So it turns out you can teach an old salt like Glen Sather new tricks.
It turns out the Ranger GM who never before had hired a strong-minded, bombastic and independent head coach from outside his expansive circle of hockey friends did exactly that yesterday when he turned to John Tortorella to save the Rangers’ season, if not Sather’s very own legacy in New York.
But the time had come for drastic measures. The time had come for Sather to bring Tortorella, the 2004 Tampa Bay Stanley Cup-winning head coach, to New York to replace Tom Renney, whose ability to get the most out of his players had dissipated in a sea of lethargy during a 2-7-3 stretch that has imperiled the Rangers’ playoff possibilities.
“I wish it hadn’t come to this, but it did; the last two or three games, it became obvious that something had to be done,” Sather said in a conference call.
Tortorella is the coach who came to Tampa Bay in 2000-01 and stripped Vincent Lecavalier of his captaincy. He later benched the Lightning’s signature athlete for indifferent defensive play early in the 2003-04 season. The centerman responded to the tough love by evolving into one of the league’s great players.
Indeed, as interim coach of the Rangers for the final four games of 1999-2000 after John Muckler had been fired, Tortorella, an assistant coach throughout the year, refused to allow Theo Fleury to play in the season finale following one of his random acts of insubordination that previously had been tolerated.
There will be accountability. There will be performance and effort or there will be no ice time.
And there will be emotion. There will be emotion on the ice, and there will be emotion behind the bench, where Tortorella will be joined by Jim Schoenfeld as his lead assistant – Perry Pearn was also dismissed – in a reversal of roles from their days together on the Coyote coaching staff in the late ’90s.
“I think Torts is going to bring a lot more fire to the game, which is something I feel we needed,” Sather said of the head coach who will greet his team before this morning’s practice.
Sather accepted shared responsibility for the issues plaguing his team, while also pinning part of the blame on the players, who sure didn’t shed many tears.
“Certainly we needed something just to get us to play better,” captain Chris Drury said. “Whether it’s a different personality, a different voice, a different system, or a combination, but technically it might help us to try a different approach.”
Tortorella, who was dismissed by Tampa after last season and received a multi-year contract from Sather after receiving permission from the Lightning to hire him without yielding compensation, believes in attack hockey. So does the GM.
The Rangers should start their engines. If they don’t or can’t, they are in for a bumpy ride.
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While working this year for TSN, Tortorella was dismissive of Sean Avery. But that doesn’t mean the end of the road back to Broadway for No. 16, not at all. “John doesn’t know Sean the way we do,” Sather said. “Over time, he’ll learn to love him the way I have.”