Nick Piccone
The Flyers have fired head coach John Tortorella. Brad Shaw has been named interim head coach.
General manager Daniel Briere announced the news Thursday morning.
“Today I made the very difficult decision to move on from John as our head coach,” said Briere. “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.”
“On behalf of the entire Flyers organization, we would like to thank John for his dedication over the past three seasons,” said Flyers Governor Dan Hilferty and President of Hockey Operations Keith Jones. “We fully support Danny’s decision in making this change as he continues to do what is needed for the future of our organization. John Tortorella has made a positive impact throughout the Flyers organization, and we are grateful and appreciative of the opportunity to work with him. We wish John, Christine and their family all the best moving forward.”
After the Flyers’ 7-2 loss to the Maple Leafs Tuesday night, Tortorella sounded off.
“When you’re in this type of situation and you’re losing all the time and there’s nothing at the end of the tunnel for you, there’s certainly going to be some frustration. But this falls on me. I’m not really interested in learning how to coach this type, in this type of season, where we’re at right now, but I have to do a better job, so this falls on me, getting the team prepared to play the proper way until we get to the end.”
This came after a polarizing decision to bench defenseman Cam York during the game. Tortorella has also benched various players throughout the course of his tenure, including Matvei Michkov. There’s always a method to his madness but is seems like doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results was a fool’s errand with the roster he’s been given year after year.
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