John Tortorella sat down with The Athletic this week for his first public comments since the Vegas Golden Knights told him he wouldn’t be back, and the 68-year-old didn’t mince words about where he stands.
“Oh, I want to coach,” Tortorella said. “I want to coach now. I’m not sure if that happens, and that’s where I am in my career. But I wanted to coach that Vegas team. I told (general manager Kelly McCrimmon) that.”
Tortorella replaced Bruce Cassidy on March 29 with eight games left in the regular season. Vegas had lost 12 of 16 and looked like a team running on fumes. Under Tortorella, they went 7-0-1, won the Pacific Division, and ripped through three playoff rounds — including a sweep of the Presidents’ Trophy-winning Colorado Avalanche — before falling to the Carolina Hurricanes in six games in the Stanley Cup Final.
Not bad for a fella who was working television at the start of the year.
The morning after Game 6, McCrimmon sat Tortorella down and, within a minute, told him Ryan Craig would coach the team next season. Craig played for Tortorella in Tampa Bay from 2005 to 2008 and spent nine years climbing the ladder in the Vegas organization — six as an NHL assistant, three as head coach of their AHL club in Henderson.
“I guess the word I’d use is ‘Disappointed,'” Tortorella said. “We didn’t finish the job, and I wanted some more time with that club to try to finish the job. That’s not my call. That’s the general manager and president’s call.”
But he bore no grudge. “They’ve been developing (Craig) for a number of years there,” Tortorella said. “He’s a good coach and a good man.” The two have spoken several times this summer. “I want to help him any way I can,” Tortorella said, recalling Craig as a player who “couldn’t skate” but was “so smart, so cerebral, such a great pro at an early age.”
Tortorella also used the interview to address the $100,000 fine and lost second-round draft pick that the NHL levied after he skipped a postgame press conference during the second round against Anaheim. He said it wasn’t about ducking the media — it was about a scheduling snarl. Ducks coach Joel Quenneville was supposed to go second but went first and ran long. Tortorella said he was standing in the hallway at Honda Center, asking his PR person to get him to the room, and finally chose to join his team on the bus rather than hold them up after a series-clinching win.
“I was not going to hold up my hockey team after eliminating a team from the playoffs,” he said. “I’m going with my hockey team. I own that.”
On the Final itself, Tortorella pointed to a turnover in Game 2 in Carolina — a defensive-zone faceoff win that Vegas fumbled away, leading to Logan Stankoven’s wraparound goal — as the kind of play that tilts a series. He also praised Hurricanes goalie Brandon Bussi, who came on in relief of the injured Frederik Andersen in Game 3 and “played some incredible games.”
As for his own goaltending, Tortorella stood by Carter Hart, who gave up four goals in five of the six Final games and finished with an .863 save percentage — the worst in a Final in 35 years. Adin Hill, who backstopped Vegas to the 2023 Cup, sat on the bench the entire series. Tortorella’s reasoning was straightforward: Hill hadn’t played since April 9. “Hilly hadn’t played in 65 days,” he said. “We were going with Carter. If it happened again the same way, we would go with Carter.”
That’s the kind of call a coach makes and lives with. You ride the guy who got you there. The film doesn’t lie about what Hart did in the first three rounds, and it doesn’t lie about what happened in the Final, either.
Tortorella has 777 wins across 1,628 games and 24 seasons with six franchises. He won the Stanley Cup with Tampa Bay in 2004 and served as an assistant on Team USA’s Olympic gold-medal staff in February. He’s the second-winningest American-born coach in NHL history, behind Peter Laviolette’s 846.
What’s next is uncertain. He’s done television work for ESPN before, and that door may open again if no bench materializes. For now, he and his wife Christine have been back at their Florida home for about a week, after visiting her family in Minnesota. He’s been talking with former players who’ve moved into coaching — the “little fraternity,” he called it — and keeping his mind in the game.
Three decades in, 777 wins on the board, and the man still wants the whistle. Whether anyone hands it to him is the only question left.
Sources
- The Athletic — John Tortorella exclusive interview
- NHL.com — Tortorella unsure of future after Final loss
- Bleacher Report — Golden Knights announce Tortorella won’t return
- The Athletic — Questions facing Tortorella and Vegas after Final