even remotely in that realm. However, again, the Flyers have promising young players throughout the lineup, while the Canucks roster was mostly established veterans: the average age for the Vancouver lineup was 28, while the Flyers’ was 25. If you put more weight in established players, then the Canucks have the better roster; if you consider the potential of youth, the Flyers may have a slight edge long term.
And even not considering their age, during the Canucks’ unreal 2023-24 campaign, beyond the trio of Pettersson, Miller, and Boeser, their most important forwards were Pius Suter and Teddy Blueger. In that same range of usage, last season’s Flyers team had Michkov, Cates, and Tippett below the relied-upon trio of Konecny, Couturier, and Foerster.
So, the Flyers might not have the high-end talent to compare to those Canucks rosters, but they are considerably better when talking about depth. With that, we’ll leave that last one for you to decide.
Stats courtesy Natural Stat Trick
