Rick Tocchet Autographed Card

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I thought we could take the opportunity, during the NHL All-Star break, to look at Rick Tocchet's job as head coach of the Arizona Coyotes midway through his second season - possibly midway through his tenure, who knows?

Last season, the Coyotes finished with a 29-41-12 record, "good" for the eighth and final spot in the Pacific division. This was whiz "fancy" stats kid GM John Chayka's second full season with the team - a second major overhaul.

This year, so far, the team stands at 23-23-4, in sixth place in the league's weakest division, just one point ahead of the Edmonton Oilers, and six ahead of the Los Angeles Kings. Its leading scorer is sophomore Clayton Keller who, at 35 points in 50 games, places 90th in the league, meaning there are on average three players (an entire line!) per other team ahead of him. Keller is also -14, one better than star defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson (-15). That puts Keller 598th in the NHL, and OEL 806th. Out of 825 players who have suited up for at least a game this season.

Star goaltender Antti Raanta is out for the season having just played 12 games (5-6 record with a 2.88 GAA and .906 save percentage, middling backup numbers anyway), leaving Darcy Kuemper and Calvin Pickard to shoulder the workload.

Compared to the two teams within their reach - the Vancouver Canucks with Jacob Markstrom and the Anaheim Ducks with the best goalie this year in John Gibson - it seems like the 'Yotes are bringing a plastic spoon to a gun fight.

I'm not sure if Tocchet has what it takes to compete with the best head coaches in the business - the likes of Barry Trotz, Jon Cooper, Peter Laviolette, Ken Hitchcock, Claude Julien, John Tortorella, and Guy Boucher, heck even the unemployed Alain Vigneault and Darryl Sutter, or the KHL-exiled Bob Hartley - but I do feel like he's not given the best tools to give it his best shot, unlike his days coaching the Tampa Bay Lightning when he had a Hall of Famer (Martin St-Louis) and three perennial All-Stars and award-winners (Vincent Lecavalier, Brad Richards and a young Victor Hedman).

We'll see in due time how he fares.

In the meantime, here's a blast from the past, Tocchet wearing the alternate captain's "A" while playing for the Prince Of Wales Conference at the 42nd All-Star Game in Chicago:

That's card #311 from Pro Set's 1991-92 Series 1 set (the entirely French Canadian version). Those were nice All-Star Game uniforms!

Of note, Tocchet had a goal (assisted by Pat Verbeek and Joe Sakic) and an assist (on a goal by Kevin  Stevens) in an 11-5 loss to the Clarence Campbell Conference in that game, which was his third of four All-Star Games (1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993).

Rick Tocchet Autograph Card

Rick Tocchet.

I wasn't a huge fan of his during his playing days, when he was a power forward comparable to Wendel Clark, Dino Ciccarelli, Brian Bellows and Ray Sheppard, a notch below the pre-eminent one of the 1980s (Cam Neely) and the perfected versions of the 1990s (Eric Lindros, Todd Bertuzzi).

That being said - and even when contextualizing that his best seasons took place between 1987 and 1993, at the height of NHL scoring prowess and right before the Dead Puck Era - one has to give him his dues: fans and head coaches loved him, as can be attested by his four (1989, 1990, 1991 and 1993) All-Star Game appearances; he reached the 40-goal plateau three times, twice with the Philadelphia Flyers (45 in 1988-89 and 40 in 1990-91) and once with the Pittsburgh Penguins (48 in 1992-93, which ranked third on the team behind Mario Lemieux's 69 and Kevin Stevens' 55); he surpassed the 100-point mark in 1992-93, one of four members of the Pens to do so that year, with Jaromir Jagr's 94 just shy of making it five; he won the Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh in 1991-92; and he holds the Flyers' career mark for Gordie Howe hat tricks (with 9), as well as the entire NHL's (with 18).

He also surpassed the 200-PIM mark four times during his career, and had at least 150 penalty minutes nine times.

He played for the Flyers (twice), the Pens, two half-seasons with the Los Angeles Kings and the same with the Boston Bruins and Phoenix Coyotes while I stopped actively following hockey, before going back to Philly to bookend a career that saw him score 440 regular-season goals with 512 assists for 952 points in 1144 games, with 2972 penalty minutes around all that production.

His playoff contributions amounted to 52 goals, 60 assists and 112 points with 471 penalty minutes in 145 games. He reached the Conference Finals twice with the Flyers, in 1987 and 2000.

After his playing career, he became an assistant coach (to Wayne Gretzky) with the Coyotes. His tenure was most notable for having been named the leader in a gambling ring that put Gretzky's wife, Janet Jones, in the spotlight in 2006.

He followed that up with a head coaching stint with the Tampa Bay Lightning, missing the playoffs twice with terrible records:

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Keep in mind those teams included Martin St-Louis, Vincent Lecavalier and Steven Stamkos up front both years, and Alex Tanguay on left wing and Victor Hedman on defense the second...

And yet, now that he's helped the Pens to consecutive Cup wins as an assistant to head coach Mike Sullivan, he interviewed for many teams this summer, eventually finding a fit back to a two-time stomping ground - the Arizona Coyotes. None of the articles I've read mention how long his contract is for; then again, he's already the franchise's 18th head coach, the 7th since its move to the desert.

Speaking of which, here he is wearing the team's "Peyote Coyote" jersey design ("dark" away version), on the silver signed insert version of card #105 from In The Game's 1998-99 Be A Player set:

I miss those uniforms...

Rick Tocchet Autograph Card

Power forward: a rare type of hockey player who possesses both the skills of a sniper (capability to score goals) and a grinder (hard-nosed role player who hits opponents in order to retrieve the puck and/or extenuate them). Usually among the most respected in the dressing room.

Examples: Jarome Iginla, John LeClair, Keith Primeau, Todd Bertuzzi, Cam Neely.

And Rick Tocchet.

I'll forever associate Tocchet to the Philadelphia Flyers, because he spent his first 7 1/2 and last 2 1/2 seasons with them, but he might like to have a special thought for the Stanley Cup he won with the star-studded Pittsburgh Penguins in 1992.

He ended his career with 440 regular-season goals, 952 points and 2972 PIMs (yes, nearly 3000!) to go with a 52-60-112 production in 145 playoff games (471 PIMs), a Cup, another Finals, and a Conference Finals with the Flyers in 2000 in which he managed 11 points in 18 playoff games near the end of his career. He was also a four-time All-Star.

He amassed 150 penalty minutes or more (three times near the 300 mark) in his first 9 seasons ending his streak with 252 in 1992-93, nearing that plateau again in 1997-98 (157) and 1998-99 (147) as a member of the Phoenix Coyotes. That's just about where this card comes in, their original ''coyote on peyote'' white (home) uniform:

It's from Pinnacle's 1997-98 Be A Player (127 in the set) signed on-card in black sharpie. Apart from the autograph, the cards are exactly the same as the regular version, so you always had to be extra careful when opening packs to look for the 'special' ones. I've seen people open a pack in a store, get one auto and throw the rest away, and of course there'd be another one in it!

On a lesser note, he played a year and a half for the Los Angeles Kings, two half-seasons with the Boston Bruins and 13 games with the Washington Capitals, but non-hockey fans will mostly remember him from having run an illegal gambling ring while an assistant coach in Phoenix (one of his high-profile clients was Janet Jones, Wayne Gretzky's wife) while hockey trivia aficionados will remember his short head coaching stint with the Tampa Bay Lightning in which he merely won 53 of 148 games, finishing 5th and 4th of the worst division in the league, back when the franchise was a joke.