Rick Tocchet is heading back to Vancouver with the kind of pressure that can swallow a coach whole.
Less than 19 months after leaving the Canucks, Tocchet returns to the city where he once steadied a shaky situation and then won his first career Jack Adams Award. This time, though, the backdrop looks a lot different. The Flyers are sliding, the losses are piling up, and Sunday night’s collapse against Calgary only turned up the heat.
That game had all the familiar ingredients of a Philadelphia letdown. The Flyers led three separate times, only to watch the Flames answer quickly after the first two leads and then claw back again in the third. Owen Tippett’s power-play goal briefly put Philadelphia ahead 3-2, but former Flyer Joel Farabee scored shorthanded to tie it before the game reached the halfway point of the final period.
The Flyers also had a chance to seize control on a third-period power play, and instead it became part of another unraveling. Calgary finished the night with the edge when it mattered most, outshooting Philadelphia 9-5 in the third period. The numbers behind the scenes were even less flattering for the Flyers: in 15:53 of 5-on-5 play in the third, the Flames had 21 shot attempts to Philadelphia’s 13 and held a 0.97-0.41 advantage in expected goals, according to Natural Stat Trick.
Dan Vladar had to come up with several strong saves just to keep the game tied late, which is why the Flyers came away with only a loser point from a game they had chances to win.
And that’s the problem. This wasn’t a one-off.
Philadelphia was in the same spot at Madison Square Garden three nights earlier, carrying a one-goal lead into the third before folding late. The Rangers scored twice in under two minutes, and the Flyers were left with another loss that looked painfully similar to the others.
Tocchet’s frustration after Calgary matched the mood around the team, but the message has become almost routine. The Flyers keep talking about playing the right way, doing the little things, and putting together a full 60 minutes. The issue is that those words have been repeated all season, and the results haven’t followed.
Now the Flyers are winless two games into a road trip that could have helped them reset. The Rangers game was there for the taking.
Calgary was there too. Philadelphia is even a road favorite against the Canucks on Monday night, simply because Vancouver is one of only two teams worse than the Flyers so far.
If that trip gets uglier in Vancouver before a meeting with Connor McDavid and the Oilers later in the week, Tocchet’s future could come into sharper focus fast.
A coaching change won’t magically fix everything. Danny Briere and Keith Jones would still have to deal with a roster that needs work, and there are already names that may end up as trivia answers down the line - Michael Bunting and Jack Studnicka among them, both of whom saw time with the Flyers before Cole Knuble.
Knuble, one of the most impressive players in training camp, was blocked by a roster plan that looked largely set before camp even started. Now he has forced his way into the picture and is getting a look at center.
Personnel changes will have to come too. But for Tocchet, the immediate question is simpler than that: can the Flyers turn this around soon enough to keep his job intact? Right now, that answer feels very much up in the air.
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Even with some encouraging signs from Jamie Drysdale and Denver Barkey, the bigger question is whether the current group is enough to steady the season. Around the team, there is already speculation about potential roster movement as the Flyers try to find a cleaner fit and more stability up the middle, and the recent results have only added urgency to those conversations. [Read more 🡒]
Flyers Still Have One Problem Threatening This Early-Season Slide
Through the first 19 games of the 2026-27 season, the Flyers have been trying to find any kind of rhythm at both ends of the ice. The offense has been too inconsistent, the defensive group has been stretched thin, and a 4-10-5 start has left little margin for error in a Metropolitan Division that rarely gives teams much breathing room. Even with Travis Konecny and Owen Tippett back in the lineup after injury absences, Philadelphia still has not found the steadier version of itself coach Rick Tocchet needs.
One lingering issue is the blue line, where the Flyers have had to keep adjusting their mix while waiting for more stability. Rasmus Ristolainen is still on injured reserve with an upper-body injury, and his absence has only added to the challenge of building depth on defense. The Flyers are working to correct the slide as the schedule moves on, but until that side of the roster settles in, the pressure on the rest of the group will keep growing. [Read more 🡒]
Cutter Gauthier Is Making The Ducks Rebuild Look Way Ahead Of Schedule
Cutter Gauthier keeps turning Anaheims rebuild into something much more immediate. He scored another hat trick in the Ducks win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, helping stretch the clubs winning streak to five games and further validating the kind of long-term bet Anaheim made when it committed major money to its young core. Leo Carlsson is also off to a strong start, and together the two have given the Ducks a much faster timeline than many expected.
Gauthiers production has been the loudest part of it, with the winger sitting at the top of the league scoring race and piling up milestones at a pace that is starting to feel historic. For Flyers fans still watching the other side of that trade, it is hard not to notice how quickly Anaheim is building around him, and how much more dangerous the Ducks look when their young stars are driving results instead of just projecting them. [Read more 🡒]