Rangers fire head coach Tortorella

NEW YORK >> John Tortorella was defiant in stating that the New York Rangers didn’t take a step back when they were knocked out of the Stanley Cup playoffs in the second round.

General manager Glen Sather thought otherwise and fired the combative coach on Wednesday.

The fiery Tortorella was let go four days after the Rangers’ season ended with a Game 5 loss at Boston to the Bruins. New York had reached the Eastern Conference finals last year and was considered to be a championship contender in this lock- out- shortened season.

“I came up with the decision that I really needed to do something to improve our team going forward,” Sather said during a conference call. “Every coach has a shelf life. I’ve told every guy that I’ve hired that at some point in time this is going to change.

“Our goal is to win the Stanley Cup and we didn’t achieve that goal this year. I had to make a decision, so I did.”

Tortorella was unexpectedly dismissed with one year left on his contract. In 319 regular- season games with New York, including a fourgame run at the end of the 1999- 2000 season, Tortorella went 171- 118- 1- 29. He was 19- 25 in the postseason, and reached the playoffs in four of five seasons after taking over as coach in February 2009.

Tortorella, hired to replace Tom Renney with 21 games remaining in the 2008- 09 season, achieved some success with the Rangers but couldn’t match the Stanley Cup title he earned in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Sather said Tortorella’s contract status didn’t factor into the decision.

“It wasn’t one thing and I am certainly not going to speculate or start to criticize what happened with Torts and give you a lot of reasons why we decided to do this,” Sather said.

ALEX BRANDON/ ASSOCIATED PRESS New York Rangers head coach John Tortorella talks with his team in the second period of Game 5 in the first- round NHL Stanley Cup playoff series against the Washington Capitals.