Like it or not, Tortorella stands behind Fletcher
With 20 games remaining in what certainly seems to qualify as one of his worst experiences as an NHL head coach, John Tortorella seemed a little softened Sunday.
No surprise there, since his Flyers’ 39 cumulative losses entering a game against the Detroit Red Wings ranked them better than only one other team in the East, the Columbus Blue Jackets, the last team Tortorella coached before coming to Philadelphia.
Of course, there were a lot of victories over the 20 years he’s served as a head coach in the league, along with a Stanley Cup championship. In a few of those situations, success came at a development cost, Tortorella overseeing years-long player growth programs in Tampa, New York and Columbus, all those teams going from mediocre or worse into viable Cup contenders under his stewardship.
Along the way, the patently perturbable Tortorella has had to maintain his patience exercises, deep breathing in between moments of verbal fire directed at players, media members and probably a general manager or three along the way. Before the game against the Red Wings Sunday night, knowing the importance of finishing strong as players and as a team, Tortorella appeared sworn to patiently finishing out what will be a fourth playoff miss of a season in five years, rather than doing so by driving so many messages of urgency through his players’ helmets.
“We’ve talked about it enough,” Tortorella said. “I’m not going to try to beat them over the head with that. We’ve got good people. Sometimes you can almost insult them when you keep talking about it. So we’re going to let them play.”
Play on it was for a Flyers team that just rounded the bend of a bittersweet trade deadline two days beforehand. One in which embattled general manager Chuck Fletcher swung and missed in trying to deal veteran forward James van Riemsdyk, whose $7 million cap hit of a deal was coming to an end. At 33, JVR’s scoring skills diminshed, he still seemed a prototype for a rental player almost any Cup-hopeful team could use, especially on the power play.
Then again… “Nothing’s ever certain,” van Riemsdyk would say later, “until it’s done.”
Alas, what Fletcher said was a three-week effort went for naught. Van Riemsdyk stayed, and the uproar of what has become a much smaller Flyers fanbase blew up via social media. To Tortorella, it was time to play a little defense for his GM, and Saturday he took that opportunity and ran with it.
“Do you not think he tried to move him?” Tortorella asked. “You guys kidding me? He tried like hell to move him. … There’s so many different scenarios that went on. And I just don’t get the criticism of James still being here.”
Fletcher said he had even tried to offer to cover half of van Riemsdyk’s salary (and thus half of his $7 million payroll cap hit), but to no avail. Almost ironically it was only the Red Wings that showed serious interest, but the deal fell through.
So Fletcher, as has been his deserved fate since taking over for fired Ron Hextall in December of 2018, took another fan and media beating for not being able to swap van Riemsdyk for what would have been a mid-round draft pick. From his head coach, there was support, but also a co-admission guilt.
“I get it, I haven’t been here the whole time,” Tortorella said. “I think Chuck’s been kind of run over and chucked darts at for quite a bit here. For me, chuck darts at me when I deserve it … when you guys think I deserve it. But I just don’t want you to manufacture criticism of Chuck at this time, at the deadline, just because something
sexy didn’t happen. Nothing sexy was going to happen. We had expiring contracts and were trying to gain assets.
And he tried but you still need people that are willing to join in.
“Don’t get me wrong, we need to grow some skin around here and criticism is all part of it,” Tortorella added. “We deserve some criticism because of where we’re at as a team. I just don’t like unjustified (criticism). You have enough to criticize me and Chuck about. I don’t think criticizing Chuck about his day (Friday) is warranted. His scouts were waiting and willing and able and it just didn’t happen.”
Indeed, it takes two hockey traders tangoing
together with dead roses between their dentures to make a trade, but to so many it was just another Flyers/Fletcher failure. Even if in the overall scheme of things, it mattered more to van Riemsdyk than anyone else.
He handled the nonmove with typical aplomb. So did Fletcher, who of course has had plenty of experience here owning up to talking about coming up short. But, for now at least, he has a veteran head coach behind him rather than breathing fire at him.
Whatever that’s worth at the end of another disastrous season.