Ex-Rangers coach ‘showed me how to be a pro,’ still ‘roasted’ Dan Girardi
During John Tortorella’s five-season run as New York Rangers coach from 2009-13, he played a major role in turning the team into a real Stanley Cup contender after years of losing and disappointment. Along the way he helped bring along an undrafted defenseman by the name of Dan Girardi, who ended up being a decade-long fixture on the Rangers blue line, and is often considered to be the embodiment of those gritty Black and Blueshirts teams.
Girardi was a defense-first, rugged, shot-blocking defenseman, who largely played on the right side of the top pair. He had two pretty good left-side partners during his run on Broadway, first Marc Staal, then Ryan McDonagh.
He also had a coach that believed in him, and brought out the best in him. In turn, Girardi was all-in playing for the demanding bench boss.
“Just what he did for my career, I can’t thank him enough to give me the confidence to play my game and also add the dimension to eat a lot of pucks, defend hard, and showed me how to be a pro every day,” Girardi told Forever Blueshirts on the Rink Rap podcast this week. “I can’t thank him enough, and obviously ‘Sully’ (Mike Sullivan, then a Rangers assistant, now their head coach), as well. Those guys did a great job with me.”
Girardi actually cut his teeth in the NHL under Tom Renney, his first coach with the Rangers, after the defenseman played a year-plus in the American Hockey League with Hartford. Back in those days, the Ontario native was viewed as a two-way defenseman, and scored a career-high 10 goals in his first full NHL season in 2007-08. Eleven of his 18 points, and five of his goals, were scored on the power play that season.
But his true heart-and-soul identity was borne under Tortorella, who replaced the fired Renney in February of 2009. However, even though Girardi came into his own with Tortorella as Rangers coach, and he clearly was a favorite of Torts, that didn’t make Girardi immune to the coach’s legendary wrath from time to time.
“Torts stories come up all the time and the one the guys always bring up is we were doing a power-play practice at the [MSG} training center, and I’m just having a tough day, bobbling pucks left and right, and I’m not sure why I’m on the power play anyways,” Girardi shared. “But I’m out there struggling and he calls someone else out there [to replace Girardi], and I kind of took a puck and shot at it at the boards.
“It wasn’t going to him at all, but it was definitely in his direction, and the quote he said, ‘Was that for me?’ And I just had nothing. I’m just like ‘No, no, no. I was just mad.’ Even though it was for him, but I couldn’t say it to his face that I was shooting at him. I had no cojones downstairs and the boys just gave it to me, too. I didn’t hear the end of that for a while. That’s a good one there.”
But that wasn’t the only time Girardi had to diffuse a percolating situation with the fiery Tortorella.
“Another fun one is we’re in Anaheim and had a really tough game there [against the Ducks] and I was minus-3, minus-4 and we’re having a video meeting upstairs at their practice rink in some restaurant, and he’s showing the video and just kind of roasted me for the whole video session, and I can take it, I’m a big boy,” Girardi explained. “Then he kind of drops his remote and says, ‘Hey, you got anything for me? You’ve got anything to say?’ And I’m like ‘Nope, I had a bad game.’ He just wanted to me to go at him and get a little something going. But I didn’t give him the time of day. You could tell he really wanted to roast me, but I didn’t give him the chance to do anything worse than he did in the meeting.”
Dan Girardi recalls Rangers ‘had best group of guys’
By and large, though, things were good between Girardi, who ended up an alternate captain in New York, and Tortorella, who was fired by the Rangers after the 2013 playoffs, one year after guiding them the 2012 Eastern Conference Final.
Girardi played 788 regular-season games with the Rangers, 11th most in franchise history, before his contract was bought out in the 2017 offseason. Only long-time teammate Chris Kreider (123) played more postseason games than Girardi (122).
During his time in New York, Girardi helped the Rangers reach the Stanley Cup Playoffs 10 times in 11 years, including a 2014 run to the Stanley Cup Final, when the Rangers lost in five games to the Los Angeles Kings. From 2012-15, Girardi and the Rangers reached the conference final three times in four seasons, once under Tortorella and twice under his successor Alain Vigneault.
“We had the best group of guys,” recalled Girardi. “But so many things have to go right in order to win it all.”
Tortorella seeks to win it all again with the Vegas Golden Knights this spring. Twenty-two years after leading the Tampa Bay Lightning to their first Stanley Cup championship in 2004, Tortorella is back in the Cup Final, seeking another championship. However, his Golden Knights trail the Carolina Hurricanes 3-2 in the best-of-7 Final, with a must-win Game 6 set for Sunday back home in the desert.
“I would have never guessed that he’d be back in the League this quickly after doing some of the TV stuff, and out of nowhere Vegas grabs him and look what he’s doing with that group,” Girardi marveled. “I know it’s a veteran group and they’ve won before, but he just has that effect when you buy in, he’ll fight for you and do anything for you. That’s why the players love him, because he will do or say anything to defend his players. All he expects in return is full effort, full commitment.”
Girardi added he’s not surprised by Torts’ success in Vegas — the Golden Knights are 20-5-1 in the regular season and playoffs since he replaced the fired Bruce Cassidy in late March.
“He’s so in the moment and focused. When you have full buy-in, what he does works. He did a great job with us. … He had every guy buy in, and when you do that, he’s a very special coach.”
