"I would be shocked if Boston isn’t a team that looks at Rick Tocchet.”
The Bruins are reportedly in the mix for one of the top NHL head coaches out on the market.
According to TSN’s Darren Dreger, there are “strong indications” that Rick Tocchet will soon land with a new NHL team. Dreger listed the Bruins, Flyers, and Kraken as the “top contenders” for Tocchet’s services.
Tocchet, 61, is a popular head-coaching target this offseason after he parted ways with the Canucks at the end of the 2024-25 season. Tocchet closed out his three-year tenure in Vancouver with a record of 108-65-27 (.608).
Tocchet took home the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s coach of the year for the 2023-24 season, leading the Canucks to a Pacific Division title and a 50-23-9 record.
But the Canucks regressed this season, missing the postseason by six points (38-30-14). Vancouver had a club option for Tocchet in 2025-26, but opted to not exercise it.
Tocchet has made several stops across the NHL as a head coach, leading the Lightning from 2008-10 and Arizona Coyotes from 2017 to 2021. In his head-coaching career, Tocchet sports a career record of 286-265-87 (.516). He also won two Stanley Cups as an assistant on Mike Sullivan’s staff in Pittsburgh in 2016 and 2017.
Dreger noted that the Flyers “want to be aggressive” in their head-coaching search, with Tocchet already having plenty of ties to the franchise. He played 1,144 games in the NHL across 18 NHL seasons, spending a majority of his playing career with the Flyers (621 games).
But Tocchet also has some ties to the Bruins, as he played alongside Cam Neely and Don Sweeney in Boston from 1995-97.
“Boston is a club that I’ve been saying keep an eye on the Bruins. I will be surprised if the Bruins don’t contact Tocchet. He’s a really Boston-type guy,” The Athletic’s Rick Dhaliwal said on a recent episode of Donnie & Dhali. “Boston is a place where it just reeks of Rick Tocchet. Cam Neely’s running the show there. I would be shocked if Boston isn’t a team that looks at Rick Tocchet.”
But if the Bruins prioritize Tocchet over a younger, perhaps more unproven coaching candidate like Misha Donskov or Mitch Love, they might have pony up with one of the largest contracts ever doled out for an NHL head coach.
“I think he’s going to have multiple mega offers that are game changers for the coaching pay scale,” Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli said of Tocchet last week. “’I’m going to project that Rick Tocchet is on at least a five-year deal and north of 6 million per year.’
