Undoubtedly, the person who will have the greatest impact on the 2025-26 Philadelphia Flyers will be new head coach Rick Tocchet.
Tocchet, 61, is heading into his 10th season as an NHL head coach having only made the playoffs twice, and that's the level the Flyers are aspiring to reach.
But the Flyers are aspiring to reach that level as a step, not the endgame or ultimate goal. That's winning the Stanley Cup, which Tocchet has done twice as an assistant coach and once as a player.
The former Flyers forward returns to Philadelphia on the heels of a successful but volatile and tumultuous tenure with the Vancouver Canucks, which was, at the end, marred by injuries, locker room issues between star players, and an overarching failure to meet greater expectations.
For better or for worse, right or wrong, it was under Tocchet's guise that the feud between Elias Pettersson and J.T. Miller blew up, which led to the former suffering a career-worst 45-point season.
Franchise defenseman and Canucks captain Quinn Hughes is now on the verge of leaving if the team doesn't start winning soon, too.
Again, fairly or unfairly, the team reached this condition under Tocchet, even after an exhilarating 50-win, 100-point campaign only a year ago in 2023-24.
In his official return to Philadelphia with the Flyers, the affable bench boss will be tasked with developing players and winning games, of which Tocchet's history is questionable.
In Vancouver, players like Pettersson, Hughes, and Miller flourished, but the two forwards later crashed and burned at the hands of each other.
Ex-Flyers forward Andrei Kuzmenko was amazing at first, but flamed out under Tocchet. Top prospects like Vasily Podkolzin and Vitali Kravtsov didn't experience much success under Tocchet, either, and ended up leaving the Canucks.
Tocchet's time with the Arizona Coyotes might be his greatest success story in terms of winning and developing simultaneously, but how you take that depends on your own view.
For example, Clayton Keller had a 65-point age-19 season under Tocchet, but failed to crack 50 points in the three following seasons. Then, under Andre Tourigny, Keller has had no fewer than 63 points in each of the last four seasons, including a stellar 30-goal, 90-point campaign with the Utah Hockey Club last season.
Keller developed under Tocchet, but he didn't become a star under Tocchet. There's a difference. Just like how Matvei Michkov developed under John Tortorella, but won't become a star under the now-fired Tortorella.
And we can extrapolate this example for many such cases under Tocchet, for names like Jakob Chychrun, Dylan Strome, Lawson Crouse, and Nick Schmaltz.
With the Flyers, Tocchet is tasked with proving he's the guy who can get young players like Michkov, Tyson Foerster, Cam York, and more over the hump, rather than just showing them where the hump is.
On top of that is the general expectation of winning games and being better than the fourth-worst team in the NHL, which the Flyers were last season.
The bar starts very low, yes, but to which height is the extent of which the bar can be raised?
Viewed as a long-term solution behind the bench by GM Danny Briere and the Flyers, Tocchet must show that he can win, even though extended success historically been far and few between for the 61-year-old when leading the coaching staff himself.
Even with his age, experience, and playing pedigree, Rick Tocchet is effectively starting over and needing to prove himself all over again as the new Flyers head coach.
