GM confident Tortorella can turn it around

It wasn’t an absolute vote of confidence that John Tortorella will finish this season as the Blue Jackets’ head coach, but it was really close.

Jarmo Kekalainen, the Blue Jackets’ general manager, arranged a video conference Tuesday to address a bubbling cauldron of commentary regarding his team’s five-game slide potentially putting his head coach on the hot seat.

“We’ve got a new opportunity tonight, again, to get back on track and I wanted to have this call to just kind of clarify that this coaching staff has gotten us out of slumps before,” Kekalainen said, referring to the Blue Jackets’ game against the Detroit Red Wings on Tuesday night at Nationwide Arena. “They’ve done a great job for us in the past five to six years that they’ve been here, and they are the ones that are going to get out of this jam, as well, with the team that we have.”

Kekalainen later declined to commit to saying Tortorella, who is in the final year of his contract, is assured of finishing this season. But his answer made it clear that Tortorella’s job doesn’t appear to be in imminent jeopardy.

“What I said was that I have 100 percent confidence that these guys will get us out of this,” Kekalainen said. “They’ve done it before. They’ve done a great job for us before and for many, many years. They have a great track record, both (statistically) and what they do day-to-day here and I’m a big believer in the process and not just watching the record, but watching what these guys do every day.”