As playoff hopes vanish, Tortorella signals pride in season
John Tortorella has been a hockey coach for a long time, so he would probably be able to ace a math test, even if NHL playoff math also requires college-level calculus work.
One thing Tortorella has never been is a guy that lives by a+b=c kind of coaching logic.
“I think they should feel good about what they’ve accomplished here,” Tortorella said Tuesday morning about his Flyers team, one that later that evening slipped to a fourth straight playoff miss amid a 2-1 loss to the Washington Capitals. Oh, and elder fans know that a miss this year was the eighth over the last dozen years.
And yet they soldier on. “A couple of weeks ago, playoffs were right there for us,” Tortorella said. “I wanted them to take the next step since we were here — ‘look at it, look where we’re at.’ I wanted them to realize that and I think they did. We’ve lost some games and stuff like that but a number of different things happened in losing those games. Not their intention. Not their willingness to accept the moment. So they should feel good about that.”
Losing wasn’t intended. Losing wasn’t willed by any player. Put it another way, you could almost see Tortorella take the familiar organizational “choking situation” label off this year’s version.
On Feb. 15, the Flyers went to Toronto on a four-game winning streak. They had overachieved much of the year, even if a five-game skid had preceded the four-game winning streak and hinted at vulnerability. Since recent history taught them to know better, not much was spoken of playoffs then, even if they seemed solidly in play.
The Flyers promptly lost 18 of their next 25, dropping their playoff odds about as low as their win total.
Only subsequent and ultimately fruitless recovery victories over the Rangers Thursday and the Devils
Saturday had allowed them to live another day, or during the course of this Torts media availability, several more hours Tuesday.
“I’m proud of the team. That was my message to them prior to the Ranger game,” Tortorella said. “Let’s just be proud of ourselves and get this to Tuesday and let’s see where we go. Even in some of the bumps we had through the year, they stayed together. They’ve tried to figure it out and now they get to play a Game 82 that means something.”
Not that playing a final game of the season for at least a heartbeat of a hope was the goal, it’s just that by Tuesday, Tortorella knew enough of the math to make it sound that way.
“Even when things were going really good this year, we had not come off of, ‘we’re rebuilding here,’” Tortorella said. “We’re rebuilding. So for them to take some punches here and there, some ebbs and flows and momentum swings, and just stay within themselves, they should feel good about that.”
Fair enough, but no competitive team, not even a rebuilding one, should feel that turning a late-February slide into a March/April trainwreck is even halfway acceptable. But so it went, and on April 1, after an overtime loss to the Islanders, Tortorella’s smarting pride moved him to vent some harsh truths.
Or at least that’s the way he made it sound.
“There are certain people that don’t have a clue how to play or don’t have it in them to play in these types of situations,” Tortorella had said that night. “This is why I’m glad we’re
playing them. We have to figure things out as far as what we’re going to become as a team here. That was embarrassing in the second period for the Philadelphia Flyers uniform. Embarrassing.”
Tortorella’s remarks were essentially ticketed to that one second period. But on a grander scale, having a successful coaching career indicates that Tortorella knows embarrassing like he knows math. Making Sean Couturier a healthy scratch on March 19 for a home game against Toronto and again two nights later in Carolina might have only served to embarrass the guy he’d only recently appointed team captain.
Couturier tried hard to not show how he felt publicly. His agent didn’t try so hard.
Initially, what many saw as Tortorella’s attempt at a wake-up call proclaimed it to work. The Flyers beat
the Leafs and gained a point on the road in Carolina, then returned home to upset the Boston Bruins upon Couturier’s return. But the mood was said to have darkened after that Couturier move, and anyone can feel free to speculate how a raging eightgame losing streak following that Bruins win might have been at least partially precipitated by scratching the captain.
Right in the middle of that mess was Tortorella’s mini-rant about players not having a clue “how to play in these types of situations.”
That would be, playing under pressure.
Perhaps he wasn’t wrong. On the heels of that overtime April 1 loss to the Isles, the Flyers lost to three fellow non-playoff teams — Buffalo, Columbus and Montreal
The heat on the darlings from earlier in the season from Philly fans and media
alike increased. The pressure of making the playoffs? Not so much anymore.
“I heard the word quit,” Tortorella said. “Not a chance. I’ll tell you right now, there wasn’t a g— damned second that those guys quit. You’ve got to really be careful the way you use that word (no kidding?). No matter what context you want to put it in … they didn’t quit for a second.”
The subsequent twogame turnaround awould be too little, too late. And yet, given barely a whisper of hope, Tortorella would play along for effect. It’s what experienced hockey mathematicians do.
“To get it to this level,” Tortorella said, “to play a full season, 82 games, and have every day mean something, that’s a step in the right direction.”