Discouraged by an early-season loss to the Oilers, Rangers coach John Tortorella held a 16-second press conference where he left without taking any questions. Tortorella will have a much harder time avoiding the cameras and microphones over the next month.
HBO began shooting for their four-episode 24/7 series earlier this week, which will provide behind-the-scenes coverage of the Rangers leading into their Winter Classic matchup with the Flyers on Jan. 2. Tortorella has a reputation keeping things private, but he had to make assurances to the cable network and NHL that he would not interfere with the work of the HBO crews.
“The coach has made it clear that, yes, he is concerned about things that provide glimpses at their strategy and possibly with their injuries, but he has not given us restrictions on what we can do,” HBO’s coordinator producer Dave Harmon said.
“We are expecting the full cooperation of the Rangers. We are not expecting any less than we got from the Penguins, Capitals or what we are to get from the Flyers. Until I see otherwise, I’m not worried about it.”
The Rangers may be in a welcoming mood for their new guests having won five of their past six games heading into last night’s game with the Lightning. When Washington and Pittsburgh were shown last year, viewers got to witness the lows of the Capitals’ eight-game losing streak followed by winning four out of five heading into their New Year’s Day matchup with the Penguins. The most infamous highlight from the series was then Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau Bruce Boudreau cursing up a storm after one of his team’s defeats.
“We are coming into their house and everyone runs their house differently. That’s part of what we established the first year is that we can be a little flexible, it’s not one size fits all,” NHL COO John Collins said of the show, which premieres Wednesday night.
“The one thing is we need access and that needs to continue throughout the series. You have to give Washington credit because they were going through a tough stretch that they ultimately turned around, but they never restricted the access, never threw the cameras out and it just made for some incredibly compelling television.”
HBO will have nine crew members and three cameras with the Rangers for 30 days, which started Dec. 5 and runs just beyond their game in Philadelphia played at Citizen’s Bank Park. Teams will not have the chance to look at the final copy of the show, but while the cameras are shooting they can tell producers that certain shots are “off limits.”
“But we’ve found with ‘Hard Knocks’ and the NHL so far that that is incredibly rare,’’ Harmon said. “It’s more is in the training room with injuries than it is with anything else, where there’s doctor/patient privilege and things like that that teams simply don’t want the rest of the league finding out about.”