new AHL coach, Stu Bickel,<\/a> and, coincidentally, the coach who replaced Tortorella in Vegas, Ryan Craig. The coaching world is a \u201clittle fraternity,\u201d Tortorella said, and the 68-year-old isn\u2019t ready to leave it after three decades.<\/p>\n\u201cBut I also understood Kelly and (team president George McPhee)\u2019s point of view,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been developing (Craig) for a number of years there. He\u2019s a good coach and a good man.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tortorella replaced Bruce Cassidy on March 29, with eight games remaining in the regular season, and Vegas went 7-0-1 in those games before its run to the Final, where the Golden Knights lost in six games to the Carolina Hurricanes.<\/p>\n
NHL free agency: Early winners and losers<\/p>\n
Shayna Goldman and Madison Eades<\/p>\n
Tortorella is grateful for his time with Vegas but said he wanted to \u201cfinish the job.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI guess the word I\u2019d use is \u2018Disappointed,\u2019\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cI was honest with Kelly. We met the next morning (after Game 6). \u2026 Kelly is very honest, and he let me know within one minute of sitting down in that meeting \u2014 he basically told me, \u2018Ryan Craig is coaching the team next year.\u2019 I told him what I thought, and we had an honest conversation. I truly respect where the organization is going.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t finish the job, and I wanted some more time with that club to try to finish the job. That\u2019s not my call. That\u2019s the general manager and president\u2019s call. You just get about your business after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tortorella won the Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004 and has 777 wins in 1,628 games in a 24-year career, coaching for the Lightning, New York Rangers, Vancouver Canucks, Columbus Blue Jackets, Philadelphia Flyers and Golden Knights. He\u2019s 70-72 in the Stanley Cup playoffs and is the second-winningest American-born coach behind Peter Laviolette (846 wins).<\/p>\n
But going on another deep run was certainly invigorating \u2014 especially after years of coaching less-developed teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved it. I loved the teaching part of it,\u201d he said. \u201cI loved coaching in Philly, Columbus, when we were building that. But when I went to Vegas, a team laden with veterans \u2014 they had won in \u201923, a lot of them \u2014 the information I got when I got there was there wasn\u2019t a whole bunch of confidence within the group. That\u2019s how we attacked it. I get to coach a different way. I get to coach with them, not at them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t the time of year to coach at them anyway. It was the time of year to coach with them with a veteran group. I have made no bones about it. I loved working there. I thought the group \u2014 the locker room was solid, with great leadership. I wanted to still be part of that, and I was very fortunate to be part of that those three months.\u201d<\/p>\n
The series with Carolina was an extremely tight one, with plenty of swings. It\u2019s hard for Tortorella not to wonder \u201cwhat if?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s certain plays within the game that change the series,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cI look at Game 2 in Carolina, where we win the defensive-zone faceoff, we turn it over really for no reason. We just need to keep pushing it up the ice. We turn it over, and (Logan Stankoven) scores this little wraparound goal that bounced off a couple people. Gave them some juice. That was right after Mitch Marner hit the crossbar.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Mitchy scores, I think we walk away with two wins out of Carolina. Who knows where it goes from there?\u201d<\/p>\n
In Tortorella\u2019s view, the key to the series was Brandon Bussi coming on in relief of Frederik Andersen in Game 3 after the veteran goalie gave up four goals. It later came out that Andersen had suffered a knee injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cBussi came in and played some incredible games,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cWe had a tough time beating him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vegas goalie Carter Hart also struggled in the Final, giving up four goals in five of the six games. But Tortorella stood by his decision not to turn to Adin Hill, who won the Cup with the 2023 team but hadn\u2019t appeared in a game since April 9.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure there was a lot of criticism on that,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cBut you know what? Hilly hadn\u2019t played in 65 days. We didn\u2019t practice a lot. There wasn\u2019t a lot of game situations. We were going with Carter. If it happened again the same way, we would go with Carter. He deserved to work through it. He gave us an opportunity to go to the Final the way he played in the first three rounds, especially the early rounds. \u2026 We trusted Carter.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any regrets overall on the series?<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cWe had to play a style of game against Carolina in the Final that might have been a different tilt a bit for some guys. \u2026 I think there\u2019s a certain style we have to play against that team. I thought we did for probably 85 or 90 percent of the time. When we didn\u2019t, it cost us, and that\u2019s how good Carolina was. We had to be a very patient team in that hockey series, play along the boards, make sure they come 200 (feet), not give them any chance for turnovers, and I thought we did a really good job of that, and when we didn\u2019t, they made us pay.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tortorella also addressed skipping a postgame news conference during the second round against the Anaheim Ducks. He explained that he was supposed to have his availability before Ducks coach Joel Quenneville\u2019s, due to an agreement made before the series, but Quenneville went first after the elimination game and ran long. Tortorella said he was in the hall of the Honda Center asking his PR person to get him to the media but eventually decided to join his team.<\/p>\n
As a result, Tortorella was fined $100,000 and the Golden Knights were docked a second-round pick in June\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat wasn\u2019t me not wanting to do the press,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cThat was me not wanting to hold up my team. I had to make a decision. \u2026 I was not going to hold up my hockey team after eliminating a team from the playoffs. I had to make a decision: to wait for Joel to finish and talk to you guys and hold up my hockey team, or go on the bus with my hockey team. I\u2019m going with my hockey team. I own that. There was no underlying (issue). It was just bad timing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tortorella said he has a good relationship with the Vegas brass and talked to McPhee this week. And he\u2019s had several conversations this summer with Craig, who played for Tortorella in Tampa Bay from 2005-08. Craig spent six years as a Vegas assistant and the past three years leading their AHL club, Henderson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to help him any way I can,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cI had Craigger for a little bit, and I could tell Ryan Craig wanted to be a coach. You could see how mature he was when he came to us in Tampa and how smart he was. He couldn\u2019t skate. I\u2019m watching this guy: \u2018How does he play in this league?\u2019 But he was so smart, so cerebral, such a great pro at an early age. You knew it was going (to lead) to something like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been there nine years. He has gone through the whole process. So I understand the process, and I don\u2019t hold any grudges at all, especially when it comes to Ryan Craig getting a job in the National Hockey League. It\u2019s just weird for me, having coached this guy and then we\u2019re talking, and I\u2019m thinking maybe I want to finish the job and Kelly came in and said within 30 seconds that Craigger is in.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for what\u2019s next for Tortorella, he isn\u2019t sure. He\u2019s had experience on TV with ESPN, but it\u2019s unclear if he\u2019ll return to that if a coaching job doesn\u2019t present itself. For now, everything is still sinking in. After the Final, he and his wife, Christine, spent a few weeks in Minnesota visiting her family, and they have been back in their Florida home for only a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t even thought about it,\u201d Tortorella said. \u201cI\u2019m still, quite honestly, I\u2019m still trying to swallow how close we were, and honestly, swallow how I really wanted to coach that hockey team, too. I loved being part of (the Golden Knights) the short time I was in it. I wanted to be in it longer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Tortorella isn\u2019t done. Speaking publicly for the first time since the Vegas Golden Knights announced just after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":821480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,3936,3617,575,3065,85,4788,2371,7529],"class_list":["post-821479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-nhl","tag-philadelphia-flyers","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-lightning","tag-vancouver-canucks","tag-vegas-golden-knights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821479","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=821479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/821480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}