How Rick Tocchet And His Staff Are Building Trust With A Young Flyers Team

The easiest thing for a coach to demand is accountability. The hardest thing is creating an environment where players willingly seek it out themselves.

And when it comes to the Philadelphia Flyers under Rick Tocchet, one of the clearest organizational changes over the course of this season revealed itself to be a relational one.

Long before the Flyers became one of the league’s most compelling young teams, before the playoff push reignited the city’s connection to hockey, there was a foundation being built behind the scenes.

It happened in video rooms, at breakfast tables, in hallway conversations. It was exchanged in quick text messages sent late at night after games and in small moments that, over time, became routine for the team's younger stars.

Tocchet did not simply want players to listen to coaches, but wanted them to feel ownership over their own growth. And increasingly, especially among the younger core of the roster, that started happening organically.

“I give the staff a lot of credit,” Tocchet said on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of communication behind the scenes that they do. I know Jay [Varady], he’s in at breakfast and he doesn’t go to people, they come to him—‘Hey, Jay, can we look at that play that happened yesterday?’”

It's not a revolutionary coaching method on the surface. Coaches and players watching video together is hardly uncommon in professional hockey. But the dynamic Tocchet described is important.

The Flyers are trying to create self-starters, not passengers.

There is a major difference between a coach summoning a player into a video session after mistakes and a player independently walking into a room asking to learn. One is compliance. The other is personal investment.

Tocchet continued, “We’re trying to promote that more, be more of a self-starter. We can go grab a kid, and say, ‘Let’s go watch video,’ but it’s nice when they come to you, and I find that, this year, a lot of those kids were doing that… I love that.”

That approach reflects something larger than just your run-of-the-mill player development philosophy. It shows a head coach not just preaching, but practicing trust in his player's instincts. 

Tocchet's trust is not the blind variety, and he's not approaching in the way of being passive. But it does signal that he understands that younger players are capable of processing the game intelligently when given both responsibility and support, and that matters for a Flyers team built increasingly around players still learning who they are at the NHL level.

For years, hockey development often leaned heavily on hierarchy. Coaches dictated. Young players listened. Questions could be interpreted as challenges. Silence could masquerade as professionalism.

The modern NHL has gradually moved away from that rigidity, and the Flyers appear to be leaning fully into that evolution.

Tocchet repeatedly emphasized that his staff's “open-door policy” is not performative. It only works if players genuinely believe it exists. 

“For me, communication with them, where a kid can text me out of the blue, that’s when you know you’re on the right page,” Tocchet said. “I’m not saying it happens all the time, but you’ll get a text from a kid saying, ‘Hey, can we come in early and watch video?’ That sort of stuff I love.”

That level of comfort does not happen automatically, particularly with younger players trying to establish themselves professionally. But when there's multiple younger guys trying to make their way, as is the case for this current team, it helps everyone feel more at ease.

Tocchet would know. He remembers being in their shoes. 

“I remember in ’85, I was one of those young guys, and we had a lot of young guys [on that team],” he said. “It’s nice to have young guys around you.”

He also knows that when a new coaching staff arrives, there can be apprehension as everyone tries to feel each other out and get a sense for how the other operates.

“There was nervousness at the start of the year,” he said, “but I think the coaching staff helped bridge that.”

That “bridging” process may ultimately become one of the defining elements of this Flyers era. This roster is not developing in isolation. Players like Matvei Michkov, Porter Martone, Alex Bump, and Denver Barkey are developing inside an environment that actively encourages communication instead of fear.

Young players rarely improve consistently when they feel guarded around the people evaluating them, and Tocchet seems acutely aware of that dynamic.

“You can always tell there’s certain players that they’re scared to come—I don’t know why, maybe they’re nervous about something, but I don’t want that,” he said. “I want them to know the door’s always open.”

What makes Tocchet’s further comments especially interesting is that they reveal a coach comfortable admitting imperfection. 

“We’re not always right,” Tocchet admitted. “We overlook things. So I always tell players, if you’ve got bullets, come in. Come by, say, ‘Hey, man, gotta talk to you. I only played 10 minutes. I thought I played well.’ Then [in response], ‘You’re right. You had some really good shifts. I lost you on the bench.’ It’s okay for a coach to admit it.”

That changes the tone of an entire organization. Not because it removes accountability, but because it reframes communication as collaborative rather than punitive.

Players are not simply being talked at. They are participating in the process.

That openness has clearly resonated with players themselves.

Trevor Zegras has previously spoken about texting Tocchet directly to go over video clips and work through details in his game. That level of player-driven engagement, especially from one of your superstars, says something important about how the relationship between coaches and players has evolved within the organization.

The Flyers are not treating development as a one-way lecture, but as a dialogue, and it shows up in more than off-ice meetings. Tocchet has made it known that he isn't interested in micromanaging his players. He's made it abundantly clear that he believes there are plenty of occasions where coaches need to step back and let the players take the reins. 

Earlier in the season, back in December, he explained his preference for allowing players, particularly leaders, to sometimes manage situations internally.

“Sometimes leaders can do their own thing,” Tocchet said then. “Sometimes a coach has to stay out of it. They can correct themselves.”

The consistency in his approach to coaching reveals an enormous amount about how Tocchet sees leadership. He is not trying to control every interaction, every frustration, every difficult stretch. He is trying to create a structure strong enough that players begin regulating standards themselves.

Defenseman Cam York summed it up best on Tuesday, saying, "Honestly, just his personality and how he goes about his business fits well with our group and how we go about ours. In terms of video and stuff, compared to the staff before, I feel like we covered a lot more and I think that's good for our group. I just feel like, as a person, he's just the right guy for our team. The way he goes about his stuff, it just felt right with our group."

A big part of why this relationship between coach and players work is that Tocchet knows what it means to be a Flyer. Being led by a coach that is intimately familiar with the pressures of playing in front of Philadelphia and what it takes to earn the city's respect. That perspective likely shapes much of how he coaches now, and it doesn't go unnoticed. 

Alternate captain Travis Konecny who has been through seven head coaches in his Flyers career (including Tocchet and interim coaches), noted, "He understands it here. He understands the city. In some ways, a lot of the guys we have understand his style of play. A lot of the guys work hard and compete and he can relate to that. Being a player, he just understood us. We bonded with him, and he has a good staff around him; I love all the staff members here, they're great. They did an awesome job with that this summer."

What makes all of this significant is that it began before the Flyers started winning.

Back in September, before Tocchet fully knew what kind of group he had inherited, captain Sean Couturier described the relationship-building process already taking shape.

“It’s fun to just go back and forth, get to know each other, listen to each other’s thoughts on the game,” Couturier said. “I think we’re just trying to push in the same direction. Our goal is the same. There’s no ego.”

Throughout the season, the Flyers increasingly looked like a team operating with uncommon alignment between coaches, veterans, and younger players. There were difficult decisions—scratches role changes, and public criticism at times. But very rarely did the room appear fractured by it.

That does not happen accidentally. It happens when players trust that communication is honest and when coaches treat players like collaborators instead of underlings. It happens when younger players feel safe enough to ask questions instead of hiding uncertainty because they know their development isn't transactional.

The Flyers are still building. Tocchet himself has acknowledged repeatedly that the process is ongoing. This team remains imperfect, young, and unfinished.

But one thing became increasingly clear over the course of the season: The Flyers are trying to build more than systems and structure. They are trying to build an environment where players genuinely want to, and are given the space to, grow.