If you think that winning two playoff series with John Tortorella behind the bench over the 12 years after he left Broadway in 2013 looks good on his résumé and is worth the angst that always accompanies one of his administrations, be my guest and by all means hire this coach who essentially fired himself again last week in Philadelphia.
The brush paints the same broad strokes every time, whether in Tampa, New York, Vancouver, Columbus or Philadelphia. The Canucks represented a complete washout, but there was at least fleeting success everywhere else until Tortorella no longer could get out of his own way — which he never intends to do, anyway.
It is all about Tortorella everywhere he goes. There will always be a specific incident — apparently this time, as reported by The Athletic, a one-on-one interaction gone wrong with a 24-year-old player named Cam York — or a preponderance of evidence that the coach’s old-school approach has reached the diminishing-returns portion of the program.
In a league where the most consistently successful teams have coaches who lean young, or at least trust young, will you please identify the last marquee prospect to have soared under the scared-straight philosophy of Tortorella, who finally has just become another recyclable in the overstock bin?
