Rick Tocchet doesn’t sound interested in forcing the Flyers into some cookie-cutter system. He knows better than that. What he does want, though, is simple: keep the puck.
“Puck possession, that's the thing I keep telling my team. If we have the puck a lot more, you defend less. "
That’s the lane Tocchet is steering Philadelphia toward this season, and it fits the group he has in front of him. The Flyers’ projected blue line has real offensive juice, especially with Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, and David Jiricek in the mix. Nick Seeler and Rasmus Ristolainen are different kinds of defensemen, less likely to drive the attack, but every backend needs a couple of big trees.
The logic is pretty old-school, and it still holds up. If you’re controlling the puck, you’re spending less time in your own end.
That means fewer draining shifts for your defense and goaltenders, and more chances to create offense at the other end. When a team is stuck chasing for long stretches in its own zone, that usually tells you exactly where things are headed.
Tocchet and his staff clearly spent the offseason looking for the places Philadelphia has to tighten up. One of the clearest issues shows up in Shot Attempt Percentage, where 50% is the baseline. Fall below that number, and you’re spending more time absorbing attempts than generating them.
In 2025-26, only five Flyers players were at or above that mark. Three of them - Porter Martone (9 games), Egor Zamula (13), and Jacob Gaucher (4) - had such small samples that the numbers don’t mean much. The other two were Sean Couturier at 50% and Matvei Michkov at 50.2%.
That’s the part Tocchet wants to change. He’d like to see more regulars push past that line and give the Flyers a roster-wide shift toward better puck control. Considering Philadelphia still made the playoffs and got to the second round with those kinds of numbers, the ceiling looks pretty obvious if they can clean it up.
The catch is that doing it again won’t be so easy. The Flyers managed to survive some rough advanced metrics last season, but banking on that kind of success two years in a row is a dangerous game, especially with Dan Vladar’s injury status still uncertain. He was a major reason they were able to overcome it in 2025-26.
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Flyers Roster Crunch Just Put One Veteran Battle In Focus
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A batch of veterans has now been pushed into the waiver process, which underscores how crowded the picture remains as the final spots come into focus. One name in particular stands out because he had been practicing in a more NHL-facing role, and his situation could matter if the Flyers need more room for a younger winger who is not fully set for opening night. [Read more 🡒]