Former Rangers coach fired by Flyers after damning comments earlier in week
John Tortorella, whose coaching career included a four-game stint with the New York Rangers in 1999-2000 and four-plus seasons from 2009-13, was fired by their Metropolitan Division rival Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday.
The Flyers relieved Tortorella of his duties and named associate coach Brad Shaw as interim coach, effective immediately.
Philadelphia is 28-36-9, last in the Metropolitan Division and 28th in the 32-team league. The Flyers are 0-5-1 in their past six games and 1-10-1 in their previous 12 entering a Thursday night home game against the Montreal Canadiens.
Tortorella, who coached the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Stanley Cup in 2004, was in his third season with Philadelphia. The Flyers are all but assured of missing the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the fifth straight season.
“It’s my job to prepare this team in this type of situation,” Tortorella said Tuesday. “Haven’t done a good enough job the past couple games.”
The Flyers allowed seven goals in each of their past two games, losses to the Chicago Blackhawks and Toronto Maple Leafs. They haven’t won in regulation since Feb. 25, when they defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 6-1.
In addition, major personnel moves prior to the NHL Trade Deadline – including trading Scott Laughton, Joel Farabee and Morgan Frost, among others – left the team in a sense of disarray heading down the stretch..
“I’m not really interested in learning how to coach in this type of season, where we’re at right now,” Tortorella said 36 hours before being fired.
He had one year left on his contract for $4 million.
“Today I made the very difficult decision to move on from John as our head coach,” Flyers general manager Daniel Briere said. “John played a vital role in our rebuild. He set a standard of play and re-established what it means to be a Philadelphia Flyer. John’s passion on the bench was only equaled by his charitable work in our community. As we move into the next chapter of this rebuild, I felt this was the best for our team to move forward. I’d like to thank John for his tireless work and commitment to the Flyers.”
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The Flyers were 97-107-33 under Tortorella. They came close to making the playoffs last season, finishing 38-33-11 and ending up four points behind the Washington Capitals for the second wild card in the Eastern Conference. Philadelphia has not made the playoffs going 41-21-7 in 2019-20.
Ex-Rangers coach Tortorella fired by slumping Flyers
The 1999-2000 Rangers were Tortorella’s first coaching stop; they were 0-3-1 in the final four games of the season after he replaced John Muckler. The Lightning hired him midway through the 2000-01 season, and he led the franchise to its first championship three years later, winning the Cup by defeating the Calgary Flames 2-1 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
The Lightning fired Tortorella after missing the playoffs in 2007-08, and he returned to the Rangers midway through the following season. They finished first in the Eastern Conference in 2011-12 with a 51-24-7 record and won their first two playoff rounds, defeating the Ottawa Senators and Washington Capitals by winning Game 7 each time, before losing to the New Jersey Devils in six games in the Eastern Conference Final.
The Rangers made the playoffs again in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season and defeated the Capitals in the first round, again winning in seven games, before being eliminated by the Boston Bruins in a five-game second-round series.
That was the end of Tortorella’s time in New York; he was fired despite going 171-115-29.
He was quickly hired by the Vancouver Canucks but lasted only one season. After serving as a TV commentator during the 2014-15 season, he went back behind the bench with the Columbus Blue Jackets early in the 2015-16 season.
The Jackets, who entered the NHL in 2000, made the playoffs in four consecutive seasons under Tortorella and set team records for wins (50) and points (108) in 2016-17. They also pulled off one of the greatest playoff upsets in NHL history in the spring of 2019, sweeping the Lightning in the first round after Tampa Bay had tied an NHL single-season record with 62 wins and won the Presidents’ Trophy with 128 points. Columbus was the first team to sweep a regular-season champion in the opening round of the playoffs.
But Tortorella was fired after the Blue Jackets missed the playoffs in the Covid-shortened 2020-21 season.
After a season on the sidelines, the Flyers became the 66-year-old’s fifth coaching stop when he was hired in the summer of 2022. Philadelphia went 31-38-13 in his first season, then came close to a playoff berth in 2023-24 and was in the hunt for a wild-card spot this season before collapsing after play resumed in late February following the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Shaw, a 60-year-old former NHL defenseman, is in his third season with the Flyers after joining their coaching staff in July 2022. He spent the 2021-22 season as an assistant coach with the Vancouver Canucks after five seasons (2016-21) as an assistant with the Blue Jackets, helping them earn a playoff berth four times during that span.
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