5 Potential Coach Replacements for the Flyers' Rick Tocchet

The 2026-2027 season could've started a whole lot better for the Philadelphia Flyers, but after starting 0-3-2 with just six goals scored and 19 against, the time to worry is now, and that's put head coach Rick Tocchet firmly on the hot seat.

After signing a five-year contract, Tocchet helped guide the Flyers to the playoffs last season, and while Philly advanced to the second round before being ushered out quickly by eventual Stanley Cup champion Carolina, that success raised expectations for this season. The Flyers' grim start, therefore, could come with consequences and leave general manager Danny Brière with the options of moving on from Tocchet, making rash trades, or both.

Trades take two sides to make a deal, and firing a coach needs only the GM to make the call. If the Flyers move on from Tocchet, who's out there to take over? We'll take a look at potential candidates for the Flyers and their young and impressionable roster.

If there's someone who would make a lot of sense to coach a young Flyers team and has experience in Philadelphia, former Edmonton Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch would be it.

Knoblauch coached the Oilers for the past two and a half seasons and helped lead them to two straight Stanley Cup Finals and three total playoff appearances. The Oilers bowing out in the first round to Anaheim last year ended up being his undoing, although Edmonton management having their eyes on Mike Babcock may have had more to do with that decision than anything.

Knoblauch's first NHL coaching job, however, came as an assistant coach with the Flyers from 2017 to 2019 under Dave Hakstol before he moved on to be a head coach in the AHL with Hartford. With a successful tenure in Edmonton and a history of experience coaching successful young players in the OHL with Erie (where he coached Connor McDavid, Alex DeBrincat, Dylan Strome, and others), he would be a front-runner for any opening in the NHL, but especially in Philadelphia.

If the Flyers wanted to make a splash, if they moved on from Rick Tocchet, bringing in a Stanley Cup-winning coach like Bruce Cassidy would do it.

Cassidy led the Vegas Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup in 2023 and also coached the Boston Bruins to the Final in 2019. Since reviving his career as a head coach with the Bruins, he's done nothing but win where he's gone, albeit with a bit of a shelf life before the mood changes.

Cassidy's firing from Vegas last season led to John Tortorella taking over and then guiding the Golden Knights to the Stanley Cup Final, where they lost to Carolina. The team's makeup wasn't any different, but Torts' no-nonsense approach was handled better by the players than Cassidy's tough, direct style.

Cassidy would get results in Philly, no doubt, but the question would be whether or not his style would mesh with what Brière and Keith Jones are trying to establish with the Flyers. Boston and Vegas were veteran teams built to win, but the Flyers are looking to build on the sudden progress from last year. It would be a fascinating setup should "Butch" go to Philadelphia.

The one caveat? Cassidy's availability. He was a strong candidate for the Oilers job this summer, only for Vegas to block his move because he was still under contract with the Golden Knights. It'd be interesting to see if Vegas would allow him to coach across the country.

Unlike some of the other possible new Flyers coaches, Jay Woodcroft as a possibility comes with some potentially dramatic wrinkles.

Woodcroft is a guy who has been in the running for numerous head coaching jobs over the past few years since he was fired by the Edmonton Oilers in November 2023, but last season he landed on Joel Quenneville's bench as an assistant with the Anaheim Ducks.

The relationship between the Flyers and Ducks would best be described as "frosty" after everything that's gone on with Cutter Gauthier forcing his way out of Philly to go to Anaheim and then the Flyers signing Leo Carlsson to a monster offer sheet this summer. You'd like to believe that if the Flyers wanted to hire Woodcroft as their new head coach, Ducks GM Pat Verbeek wouldn't stand in his way, but that would be a fascinating phone call to make regardless.

Woodcroft has a ton of NHL coaching experience outside of his brief tenure behind the Oilers' bench, and he's going to be a head coach again one of these years, and the Flyers would make for a great opportunity for him to show what he can do.

The easiest and quickest move to make if the Flyers fire Rick Tocchet would be to look right next to him on the bench, assistant coach Todd Reirden.

Reirden has a long history of assistant work with the Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Washington Capitals. He also has some head coaching experience from his time in Washington, where he led the Capitals to the playoffs in 2019 but was fired midseason the following year.

While Reirden would be the easiest move to make, he wouldn't make the sexiest pick, and if he took over as anything more than an interim, we're sure the panic levels amongst the Flyers fan base would reach new heights. If the Flyers move on from Tocchet, they'll assuredly be aiming bigger.

If you're not familiar with John Snowden, that's understandable because he's relatively new in the coaching ranks.

Snowden was hired as head coach of the Flyers' AHL team in Lehigh Valley last season after he was an assistant coach there the previous two years. Before that, he was with the Toronto Marlies as an assistant and spent six seasons as an assistant and head coach in the ECHL with Orlando and Newfoundland, and one season as the director of hockey operations there as well. He's 44 years old and climbing the ladder.

Despite all of Snowden's prior experience, he finally became an AHL head coach a year ago, and although AHL head coaches are often heirs to the NHL throne when things go wrong, it would be a gutsy choice by Danny Brière to promote Snowden to the Flyers so quickly, but if fans are tired of seeing the same coaches cycle through new jobs, promoting Snowden would certainly run counter to that.