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[Official] Canucks coach talk. Keep all talk here.

MJDDawg

By MJDDawg
in Canucks Talk

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DarthNinja Canucks Third-Line

DarthNinja

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OH NO, NOT TORTORELLA!!!! :shock::picard::sadno:

How can Gillis think this guy is a better choice than Lindy Ruff???

We don't need a drama Queen behind the bench, we need a COACH.

OK then, how about a coach who has won a Calder Cup, Stanley Cup and Jack Adams award?

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J529 Canucks Regular

J529

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Farhan is saying some players are excited while others are mixed about Torts being hired.

What if some of the players like Bieska, Kesler and even Sedins are so upset about him coming in, they go to Gillis and express their thoughts/feelings and want to waive their NTC's. Not saying this will happen, but it could.

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Pears Canucks Hall-of-Famer

Pears

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Farhan is saying some players are excited while others are mixed about Torts being hired.

What if some of the players like Bieska, Kesler and even Sedins are so upset about him coming in, they go to Gillis and express their thoughts/feelings and want to waive their NTC's. Not saying this will happen, but it could.

This has already been discussed. The Sedins pushed Gillis to hire Tortorella and Bieksa and Kesler will be just fine.

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Vancouver Canucks 30 Abbotsford Prospect

Vancouver Canucks 30

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http://www.theprovince.com/touch/story.html?id=8561137

Canucks' hiring of John Tortorella feels an awful lot like Mike Keenan 2.0

When John Tortorella's name first surfaced in connection with the Vancouver Canucks, the response was essentially, "This is a joke, right?"

Tortorella, after all, was the complete antithesis of everything Mike Gillis's administration supposedly represented. Gillis was a man of reason and intellect.

He was a new-age thinker who based organizational decisions on cool logic, metrics and analytics. The Canucks under Gillis were many things. But they were always rational and thoughtful.

Until today.

Tortorella is the kind of knee-jerk decision that other organizations make, not the Canucks. Yes, he represents a personality type diametrically opposed from his predecessor, Alain Vigneault. But he also represents a personality type diametrically opposed to Gillis's core values. He is loud and profane; narcissistic and temperamental. He is emotional to the point of irrationality. Tortorella, in fact, is so far removed from Gillis and his methods that this hire had to come from somewhere else; somewhere, and we're just spitballing here, like Canucks ownership.

And when ownership gets involved in decisions of this magnitude, it's a sure sign the organization is in a state of dysfunction.

The Canucks have built their brand on touchy-feely sentiments like "We Are All Canucks" and "Our Team Our Way." True, those slogans had a Hallmark feel to them but, in good times, they sent the message that the city and the province were all invested in the Canucks, that the team cared about its fans.

Tortorella, without putting too fine an edge on things, basically extends the middle finger to those fans.

That he is obnoxious is a given. And I hope when he lands here, we get the full Tortorella, the vainglorious, I'm-smarter-and-more-imporant-than-everyone-here guy we saw in New York. That way, at least he'd be true to himself. I'm just not sure he can be any other way, which is going to make things very interesting.

Francesco Aquilini, the man presumably behind this decision, is labouring under the misapprehension that the team needs a butt-kicker, a motivator to shake it out of its lethargy. That would be fine if this were 1964. But you don't reach players with the drill-sergeant approach anymore. Today's player has to be self-motivated and maniacally driven or he never reaches the NHL. The thought that players like the Sedins, Alex Burrows and Kevin Bieksa grew fat and lazy under Vigneault's watch is insulting to them and their years of service to the Canucks.

But, in much the way exasperated parents think military school would benefit their wayward teenager, Aquilini thinks Tortorella is just the man to set the Canucks straight. That's fine in theory. But in reality, Tortorella's personality is simply an impossible fit for this organization. If the Canucks were about egos and stars, then maybe this might work. But under Gillis's watch they've been about something else. They've been about the collective. They've policed themselves. Most of those players have also taken substantially less to play in this environment.

How is Tortorella going to go over with them?

If there was a country-club atmosphere with the Canucks, it started with Gillis's vision for the team. He was the GM who was going to make Vancouver a destination franchise for other players. He was the one who was going to provide every conceivable edge -- meals, sleep doctors, mind rooms, sports psychologists -- to the players. The real problem with the Canucks in 2013, of course, had nothing to do with that and everything to do with miscalculations on a number of fronts by Gillis. The ongoing Roberto Luongo soap opera not only cost the team prime assets, it was a distraction throughout the season. Gillis acquisitions like Keith Ballard and David Booth contributed very little. Organizational depth was eradicated by five years of bad drafting. The deadline acquisition of Derek Roy was a bust.

if Aquilini thinks Tortorella is going to fix all that, good luck. But what this feels like is the start of another Mike Keenan era in Vancouver. If you need reminding, that was two years of chaos in the late 1990's, in which the organization completely alienated its fan base; two years in which the Canucks became irrelevant. They came out of that turmoil largely unscathed, mostly because Brian Burke was able to rebuild the team in two short years.

Who knows? Maybe they'll get lucky again. But look at it this way. They're going to need it.

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