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You can only try to come up with so many different ways to say the same thing, but maybe it’s the best to make it extremely simple: The Philadelphia Flyers had a very bad weekend and head coach Rick Tocchet is asking some questions of his roster.

After losing a disheartening game against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday, the very next day the Flyers hosted the NHL’s worst team in the Calgary Flames. And they applied almost zero offensive pressure in the 2-1 loss — a performance that is honestly somewhat baffling to think of. Yes, they were without their two-way stud winger Tyson Foerster as he is injured after blocking a shot, but one absence shouldn’t make them put in the performance they did.

The Flames are expected to not be a very good team with a whole lot of firepower, but the Flyers losing the shot battle 21-18 in all situations and 19-17 at 5-on-5, is just miserable hockey. And all of that is forcing Tocchet to really take a look around the locker room and ask himself who has the desire to push this team.

Tocchet wants to see players step up

Tocchet spoke with the media after the loss to the Flames and when the topic of whether or not he is hopeful that players will start buying into his systems and plans on the ice, he said yes but wanted to point out what’s going on currently.

“I mean, listen, there’s been some chunks of our game we’ve liked, but when there’s some will, and our will is being tested right now and we need some guys to step up, like you know, leadership,” he said. “I’m an honest guy, I’m not ripping our players but we need some guys to get some will. I think we have a couple guys the last two, three games that are accepting that it’s just another hockey game. The fans pay a lot of money here to watch games and I don’t think we have them a half-decent product the last two games. I think they were kind of a boring game and it falls on myself. I got to get these guys to start to show some will.”

Tocchet gives an interesting mix of putting the ownness on himself to motivate this Flyers roster to reach their potential and play very solid hockey, but also somewhat puts it on the players at the same time. Needing players to just, generally, care about the result and what is going on throughout the game.

The Flyers head coach was then asked if it’s more of a mental issue than something to do with health or skill.

“I think a lot of it,” Tocchet said. ” A little bit of will, things like that. I mean, it was an ugly game. I feel bad for the fans — it wasn’t a fun game to watch. [The Flames] weren’t doing much either. They got their two goals from a screen and a tip — that’s what we’re looking for and they did it twice and they scored.”

Having the 2025-26 Calgary Flames be a better vision for what you want to do offensively, is not a great look. The Flames did end up getting into the dirty areas of the ice to score the two goals that somehow led them to earning the two points in regulation and Tocchet just wants to see more of that from his team,

But, how do they get there? Is there something that has to change with his lineup? The personnel on this team?

“Well, you have to keep pounding it,” Tocchet said. “And we have to find people who want to continue to do it, so we’ll find them but it’s my job to get these guys to do it.

“We had a good record going in to two games ago, but the will wasn’t there the last few games. We just haven’t had the will. A microcosm at the end there: We have a guy in the slot and the two guys go to the side of the net. You know, the goalie makes the save, but nobody’s in front of the net. We haven’t had a practice the last couple of days — I think we’re going to have to do a lot of net-front drills, like almost constantly. We’re going to have to get it ingrained in these guys.”

It’s not great when it’s barely November and your head coach is already talking about finding different players who will actually want to play in his system and do what he wants on the ice.

“They want to play in the easy ice”

Tocchet continued to touch on how much the Flyers’ offense was geared towards staying on the perimeter and playing in the areas of the ice that were less difficult. And, just how that is not how you play a winning style of hockey in the NHL.

“It’s hard to win in this league. If you want to play in April and March and May, you got to play hard hockey. And I think we’re finding easy ice. A lot of guys, even some of our best players, they want to play in the easy ice and not the hard ice. That’s the bottom line,” Tocchet said.

The Flyers did manage to finish the game with a 6-4 advantage in high-danger attempts but that is barely enough to get by. Only in their 4-1 win over the Nashville Predators last week, featured fewer high-danger attempts — every other game had six or more of those high-quality chances. It was during the thrilling 4-3 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes where the Flyers had the most, with a total of 14 high-danger attempts in that very positive defeat.

In addition to the vague and specific criticism, Tocchet responded to one of his star players giving his opinion. While speaking with the media after the loss, Travis Konecny said that the Flyers needed to get more bodies in front of the opposing netminder for better scoring chances. And, well, Tocchet agreed but maybe didn’t want that coming from that source.

“I think our D could do a better job of changing lanes and shooting, but he’s right. We just got to do it. I mean, we got to stop telling the press that we got to get to the front of the net, we just have to do it.”

We’ll just have to see where this takes the Flyers. They can either rise from this terrible weekend and play the hockey that the coaching staff wants (and hopefully it leads to more wins) or they can just be this bad for the next couple of months and we’re looking up the draft lottery odds before the calendar year even finishes.