Just over two years ago, on the floor of the Wells Fargo Center, Danny Brière, Keith Jones, Dan Hilferty, and a begrudging John Tortorella promised better for the Philadelphia Flyers.
They promised a rebuild. They promised a slow and steady construction of a roster that could keep up with the modern NHL while matching the tough and passionate identity of the city. And they promised to, eventually, make this franchise into a Stanley Cup contender again.
On Friday morning, Brière was back on the arena floor atop a makeshift stage, with Jones and Hilferty watching from the seats alongside a couple hundred Flyers season ticket holders and an array of local press.
The plan is still going and hasn't changed, the general manager said. But the coach helping to steer it forward has.
Rick Tocchet was officially introduced as the Flyers' next head coach.
The former skater and fan-favorite of 11 years during the 1990s and early 2000s will now take up the post behind the bench to usher in the next phase of the Flyers' rebuild.
His mission, he said, is to make sure that a young team fully realizes its potential. "There's a talent pool here that's untapped," Tocchet said. "I really believe that."
But Brière said that's only the start of what he can set up for.
"There's many boxes that you look at," Brière explained during a media scrum after Friday's introductory press conference. "The power play being one, the relationships, the teachings, the connection to the fans – that's an added bonus – the fact that he has a good reputation, players want to play for him, it's another nice add-on bonus.
"It's all part of what Rick Tocchet is and why it makes him, for us, the most attractive coach."
Even if, from the outside, he may not necessarily look it.
Once word broke a few weeks ago that Tocchet wouldn't be returning to Vancouver as the Canucks' head coach, it wasn't hard to connect the dots to the Flyers with their own head coaching spot open following Tortorella's late-season firing.
But among the fan base, there's been a fair bit of apprehension.
Tocchet is another NHL retread, the thought goes, and another Flyers alumnus hired to an organization that, at times, polarizingly keeps itself running on them. Plus, at face value, his resume as a head coach wouldn't seem all that impressive. He won the Jack Adams last year, sure, but he has only ever gotten his teams to the playoffs a couple of times and carries a coaching record of 286-265-87 overall.
Brière believes those arguments are only surface-level, though, and require a deeper look.
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He pointed, obviously, to Tocchet's aforementioned Jack Adams win and the playoff run he led the Canucks on a year ago; He pointed to his work as an assistant in Pittsburgh during the Penguins' run to back-to-back Stanley Cups, mainly on the power play for a Flyers team that badly needs help there now, and the positive relationships he fostered with their stars Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Phil Kessel; He pointed to Tocchet's part in coaching Team Canada to gold at the 4 Nations Face-Off this past winter; But Brière especially pointed to Tocchet's several years coaching the Arizona Coyotes from 2017-2021, when he got maybe the most anyone could've out of a developing though very thin roster to push to a playoff spot within the 2020 COVID bubble.
"That's an area that really impressed me, how he handled that," Brière said of Tocchet's Arizona tenure. "And it's a combination. He's worked with young players, he's worked with great players, so part of this rebuild that we're on…I guess people are saying we're past stage one, but he's one of those guys who can be successful at the many stages coming.
"I don't know how quick it's going to take to get to the next few stages," Brière continued. "But we're confident that he can handle any of those stages, because he's lived it, he's been through it. When you look at his career and being part of a winning team in Pittsburgh too, the winning staff that was there and then Hockey Canada last year, those are great experiences for a coach to be part of."
With the hope that the next great ones are now ahead in Philadelphia.
"I know where this is going," Tocchet said of the Flyers' trajectory. "I like the direction, I actually love the direction that these guys have laid out. I believe in it, and I want to be part of the solution.
"It's just not me. It's not about Rick Tocchet. It's about everybody. But for me, I know what I gotta do to keep this ball going, and there's a lot of tools here to work with."
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