\u201cJust that, the layoff \u2026 it\u2019s a lot of days, and I’ll tell you right now, it worries the crap out of me,\u201d Tortorella said of the six days between games for Vegas.<\/p>\n
He then softened his stance. After watching his veteran team take to the ice for a crisp enthusiastic practice, he said he was impressed from what he saw.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a good group that\u2019s going to handle it the right way. We have a plan to try to be as prepared as we can. \u2026 I just worry about you losing your edge for just a little bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
He paused for a moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI trust the group,\u201d he then added.<\/p>\n
And they trust him.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a two-way relationship that has the Golden Knights just four victories away from the second Stanley Cup championship in franchise history, a concept that seemed so farfetched when Tortorella replaced the fired Bruce Cassidy as coach on March 29.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s one that has the 67-year-old feeling grateful just to have this opportunity.<\/p>\n
Sure, there are signs of the ornery coach that has shown he can be tight-lipped, if not snappy, at press conferences, for more than two decades. As such, he was fined $100,000 for failing to address the media earlier this month after the Golden Knights had just eliminated the Anaheim Ducks in the Western Conference Second Round.<\/p>\n
At the same time, there are indications that, at this advanced point in his career, in his life, he\u2019s appreciating every single moment of this latest ride.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cJust that, the layoff \u2026 it\u2019s a lot of days, and I’ll tell you right now, it worries…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-703622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}