John Tortorella is a great coach – but he wasn’t the right one for the Flyers
As head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers, John Tortorella was a square peg in a round hole.
Relieved of his duties earlier Thursday, Tortorella wrapped up his tenure in Philadelphia with 97-107-33 showing and no playoff appearances.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk chatted about why Tortorella’s coaching style was a poor fit for the current state of the Flyers.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Reading Daniel Briere’s statement from this morning, I love that Briere pointed out just how much work Tortorella does in the community. As much as ‘Torts’ is a prickly character in front of the camera, and as a coach, but as a person I think everyone recognizes and respects what he does away from the rink. But there was a line [in Briere’s statement] where he said, ‘John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set the standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Flyer.’ The reason I want to bring this is up is you don’t exactly tie in ‘Torts’ with what he has done in his career with a guy who would be a good coach for a rebuild.
Frank Seravalli: Because he’s not.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Because he’s not. And where I wanted to go with this, and I don’t want it to come off in the wrong way, but if you gave the Flyers, in some magical world, a re-do, do you think they’d want to re-do this hire? When you look back, was he maybe not the right guy to bring in and take on this kind of challenge?
Frank Seravalli: I have been saying it for three years on our show. I mean, he is an undeniably great coach. Please do not mistake the message. An undeniably great coach, but a poor coach for a team embarking on a rebuild. And to be fair, and I think this should be pointed out when you ask the question about a re-do, Tortorella was not hired by Briere and Keith Jones. They inherited him. They were in a spot where they have this guy making, by NHL coaching standards, pretty massive money. He was on a four-year, $16-million deal. They’re not in a position to just chuck that out the window the first five minutes they arrive. When it comes to setting the standard, my issue with that is Tortorella is not the arbiter solely of what a standard is. I love that he has compete thresholds and he wants his teams to work as hard as possible, but when I say ‘great coach, wrong coach for a rebuild’ it’s because he also at the same time squeezes every drop out of every team that he has ever coached. When that’s the case, you have a year like last year where you’re picking in the middle of the first round as opposed to the top-five, and it just further delays the process that you’re trying to get to with finding high-quality players to build your team around. The next part of it is the drafting and development part, but Tortorella, and I want to say this very clearly, when he talks about playing the right way or what it takes to play the right way, I’m not saying that he doesn’t know what it is. Of course he does. He’s won a Stanley Cup and he’s beaten that into players year after year. But he’s not the sole arbiter of that.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here: