It hardly is secret that John Tortorella wasn’t a media favorite in New York. Clips from his press conferences told the story of his prickly relationship with the press.
Dave Lozo gave a deeper account of what it was like to deal with the now former New York Rangers coach. The former NHL.com writer wrote a lengthy perspective on his Tumblr page. Lozo called him, “The scariest coach in the NHL.”
Here are some of the highlights:
The grave dancing that took place after Tortorella was fired was met with mixed reactions: some saw it as the inevitable result for years of bullying reporters, others saw it as tasteless whining from people who couldn’t handle someone not answering dumb questions.
If Tortorella only gave one-word answers for moronic questions – I can probably relate a dozen stories about reporters asking why he used a timeout in a situation where it was evident he wanted to get his players a breather because of an icing during an extended shift – it would be one thing, but he could be a prick when it came to fair questions, tough questions or even softball questions he felt we writers should already know the answer to.
And…
During the 2012 playoffs, Brian Boyle suffered a concussion (another injury Tortorella simply offered to the media the night in happened) and missed three games. He returned for the Game 2 of the second round, a game the Rangers lost 3-2 to Washington. Boyle played reasonably well in his third-line role: He had one shot in 15 minutes but lost the faceoff that led to Alex Ovechkin’s game-winning power-play goal in the third period.
It was the third or fourth question of the postgame press conference in which Tortorella was clearly pissed off because, you know, the media lost Game 2: “How did Brian Boyle look out there?”
It’s his first game back, he’s been in a big part of the lineup all season, it’s a question someone was going to ask, but for this unsuspecting, unfortunate soul, it was him.
“I’m not answering that question from YOU.”
It’s hard to truly convey in words just how hateful and demeaning that sentence was. He really laid the YOU on thick, too, saying it as though if someone else had asked that harmless question, he would’ve answered, but unfortunately a complete moron I don’t respect asked so go fuck yourself, asshole.
This was the exact moment I made the executive decision to never ask Tortorella another question. It was a futile endeavor, anyway. Why waste breath on him when he’s only going to tell you what he wants to tell you and I can get better insight about the psyche of the team from guys like Boyle, Marc Staal or Dan Girardi.
And…
I’m not a psychiatrist, but Tortorella is the first person I’ve ever met who I believed had both an inferiority and superiority complex. He arrived in New York seemingly petrified of what the New York media would do to him, so he took preemptive steps to guard against them, when in reality, a standard coach/media relationship would have served him better. Like any bully, Tortorella deep down was afraid of the media, and out of that was born a four-year adversarial relationship that wasn’t even necessary in the first place.
Eventually, Tortorella stops being scary. For me anyway, it went from asking a scary coach a question to asking your crazy uncle a question to I’m going to avoid the crazy homeless man altogether and walk on the other side of the street.
Tortorella slowly devolved from curiosity to side show to full-on clown. His demeanor made him an unnecessary part of the job for many writers, and his demeanor eventually made him completely unnecessary to the New York Rangers.
