Flyers-Penguins: Rick Tocchet Is Ready For The Hate To Begin

Fourteen years ago, after a scuffle on the ice in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby added to the heated activities in an unusual manner.

The Flyers' Jake Voracek dropped a glove during one of several scrums in the intense, bitterly played game. As he reached down to the ice to retrieve it, Crosby knocked it away with his stick.

After that 2012 playoff game, an 8-4 Flyers win that gave them a 3-0 series lead over the heavily favored Penguins, I asked Crosby if frustration had caused him to do it.

"I don't like any guy on their team there, so his glove was near me and he went to pick it up and I pushed it," said Crosby, then 24. "I don't like him."

Why don't you like him?

"Because I don't like him. I don't like any guy on their team."

The rivalry between the Flyers and Penguins was at its peak in those days and has since cooled a bit.

Until now.

Now the aging Penguins, with the 38-year-old Crosby (29 goals, 74 points) still going strong, and the youthful Flyers will play a best-of-seven playoff series that is being called the Battle of Pennsylvania.

Let the hate begin.

Flyers coach Rick Tocchet knows all about the heated rivalry between the teams. He's lived it – on both sides.

He played for the Flyers for eight years and later spent three seasons with the Penguins as a player and three years as a Pittsburgh assistant coach.

Tocchet, whose surging team finished with the same amount of points (98) as the Penguins, said he wants the Flyers to play aggressively in the series, which begins Saturday night in Pittsburgh.

"I want the hate. Right?" he said in an interview with NBC Sports Philadelphia. "I want them to feel the Penguins-Flyers hate, which helps you in your game. But it's got to be controlled aggression."

Tocchet said the Flyers "can't let our emotions go overboard, and that's the one thing you have to be careful about because you can lose games that way."

Tocchet was asked if he, too, hates the Penguins.

"Yeah, I do," he said. "Hey, listen. I have to control myself, too, and the way I coach."

Tocchet also said he loves the city of Pittsburgh.

"I won three Stanley Cups there" – one as a player, two as a coach. "I have friends in that city," he said. "I adore that franchise. They're terrific… But I'm on the other side now. Handshakes and all that, that's for later. This is the real keeps, and I have to keep my head on straight and know that I'm an Orange and Black guy right now. We're going to go head-to-head with this team, and it's going to hopefully be a hell of a series."

Tocchet, whose team won two of four games against the Penguins this year, is close with Crosby and texts him.

But not during this series.

"I don't think we're going to call each other until two weeks from now," he said.

After practice on Thursday, Tocchet said the Flyers "have to go through him (Crosby)" to win the series, one in which the Penguins appear to have a decided advantage in special teams.

A long-time Flyers killer, Crosby has a staggering 139 points (60 goals, 79 assists) in 93 career games against Philadelphia.

"You've got to go through him, you've got to be on top of him, you've got to make it a hard game for him," said Tocchet, who figures to have defensemen Travis Sanheim and Rasmus Ristolainen matched up against Crosby's line. "You've got to get in his way because you know what he can do. We have a ton of respect for Sid. He's an unbelievable person and player. We've got to get him in the ditches. We've got to make it hard on him."

And play with just the right amount of hate.

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