During the Rangers’ 3-2 overtime loss to the Maple Leafs last night, GM Glen Sather decided he needed to make some changes. In firing head coach Tom Renney this morning and replacing him with John Tortorella tonight, Sather made as big a change in personality behind the bench as he possibly could.
Fiery Tortorella, who won the Stanley Cup with the Lightning in 2004, is the polar opposite of calm and collected Renney.
“Yes, I think that (Tortorella) is gonna bring a lot more fire to his game and approach,” Sather said on a conference call announcing the hire. “That’s not to be critical of Tom’s approach, but that’s just his personality. A lot of our guys have thrived under that kind of coaching in the past, and I just thought we needed to get more of that in there.”
After the Rangers started the season 10-2-1, they have been mediocre (21-21-6). Sather came to the decision to fire Renney, along with assistant coach Perry Pearn, as the team dropped 10 of its past 12 games.
“I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple weeks,” Sather said. “I could see the team was starting to slide.
“I wish it didn’t have to come to this but it did, and the last two or three games it was pretty obvious we had to have something done.”
The Rangers are tied for fifth in the Eastern Conference, but two points ahead of ninth-place Carolina. The top eight teams makes the playoffs.
Sather has little experience with Tortorella, who was an assistant and interim head coach with the Rangers in 1999-2000. However, his new coach has known Rangers assistant GM Jim Schoenfeld since he was Schoenfeld’s assistant with the Coyotes in the late 1990s.
After speaking with Schoenfeld about Tortorella, Sather was sold on the idea he and Tortorella could work well together.
“Well I think he has a reputation that precedes him,” Sather said of Tortorella. “(Schoenfeld) thinks our attitudes and desires are going to mesh quite easily. John works hard and is very demanding … he’s gonna bring several things back to our game that I think we needed at this stage.”
Among Tortorella’s responsibilities will be to get the best out of some of the Rangers’ free-agent acquisitions who have struggled so far this season.
The team has 21 games remaining.
“I think some of the players we brought in are better than they have played up to date,” Sather said. “A lot of these players we have here have played well in the past, and I expect them to play well in the future.”