John Tortorella Expected To Stay As The Head Coach of the Flyers
Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet joined Scott Laughlin and Gord Stellick of Sirius XM NHL Network Radio on Wednesday morning. When asked about Philadelphia’s coaching situation, he believed John Tortorella was going to be back behind the bench.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
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Scott Laughlin: “But I want to ask you, Friedge, about the Flyers because we said to Jim Jackson when he joined us yesterday, look, you’ve got the one side of the Flyers fan base that says, you know what, the John Tortorella burn these guys out. He was too hard on these players. They had nothing left to give in the end. John Tortorella is gonna go.
And then you had the other side saying, look at the job he’s done. If he gets the team in, he should win the Jack Adams Award, too. So you’ve got the 180-degree difference, it seems like, even within the city of Philadelphia, as to how to proceed with John Tortorella. Any doubt in your mind that this coaching situation remains in place going in next season in Philadelphia?”
Elliotte Friedman: “Flyers have been adamant that it’s not changing. And the one thing I always do, Scott is at the end of every season, I look back, and I say what was expected and what was expected of Philly this year, not much. You cannot argue that anyone expected anything of the Flyers? Nobody did. And they came within minutes of making it.
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Now, I think you could look at any you can say, look, I think the Flyers could say they have more information than anybody else. They know what went right and they know what went wrong.
And Keith Jones has said on and on and off the record that he believes John Tortorella was a big part of Philly’s growth this year. When you take a look at a lot of the young players who took big steps, that’s what they wanted, and he felt Tortorella was an important part of that.
Now, you can look at it and say now, if something happened in the last couple of weeks, that Philly might want to say hey, you go to dial it down or, Hey, we’ve got to do things differently, possibly, but in last, the Flyers have been completely lying to everybody, or something changed very recently.
They have made it very clear that they think Tortorella is a big part of it, and he’s staying, so that’s what I expect unless, for any reason, Tortorella doesn’t want to, which I don’t believe is the case. So, you know, I think it’s I think it’s pretty simple, but he’s going to be back.”