Why Rick Tocchet would be perfect coaching hire for Rangers team in transition
It’s time for yet another coaching search for the New York Rangers, as general manager Chris Drury heads into the offseason looking to hire his third coach in five seasons. Peter Laviolette was shown the door Saturday, an expected casualty of New York’s regressive 39-36-7 record and failure to make the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Under significant pressure to finally get this right, Drury could go in a number of directions — an experienced coach, an up-and-coming NHL assistant, a highly-regarded neophyte from college. Thankfully for the Rangers GM, there’s a clear choice waiting in the Pacific Northwest who looks to be available, compatible with the club’s vision of the future and a huge fan of one of the Blueshirts’ most important players.
That’s Rick Tocchet, the Vancouver Canucks coach who is without a contract for 2025-26 and might be looking to move on after failing to make the playoff this season amid the J.T. Miller-Elias Pettersson affair. That personality conflict sabotaged the Canucks, who like the Rangers, crashed from a 50-win, 100-plus point season in 2023-24 to an early summer in 2024-25.
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A Tocchet-Miller reunion with Rangers would fit team’s preferred new style
Tocchet, who won the Jack Adams Award as NHL coach of the year in 2023-24 after he guided Vancouver to that 50-23-9 record, coached Miller for parts of the past three seasons. Miller, of course, found his way to the Big Apple in January in a much-anticipated trade that put an end to the acrimonious mess between he and Pettersson, the Canucks’ other star center.
Could Tocchet follow Miller from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic this summer? It certainly seems possible. On Monday, the Canucks declined their option on Tocchet’s contract, with president of hockey of operations Jim Rutherford saying that the organization has instead offered a new, more lucrative deal to secure Tocchet’s services for more than one season.
That development came not long after the once-feared power forward, who racked up 2,970 penalty minutes during his NHL career, nervously shuffled around and sidestepped a direct question about whether he’d like to to be back in Vancouver during his season-ending news conference.
Tocchet also appeared to create a perhaps not-so-minor stir during that session when he bemoaned the Canucks lack of depth at center.
“If there’s a dynamic guy out there, let us know,” Tocchet said not-so-subtly.
There happen to be a couple of those in New York, both of whom evoke Tocchet’s relentlessly physical approach to the game. Miller mostly thrived under Tocchet, posting a career-best 103-point season in 2023-24 and recording 13 goals and 17 assists in 24 games after Tocchet replaced Bruce Boudreau as coach in January 2023.
“I’m a J.T. Miller fan … J.T. played a lot of great hockey for me,” Tocchet said during his season-ending news conference.
Miller’s close friend and current second-line center on the Rangers, Vincent Trocheck, surely also suits Tocchet’s preferred style — certainly more so than Pettersson, who plays a skill-oriented game. Pettersson significantly regressed this season with 45 points in 64 games after piling up 191 points over the previous two seasons.
One can see Tocchet falling in love with Miller, Trocheck and fourth-liner Sam Carrick down the middle. Mika Zibanejad? Maybe not so much.
Tocchet comes across as a measured, analytical and highly accountable coach. He’s plain-spoken, candid and accommodating with reporters — a big plus, considering Vancouver’s high-pressure media environment. He’d of course face similar scrutiny in the big-market Big Apple, which comes with outsized fan expectations, just as he’s faced in the Pacific Northwest.
Not all is perfect with Tocchet. In nine seasons as an NHL coach, he’s made the Stanley Cup Playoffs twice, as the majority of his coaching career was with the Arizona Coyotes. He’s 11-11 in 22 postseason games behind the bench.
And he did show Miller some tough love, benching the veteran at times this season before the trade with the Rangers.
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Rangers need Rick Tocchet’s hard-edged, no-nonsense ways to rub off on them
At his core, though, Tocchet is a throwback, hardscrabble player who wants his teams to play the same way. His coaching motto is to “embrace the hard” in reference to meeting tough moments in a game and throughout the season, admitting during his news conference that the Canucks didn’t adequately do that in 2024-25.
The “buy-in needs to be better,” Tocchet said, taking responsibility for his inability to make that happen this season.
All of that suits exactly what the Rangers are looking for. They have to get bigger and tougher, but they also need to transform their identity to one of a more resilient, physical and edgy outfit. The Blueshirts are sorely lacking in resolve; that’s where a coach comes in.
The idea of Tocchet reuniting with Miller and inheriting Trocheck as his tone-setters for a team in transition has to be appealing for Drury. In Will Cuylle, Brennan Othmann, Brett Berard, Matt Rempe and Adam Edstrom, the Rangers possess a group of young forwards who play a physical and sometimes irritating game. Tocchet, ferocious and utterly fearless during his 952-point career, would seem to be the perfect tutor for them.
Those old enough to have watched Tocchet’s career remember him often torturing the Rangers during his formative years with the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins, his 28 goals against the Blueshirts being his highest total against any team. Now, the former rival is exactly what the Rangers require.
Tocchet said he would be engaging in talks with Rutherford and Canucks GM Patrik Allvin soon. There’s no way to know just how serious Tocchet might want to hammer out a new contract to stay in Vancouver, but Drury should be lurking around the edges with an offer. For the Rangers, the possibility of hiring Tocchet to lead them in a new direction just makes too much sense not to try.
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