Selected by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the eighth round (No. 255) of the 2002 NHL Draft, Craig had 63 points (32 goals, 31 assists) in 198 regular-season games for the Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins and Columbus Blue Jackets and no points in 11 Stanley Cup Playoff games.<\/p>\n
“Interestingly, (Tortorella) had Ryan Craig as a player,” McCrimmon said. “He’s got the same opinion of Ryan Craig that most people do. I know he was disappointed because he did want to coach our team next year, but I know also he’s got a lot of regard for Ryan and a lot of respect for him.”<\/p>\n
Tortorella took over for Bruce Cassidy on March 29 with eight games remaining in the regular season. Vegas went 7-0-1 before a playoff run saw it advance to the Stanley Cup Final. The Golden Knights lost to the Carolina Hurricanes in six games.<\/p>\n
“We thank ‘Torts’ for the guidance he provided our team since joining the organization in March,” McCrimmon said. “When the decision was made to bring Torts to Vegas, we needed an immediate impact to help us at a pivotal point in the season. Torts’ experience and leadership proved to be the boost that we were looking for, helping guide us to the Stanley Cup Final.<\/p>\n
“We are grateful for Torts’ passion, sincerity, and commitment to our organization, and we wish him and his family the best.”<\/p>\n
In 24 seasons as a coach,\u00a0Tortorella is 777-648-166 with 37 ties for the Lightning, New York Rangers, Vancouver\u00a0Canucks, Blue Jackets, Philadelphia Flyers and the Golden Knights. He is 70-72 in the playoffs and won the Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004.<\/p>\n
The Edmonton Oilers are the only NHL team without a coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Selected by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the eighth round (No. 255) of the 2002 NHL Draft, Craig…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-710512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}