Less than a quarter into the 2025-26 season, Philadelphia Flyers fans are already having difficulty coping with the team’s lifeless offense and overall struggles under new head coach Rick Tocchet.
This isn’t necessarily to say that Tocchet can’t turn things around in Philadelphia, because we’re 12 games in, but his teams have historically always played like this.
A Sportsnet infographic that has gone semi-viral online has shown that, in his last four seasons as a head coach, including this season and excluding 2022-23, Tocchet’s teams have ranked no higher than 26th in the NHL in shots per game.
The good news for Tocchet is that his assistant coach pick, Todd Reirden, has the defense humming despite a considerable talent gap relative to most competitive teams around the league.
Goalies Dan Vladar and Aleksei Kolosov, who have been below-average NHL netminders statistically throughout their young careers, have save percentages of .924 and .929, respectively.
To an extent, Tocchet’s system is working, but the results are the results. The Flyers, at the time of this writing, are in last place in the Eastern Conference, have scored the fourth-fewest goals, and don’t have a win on the road yet.
All of these factors have made some fans appreciate Tortorella more, and there are some who have yet to see it that way.
The truth is that Tortorella’s fingerprints are all over this roster, debacles with Cam York and Sean Couturier aside.
Noah Cates and Bobby Brink both made the jump from inconsistent players who may or may not play to lineup staples relied upon to perform in an important checking role.
Tyson Foerster has quietly emerged as one of the league’s best defensive wingers while taking on a new role as a penalty killer, while Owen Tippett, too, is adding more responsibility to his game.
Under Tortorella, Tippett went from an unwanted prospect to a three-time 20-goal-scorer, with a career-best 28 goals, 25 assists, and 53 points coming in his second year under the former Flyers boss in 2023-24.
Ex-Flyers Coach John Tortorella Recounts Golden Matvei Michkov Story
Tortorella dished on Michkov’s surprising but enthusiastic penalty box strategy, which goes to show how well the two understood each other while they were together on the Flyers.
Travis Sanheim experienced a career rebirth playing for Tortorella and ultimately leveled up as a player, and his partner in crime, Travis Konecny, also had the three most prolific years of his career over the last three seasons.
Of course, the 5-foot-9 Emil Andrae blossomed with the guidance of Tortorella, of all people, only to fall behind the likes of Egor Zamula, Adam Ginning, and Noah Juulsen with Tocchet in charge. And that’s almost exclusively due to his diminutive stature.
On top of that, Tortorella helped weed out underachieving talents in Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee while dealing with key losses at the trade deadline in consecutive years.
The most important part of this is Matvei Michkov, the Flyers’ franchise player who expressed on record his disappointment for seeing his first NHL coach leave after just one season of working with him.
Tortorella, despite the healthy scratches, benchings, and heated verbal exchanges, helped guide a 19-year-old (turned 20 midseason) Michkov to a successful 26-goal, 63-point rookie campaign that saw the Russian pace all rookies in goals.
That same Michkov, only a handful of months later, has just one goal in 12 games under Tocchet, and his ice time has dramatically decreased from 16:41 a game to 14:58.
The Flyers star is shooting less, scoring less, and playing less under Tocchet, and he just lined up against the Calgary Flames next to Rodrigo Abols, of all players.
That’s no slight against Abols, but he’s a career journeyman who scratched and clawed his way onto the roster and has sat out some games to start this season.
The lack of ice time for Nikita Grebenkin – who also hasn’t played every game – despite Tocchet’s acknowledgement that the forward needed to play more, has been a similarly frustrating pain point for many.
Matvei Michkov Says He Was ‘Very Upset’ When Flyers Fired John Tortorella
The relationship between star Philadelphia Flyers rookie Matvei Michkov and fired head coach John Tortorella was much better than many have made it out to be.
A player as prodigious as Michkov, and a player who has a knack for making plays like Grebenkin, should be playing with similarly skilled players, but it didn’t happen.
Plus, Michkov hasn’t been able to recreate the magic he had with Sean Couturier and Konecny last season, though the latter has drastically improved his own play over the last week.
That said, the only Flyers forward who has been a consistent proprietor of offense this season has been Trevor Zegras, who has impressively tallied 13 points in 12 games to kick off his Flyers career.
Tortorella, for better or for worse, didn’t have that kind of support at center over the last three seasons.
Speaking of centers, it can also be noted that Jett Luchanko objectively took a step back this season.
The 2024 first-round pick averaged 14:03 a game in four matches under Tortorella, but that plummeted to 8:58 last month under Tocchet.
Maybe a then-18-year-old Luchanko wasn’t ready for the NHL, but at least Tortorella had a plan for him and mostly executed it before the team collectively pulled the plug.
With Luchanko, and with the rest of the team, it’s still wait-and-see mode with Tocchet, but a dreadful back-to-back on home ice this past weekend is already affirming fans’ fears and increasing impatience with the club icon.
After all, the Flyers handed the Toronto Maple Leafs their first road win of the season on Saturday, then lost to the worst team in the NHL in the Flames on Sunday, scoring just two goals at even strength between both games.
Few view Tortorella as a coach who aided a rebuild, but perhaps his Flyers tenure wasn’t so bad after all.
