Latest on Flyers’ head coach search: Tocchet needs to wait, Carle not a fit

The Philadelphia Flyers are taking their time to hire their new head coach after firing John Tortorella. Here’s the latest on where they are at in the process.

The Philadelphia Flyers fired John Tortorella over a month ago and will need to start looking for his permanent replacement, but according to recent reports they have not fully entrenched themselves in the search quite yet.

With playoffs going on — and more specifically, the Under-18 World Championships taking place down in Texas to give the Flyers’ front office a chance to see some prospects for the upcoming 2025 NHL Draft — other things have taken priority. But, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen soon, and we have some hot and fast updates on potential candidates.

Let’s just get right to it.

David Carle ‘not a fit’

The one name that almost every single Flyers fan would be completely fine with the team hiring, is young coaching prospect David Carle. From the University of Denver to the USA World Juniors squad, Carle has only known winning and championships by coaching a fairly aggressive style that utilizes whatever talent he has available to him.

Unfortunately, after Carle already withdrew his name from the Chicago Blackhawks job last week, recent reports from the Philadelphia side of things are saying that he is not considered a true candidate for the Flyers head coach role, either.

Whether it’s just because they know Carle doesn’t want to be in a situation where he couldn’t find success right away, or the Flyers just want to go with a more stable and secure option behind the bench, it looks like if Carle becomes an NHL head coach, it will not be in Philadelphia.

Mike Sullivan leaving Penguins, possible candidate?

This is hot off the press. On Monday morning, the Pittsburgh Penguins announced that they are mutually parting ways with highly regarded head coach Mike Sullivan.

Sullivan instantly becomes one of the top candidates for every single job opening in the NHL. If the Flyers really want to pursue him, it is going to be a tight race with several other teams who have fired their coaches over the last few months.

The possibility of Sullivan coming to Philadelphia felt much more real in the hypothetical scenario we all came up with in our heads of John Tortorella going to the front office and his old friend Sullivan coming to take over his role. That transition from Tortorella to a much more appropriate coach for this part of the Flyers’ rebuild felt like a natural one, and it could also keep Brad Shaw involved as an assistant.

Obviously, Tortorella is no longer a part of the Flyers organization. Does that really change the odds of him coming to the Flyers, where his friend and former colleague just got fired? Maybe, but we’re not too sure. Sullivan would be able to be more secure in Philadelphia than a lot of places considering that while there are some expectations to be better next season, it isn’t a playoffs-or-bust situation.

Not ruling out candidates, but of course they’re not

The Flyers will not go on record to rule out any potential candidates, but of course they are going to keep as many options open as possible.

In the latest from The Athletic’s Kevin Kurz, he reports that two key names have not been ruled out as potential suitors for the Flyers job: Veteran head coach Joel Quenneville, and Western Michigan Broncos bench boss Pat Ferschweiler.

Obviously, with Quenneville it would come with a massive PR hit as he was an integral part and in the middle of the 2010 Blackhawks sexual assault case regarding Kyle Beach and ever since that report has been out, he has not stepped foot into an NHL organization. The former Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman was hired by the Edmonton Oilers last summer and the league has officially cleared both of them to work again. We’re not too sure that a team like the Flyers is the most logical destination to try and work with how terrible it would look to hire Quenneville but also squeeze the most out of this roster. It’s not like they’re going to try to win the Stanley Cup in the next two years.

When it comes to Ferschweiler, the connection is obvious. He’s a former teammate of Keith Jones, just won a national championship, and with top Flyers prospect Alex Bump as his best player. Ferschweiler turned a program that was considered second-rate in the college hockey landscape, to national champions sitting on top of the world. While nothing formal or official has been said, we have to assume he will at least get an interview just because of the multiple connections.

One name that was also not ruled out was Rick Tocchet.

If they want Tocchet, they will need to wait

Obviously, the noise around Rick Tocchet being the next head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers is deafening. Almost every single national media member is making the most simple of connections. Tocchet being a former Flyer himself and the fact that he was essentially the runner up to the position with John Tortorella when former general manager Chuck Fletcher was looking for a new head coach after firing Alain Vigneault a few years ago.

The latest on Tocchet’s situation with the Vancouver Canucks is messy. The Canucks have reportedly offered him a long-term contract that would make him the highest paid coach in team history — after not taking his option and potentially making him a free agent this summer. Vancouver is hoping he stays, but Tocchet possibly has eyes elsewhere with so many jobs open and available to interview for.

But, he will have to wait to do that. Since Tocchet was not fired by the Canucks and is just a pending coaching free agent, any team that wants to talk to him about hiring him will have to wait until after his contract expires on June 30.

The Flyers are taking their time right now, but are they really going to wait two more months to talk to any candidates just because Tocchet is an option for them? They might lose out on some coaches that they really want, with so many openings around the NHL.

We’ll see what happens from here but it will no matter what be an interesting search for the new Flyers head coach. And all of this is not even mentioning that Brad Shaw is also a candidate to say and he is open to being either the head coach of the Flyers, or coming back as an assistant coach under the right circumstances.