Tag: John Tortorella

The creepy ventriloquist dummy from Goosebumps tried to scare Flyers coach John Tortorella behind the bench

WATCH OUT, TORTS!

If you’re in the team box at an NHL game, you might want to look behind you every now and again for who might be lurking behind the glass.

For the Philadelphia Flyers’ Thursday night tilt against the Minnesota Wild, Slappy the evil ventriloquist dummy from the new Disney+ adaptation of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books showed up for some Halloween haunts.

Slappy got great seats for the Flyers’ game against the Wild, and he got a prime opportunity to give Philadelphia head coach John Tortorella a really good scare as he lingered right behind Torts as he was coaching.

It was great to hear the ESPN broadcast yell for Tortorella not to turn around with Slappy right behind him.

Hey, at least Gritty wasn’t afraid to welcome Slappy to the City of Brotherly Love.

Well, being that it’s prime spooky season, Slappy was right where he belonged at the Flyers game.

Maybe he and Gritty went trick-or-treating at the period breaks?

Feature image courtesy of ESPN.

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John Tortorella gave a brutally honest summary of the Flyers first period effort in ESPN interview

“We suck!”

Hockey fans know that John Tortorella is not one to mince words.

Tortorella is now back in the NHL head coaching world as the bench boss of the Philadelphia Flyers after giving up his post as an analyst on ESPN. The Flyers have had an up and down start to the 2022-23 season, which began quite well but the team has since lost five of its last seven games, with Philadelphia’s last three losses in a row coming by three or more goals.

So, it’s safe to say that perpetual grump Tortorella — who once criticized Connor McDavid for the star’s complaints about in-game officiating — is not taking the Flyers recent slump well.

On Tuesday, the Flyers left the first period against Tortorella’s former team, the Columbus Blue Jackets, down 1-0. After the goal, ESPN remotely checked in with Tortorella for a bench interview and the head coach was hilariously curt in his feelings about the Flyers effort so far.

Now that is the most John Tortorella answer possible! A perfect response from one of the NHL’s most quotable personalities in the game.

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Tracking every available major NHL head coach during the 2022 offseason

The NHL coaching market is a deep one this year.

The NHL head coaching market is going to be a wild one for the 2022 offseason.

While the Stanley Cup playoffs are still ongoing, one of the biggest stories in hockey at the moment is the gargantuan list of head coaches on the market and the team vacancies available. Normally, there are a handful of teams and only a few major names available for coaching positions, but the 2022 offseason will have some surprisingly good coaches looking for jobs.

With Tuesday’s report from NHL Network’s Kevin Weekes that Bruce Cassidy is headed to the Golden Knights, there are now five teams in the market for a head coach. Those teams include:

  1. Philadelphia Flyers
  2. Boston Bruins
  3. Dallas Stars
  4. Winnipeg Jets
  5. Detroit Red Wings

It’s quite likely that list will grow in the weeks to come too. Honestly, the NHL’s head coaching carousel is probably going to be an even bigger watch than the upcoming free agent class, which is saying something.

Here are 11 major NHL head coach candidates to look out for during the 2022 offseason.

Connor McDavid claps back at John Tortorella’s criticisms with tongue-in-cheek response

Connor McDavid has had enough.

When Connor McDavid of all hockey players gets cheeky, you know something must have ruffled his usually stoic feathers.

On Thursday, McDavid fired back at criticisms lobbied against him from former NHL head coach and current ESPN analyst John Tortorella. In comments made on air last week, Tortorella was harsh on McDavid — who has critiqued referees in the past for putting their whistles away against him — and stated that the Edmonton Oilers star needed to change his game to win in this league.

“Yeah and he complained about it a little bit, that he wasn’t getting the calls,” Tortorella said. “Quite honestly, just shut up. Don’t talk about it.”

“I do think he has to change his game a bit. Not turn into a checker, obviously. He’s talked about culture, he’s talked about standards, he’s talked about winning. You’re not just going to fill the net during the playoffs and outscore teams. You have to play on the other side of the puck. You have to have that business-type attitude of, ‘Nothing’s going to bother me, no matter how you’re going to check me.’”

It took a week for McDavid to be asked by the media if he deserves to have more calls go his way, and his brief — but effective response — was a clear shot at Tortorella: “I guess I just gotta shut up about this.”

According to Evolving Hockey, and via The Athletic, McDavid is 113th in the league with 1.21 minor penalties drawn per 60 minutes of play.

For a player as highly skilled as McDavid, there’s no way he shouldn’t be drawing more penalties as the fastest, most explosive center in the sport. The total of minor penalties per game has been dropping season-by-season as well in what is a clear overall shift of the NHL’s priorities in how the league wants the game to be managed.

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John Tortorella slams the Blackhawks for ignoring sexual assault

“I just don’t get why one guy couldn’t just stand up and say, ‘You know what? No. This is wrong.'”

We’ve seen examples of people inside the NHL who don’t get it in their reactions to the Chicago Blackhawks sexual assault scandal, a reminder that hockey culture is still very much a problem that needs to be addressed.

But former Rangers, Lightning, Canucks and Blue Jackets head coach John Tortorella — known for letting expletives fly and for his fiery press conferences — said exactly what so many have after a report revealed members of the coaching staff and front office failed to report sexual assault allegations involving video coach Brad Aldrich and two players on the team.

“This wasn’t a one-man decision,” he said. “It’s multiple people. I just don’t get why one guy couldn’t just stand up and say, ‘You know what? No. This is wrong.'”

“This is sexual assault, which casts a shadow over the game of hockey,” he added. “That’s what’s crazy to me, that one man couldn’t stand up and say, ‘You know what? No way. We have to get this straightened out right now.”

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