Rick Tocchet has been here before.
The Philadelphia Flyers head coach is no stranger to struggling early on in his tenure behind a team’s bench. Prior to his job as bench boss for his former team, Tocchet went through a rollercoaster two-and-a-half seasons with the Vancouver Canucks.
Tocchet took over for Bruce Boudreau behind the bench in Vancouver midway through the 2022-23 season. He coached the Canucks to a 20-12-4 finish, giving Vancouver some hope heading into the following year. In his first full season behind the bench, the Canucks massively exceeded expectations, with Tocchet winning his first career Jack Adams Award as the NHL coach of the year.
While the Flyers didn’t finish with nearly the 109 points the Canucks did that season, Philadelphia also exceeded expectations in Tocchet’s first year behind the bench. A late-season flurry fueled an unlikely playoff run, seeing the Flyers win their first playoff series in Philadelphia since 2012. Even with Danny Briere letting it slip that a step back could be in the cards for this growing team, no one thought it’d be quite this bad.
The Canucks lost their first three games of the 2024-25 season and finished the month of October ...