Tocchet leads new wave of NHL coaches
Rick Tocchet is the kind of coach who doesn’t mind if a player calls him at 9 p.m. to share a thought.
He doesn’t expect that to change as he goes from being a Pittsburgh Penguins assistant to head coach of the Arizona Coyotes.
Tocchet has done it before, and his 148 games as an NHL head coach make the 53-year-old one of the more experienced hires this offseason as teams look for the next new idea rather than recycling from the past.
Three vacancies were filled by first-timers: the Buffalo Sabres’ Phil Housley, Florida Panthers’ Bob Boughner and Vancouver Canucks’ Travis Green. Tocchet and the Los Angeles Kings’ John Stevens are longtime assistants with some time running a bench, while the Dallas Stars’ Ken Hitchcock and Vegas Golden Knights’ Gerard Gallant represent the only seasoned coaches.
Almost every general manager cited communication skills as a major reason for prioritizing youth over experience.
“It’s clear for me: (Tocchet is) one of the best communicators I’ve come across, not only in hockey but probably professionally as well,” Coyotes GM John Chayka said. “He can just relate to the players.
“He’s very firm. He can motivate. He can be aggressive in his approach, but he can also be that big brother kind of approach.”
Tocchet, Housley, Boughner, Green, Stevens and Gallant all played in the NHL in the 1990s and represent the new-school concept of a players’ coach, mixing positive relationships with accountability.
Likable Jon Cooper took the Tampa Bay Lightning to the 2015 Stanley Cup final in his first goround, but other experiments like Dallas Eakins, Claude Noel, Ron Rolston and Mike Johnston didn’t go so well.
More time is needed to determine the success of some, like the Philadelphia Flyers’ Dave Hakstol, New Jersey Devils’ John Hynes and Colorado Avalanche’s Jared Bednar, but teams are more willing than ever to take a risk on coaching rookies. Ten of the 31 coaches are in their first head jobs in the NHL as some prominent experienced coaches like Lindy Ruff, Jacques Martin, Jack Capuano and Marc Crawford have accepted roles as assistants.
Florida GM Dale Tallon said he went through an “exhaustive, extensive search” before Boughner’s interview blew him away, and Chayka talked to more than 25 coaches before calling Tocchet the best candidate by a wide margin.
Kings general manager Rob Blake said “there was literally no search” as Stevens was the natural fit to succeed Darryl Sutter, and the Canucks didn’t interview anyone but Green, who coached their top minor league affiliate for the past four seasons.
After winning the Stanley Cup the past two seasons with the Penguins, Tocchet figures he won’t alter his approach in Arizona.
“That’s the million-dollar question to me because I don’t want to change as a person,” Tocchet said. “I don’t think that because you carry a title head coach that all of a sudden you’ve got to be distanced from your players.”