Rick Tocchet is making his way around the NHL, interviewing for several of the open head coach roles that are available. It certainly seems like the former Vancouver Canucks bench boss can have his pick from a handful of teams that have him as their most desired candidate and will find a home eventually.
But, for now, all we have to do is wait and see where exactly he lands — and that is assuming he won’t just remain on television for a year or two until the most perfect coaching opportunity opens up for him.
When it comes to the Philadelphia Flyers, according to a recent report they think extremely highly of him but now the possibility of Tocchet being the next head coach of this team is becoming more and more uncertain.
On Monday morning’s episode of 32 Thoughts, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman gave an inside look at how Tocchet’s free agency is going. The main sentiment appears to be that he is going to be very picky about what team he is coaching for next, and that he is treating it more like a two-way interview than just applying and hoping he gets the job.
“The line I heard on Tocchet that made me laugh is, he’s not interviewing with teams, he’s interviewing teams,” Friedman said. “It’s basically, he’s interviewing them more than they’re interviewing him. So, I’m curious to see what’s going to end up here. I think Seattle had a lot of interest in him. I’m not convinced that’s going to happen.
“I don’t know about Philly. I think he’s very high on their list, but I’m just, I’m not sure what’s going to happen there.”
We have heard it before that the Flyers do think so highly of Tocchet that if he were to agree, he could be behind the bench telling Matvei Michkov what to do in a few months. But it is also the same situation with several other teams. As Friedman mentioned, the Kraken are one team that would happily bring Tocchet to the other team in the Pacific Northwest. And, it has also been mentioned that both the Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins are more than interested in bringing in the 61-year-old to be their next head coach.
Now, we might be trying to pull things from just a throwaway remark from Friedman while reporting the latest on what is going on with this one particular coach, but it certainly seems like the Flyers hiring Tocchet is getting less and less likely. And it probably isn’t coming from anything the Flyers are doing with their coaching search. With so many teams interested, does Tocchet really want to go through a couple more years of a rebuild, and try to squeeze all the juice out of a team that has no top-six centers and no stable goalie?
And with this team still building, Tocchet might really want to have a voice and input in future roster moves. General manager Danny Briere and president of hockey operations Keith Jones already had some of that with John Tortorella — do they want to go through that again? If they express disinterest in having Tocchet with that level of power, he might just decide to go elsewhere.
Again, reading in between the lines but once something becomes just a little uncertain, the likelihood of that going back to more of a sure thing, is unlikely.
The Flyers do still have multiple other reported candidates. They have already interviewed Western Michigan head coach Pat Ferschweiler for the position and have current interim head coach Brad Shaw near the top of their list. Tocchet might have been above them, but the fit might just not be right for either side.
UPDATE:
Just hours after the podcast was published, on Vancouver radio show “Donnie and Dhali” Monday afternoon, Friedman expanded on his reports about Tocchet’s future.
“And the Philly one is interesting. I’ve always believed he was very high on their radar, but over the last few days there have been some conflicting information on that and maybe that is not necessarily true,” he said. “The people that believe Tocchet returns to television next year, on TNT, they seem pretty confident right now.”
That feels pretty significant. Considering all the noise around Rick Tocchet being the preferred candidate over every single other coach out there, for the Flyers, to then basically say that it was possibly just everyone making the former player connection to Philadelphia, is massive.
All signs are certainly pointing to Tocchet not being behind the Flyers’ bench.