As the NHL coaching carousel keeps spinning, the Philadelphia Flyers have found a replacement for John Tortorella. The team has hired Rick Tocchet following his split with the Vancouver Canucks.
Tocchet now returns to Philadelphia, the team that drafted him in the sixth round of the 1983 NHL Draft. Tocchet spent the first eight years of his NHL career with the Flyers before getting traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins, where he won a Stanley Cup in 1992. Tocchet returned to Philadelphia for the final few years of his career, and he finished with 200 goals and 235 assists in a Flyers uniform.
Tocchet is just coming off his tenure in Vancouver, where he spent more than two seasons and led the team to an overall record of 108-65-27. In 2023-24, Tocchet guided the Canucks to a 50-win season and won the Jack Adams Award.
With high expectations coming into 2024-25, Tocchet and the Canucks floundered. The team went 38-30-14 and missed the postseason with key players regressing. At the end of the regular season, the Canucks chose not to exercise their team option on Tocchet's contract, and the two sides couldn't come to a new deal.
In other coaching news, the Anaheim Ducks hired Joel Quenneville, who returns to an NHL bench for the first time since 2021. Quenneville hasn't coached since resigning when he was seven games into his third season with the Florida Panthers. Following an independent investigations into the Chicago Blackhawks' handling of sexual assault allegations during the team's 2010 Stanley Cup run, Quenneville was ineligible to work in the NHL for three years.
In July of 2024, Quenneville was reinstated by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman after showing what was described as "sincere remorse."
Quenneville, who won three Cups with the Blackhawks from 2010-2015, will replace Greg Cronin in Anaheim. Ducks GM Pat Verbeek said the team conducted a "comprehensive review" of what happened in 2010 before hiring Quenneville.
Elsewhere, the Rangers hired former Pittsburgh Penguins coach Mike Sullivan as the 38th coach in franchise history on May 2. Sullivan parted ways with the Penguins after 10 seasons, in which he led them to seven postseason appearances in seven of those seasons, including winning back-to-back Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017.
As teams fill their vacancies, keep track of all the coaching movement right here at CBS Sports.
| Team | Former coach | New coach |
|---|---|---|
Anaheim Ducks | Greg Cronin | Joel Quenneville |
Joe Sacco (interim) | TBD | |
Chicago Blackhawks | Anders Sorensen (interim) | TBD |
New York Rangers | Peter Laviolette | Mike Sullivan |
Philadelphia Flyers | Brad Shaws (interim) | Rick Tocchet |
Pittsburgh Penguins | Mike Sullivan | TBD |
TBD | ||
Vancouver Canucks | Rick Tocchet | TBD |
