10/08/2025
Philadelphia Flyers captain Sean Couturier can't say enough good things about newly-appointed head coach Rick Tocchet
By Neil Becker
It's hard not to detect that excitement in Philadelphia Flyers captain Sean Couturier when talk turns to the team's new head coach, Rick Tocchet.
"Already had some really good conversations with him," Couturier said about Tocchet. "Probably more over the last three months than I had over two years with Torts." Couturier, who was drafted in 2011. 8th overall by the Flyers, went on to add, "It's fun to just go back and forth and get to know each other, listen to each other's thoughts on the game. I think we're just trying to push in the same direction; our goal is the same.
There's no ego. He has told me it's not about Rick Tocchet. I'm kind of the same way. It's not about me. We're all about what's best for the team and trying to get this team to the next level." Hockey fans shouldn't be surprised that Couturier took that verbal jab at his former Flyers head coach, John Tortorella, since they didn't exactly see eye-to-eye on certain matters. "It was just alright. I'm not going to lie," Couturier said about his relationship with Tortorella. "I think throughout the last year and a half, and what was portrayed in the media-, there wasn't much of a relationship, I would say.
We didn't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, and it was hard, but I just tried to work with him and do what's best for the team because that's my job as the captain." One thing that Couturier talked about was communication issues with Tortorella, and that happened during last year's home opener when Couturier, about to start his 13th season, didn't find out until minutes before the game that he was being moved to left wing on the fourth line.
That's just one thing which happened. Two years ago, in the 2023-24 season, during the March playoff stretch drive, Tortorella, without communicating his reasons, benched Couturier for two games, which began a Flyers nose-dive which saw them go 1-8-1 and miss the playoffs. Looking back to the Tortorella coaching era and what went wrong, Couturier was very honest as he replied, "It was almost like the last couple of years, guys were scared to make plays and get pulled off (the PP).
It's not the mentality or philosophy you want to have going into a PP and trying to score a goal," Tortorella's time behind the Flyers bench ended on March 27th, 2025, following a loss against the Toronto Maple Leafs and an incident involving Flyers defenceman Cam York. In April, when asked about the Tortorella firing, Couturier showed why he is such a respected teammate. "If you look at the minutes and stuff, I think it tells you how I was kind of maybe being pushed aside," Couturier said. "It is what it is. Didn't agree with the way I was getting pushed aside, but I was just trying not to be a distraction." He went on to add, "I tried to keep my mouth shut.
Put in the extra effort, get back to where I should be. A lot of it is on me, too. At times, I needed to play better." A big step towards turning things around in Philadelphia is making your veteran captain happy, and like I said earlier, they definitely did that by bringing in a veteran coach in Tocchet, who has coached with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Arizona Coyotes, Pittsburgh Penguins and for the past 2.5 years, the Vancouver Canucks. Tocchet, who won two Stanley Cups in 2016 and 2017 as the Penguins assistant coach, also had a solid 12-year playing career where he scored 441 goals and produced 952 points along with 2,972 PIMS playing on the Flyers, Penguins, Los Angeles Kings, Boston Bruins, Washington Capitals and the Phoenix Coyotes. As a player, he won the Stanley Cup in 1992 with the Penguins. While the Flyers are realistically quite a few ways from contending and are long shots of making the playoffs, they definitely took a big step forward in hiring Tocchet as head coach.
"
