Flyers Hire Rick Tocchet as 25th HC in Franchise History to Replace John Tortorella

Rick Tocchet will be tasked with directing the Philadelphia Flyers' rebuild.

Philadelphia announced Wednesday it has hired Tocchet as the 25th head coach in franchise history to replace John Tortorella, who was fired on March 27 with only nine games left in the regular season.

The news comes after TSN's Pierre LeBrun and Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff reported Wednesday that the Flyers were "zeroing in" and "closing in" on hiring Tocchet as their next head coach.

Tocchet, a Flyers Hall of Famer and former teammate of Flyers general manager Daniel Briere and president of hockey operations Keith Jones, parted ways with the Vancouver Canucks after three seasons this spring.

Tortorella was dismissed following a 1-10-1 stretch toward the end of the campaign, at the end of which he said he was "not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we're at right now."

He was replaced by former associate coach Brad Shaw, who led the Flyers to a 5-3-1 record to close out the regular season.

Last season, the Flyers entered April as a potential postseason team before falling out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture with nine losses in their last 11 games.

This spring, the Flyers were already essentially out of playoff contention by the time April rolled around. Two straight years of season-ending slumps was enough to spark a head coaching change.

The Flyers first signaled a lost season by trading Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee in January. They completed the roster teardown by sending out Scott Laughton, Erik Johnson and Andrei Kuzmenko at the trade deadline.

Former general manager Chuck Fletcher once famously said the Flyers needed not a rebuild but an "aggressive retool."

After replacing Fletcher on an interim basis after the 2022-23 season, Briere not only used the word "rebuild" but said the process would "take a little while."

Now that the Flyers have graduated young talent like Matvei Michkov and Bobby Brink to the NHL roster, Briere could be hoping to see some results from that rebuild soon.

Briere said after the trade deadline that he hoped to "take a run" at the 2026 playoffs, according to The Athletic's Kevin Kurz.

Tocchet will be tasked with helping develop Michkov and Brink, as well as another incoming first-round pick, as the Flyers look to climb back into Metropolitan Division contention by next spring.

Tocchet left the Canucks after the team declined his one-year contract option as part of an attempt to sign him to a longer-term deal.

The former Canucks coach said in an April 29 statement he felt "like this is the right time for me to explore other opportunities in and around hockey."

Tocchet won the 2024 Jack Adams Award as the NHL's coach of the year after leading the Canucks to 50 victories, a 12-win year-to-year improvement, in his second season with the franchise.

He capped off that run with a trip to the second round of the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs, where the Canucks came within one win of the Western Conference Finals.

The Canucks took a step back during a tumultuous 2024-25 season, during which an injury to goalie Thatcher Demko, regression from Elias Pettersson and split with J.T. Miller contributed to Vancouver missing the playoffs.

The Flyers will look to Tocchet orchestrate a similar turnaround to his first two Canucks seasons in Philadelphia, where the team is looking to make the playoffs for the first time since 2020.

Tocchet previously coached the Tampa Bay Lightning for two seasons between 2008 and 2010, and later led the Arizona Coyotes for four campaigns between 2017 and 2021. The 61-year-old coach holds a 286-265-87 overall record as NHL head coach, and a 11-11 mark in the playoffs. As a skater, he spent the majority of his 18-year NHL playing career with the Flyers.