‘I still root for those guys’: Rick Tocchet has no regrets ahead of his return to Vancouver
“I loved it,” Tocchet said of coaching the Canucks. He added that he learned a lot of things there, including how to try and build a winning culture, that he's taken with him to Philadelphia.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia ― The terms “abandoned” and “quit” have been thrown about in the Pacific Northwest when it comes to Rick Tocchet’s departure from the Vancouver Canucks.
After 2½ seasons, Tocchet’s contract expired, and he opted to move on, linking up with the Flyers two weeks later in May. Now, months later, the bench boss, who won the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year in 2024 while at the helm in Vancouver, returns for the first time.
How does he think fans will react?
“I don’t know, honestly, don’t know. It is what it is. I’ll have my business mode anyway,” Tocchet said, standing in an empty locker room near his team’s room — and down the hall from his old stomping ground — while donning a black long-sleeve shirt with Philadelphia Flyers emboldened on it.
» READ MORE: Flyers takeaways: The good, the bad, and the ugly from a 4-1 loss to the Kraken
“Trust me, I played 18 years in the league, I’ve been booed a lot of places. It’s all right.”
The Flyers coach has bigger things on his mind these days anyway. Despite coming off a 4-1 loss to the Seattle Kraken on Sunday, he has the team he once starred for playing well. Entering Monday night’s action, the Orange and Black have a 19-11-7 record and are sitting in third place in the Metropolitan Division, just four points behind the leaders, the Carolina Hurricanes.
On Tuesday (10 p.m., NBCSP), the Flyers will face a Canucks team they beat handily a week ago, 5-2. Vancouver will also be playing a back-to-back after facing the Kraken in Seattle on Monday night. Tocchet wants his team to keep a foot on the gas and make the hometown team play an uncomfortable game.
He does acknowledge it was a little weird seeing the Canucks — the players, like Brock Boeser, Thatcher Demko, and Conor Garland, and the coaches, especially head coach Adam Foote, whom Tocchet hired as his assistant coach with Vancouver despite not having NHL experience — last week from the home bench in Philly.
It’ll be even weirder at Rogers Arena.
“I loved it,” he said of his time in British Columbia. “Obviously, we had a really good year the year before. Then last year, even though there were a lot of issues and injuries, I thought we were only a couple of points out of a playoff spot.
“I thought the core guys there hung together, and I really appreciated that, and respect those guys. … Those guys, really, I still root for those guys.”
Vancouver wasn’t Tocchet’s first stop on the coaching carousel, but he certainly learned a lot that he carried back to Philly.
“A wealth of experience of different things, the highs and lows, situational stuff. You learn different things … and then trying to just build a winning culture,” explained Tocchet, who said he had a good relationship working with the general manager Patrik Allvin, president Jim Rutherford, and owner Francesco Aquilini, too.
» READ MORE: The Flyers are in Rick Tocchet’s ‘blood.’ Now he’s tasked with returning the once-proud organization to prominence.
After taking over midway through the 2022-23 season, Tocchet led the Canucks to Game 7 of the second round in 2024, falling to the Edmonton Oilers, who have made the Stanley Cup Final the last two years. That run represented the first time Vancouver made the postseason since the 2020 bubble.
He is now working on building a winning culture with a Flyers team that has not made the postseason since that same summer.
“We’re lucky to have him,” forward Sean Couturier said. “He’s got tons of experience as an ex-player and a coach, so he can relate in different situations.
“We have a young team, though, so I think he’s given us older guys a voice to kind of lead,” the captain added. “But I think we’re all in this together. We’re all buying into what the style of play he wants us to play. It’s been working so far. So it’s been fun.”
Breakaways
It looks like Sam Ersson will start in goal for the Flyers on Tuesday night, as he took the majority of the reps Monday in the starter’s net during practice. If that is the case, it all but assures that Dan Vladař will start on New Year’s Eve against his old club, the Calgary Flames.