Flyers fire coach John Tortorella: "It was time to go in a different direction"
The Flyers will be looking for a new voice behind the bench as they enter the next phase of their rebuild. Philadelphia on Thursday fired John Tortorella with nine games left in his third season as head coach, a campaign mired with on-ice regression.
Associate coach Brad Shaw will serve as interim coach, beginning with the Flyers' game Thursday against the Montreal Canadiens.
"You've seen this team play hard over the years. They've shown they have a no-quit attitude ingrained in them. Torts is a very, very big reason for that, and that standard he's set back in place over the last two, three seasons," Flyers general manager Danny Briere said during a press conference Thursday. "Unfortunately, at this time, I felt it was time to go in a different direction."
Tortorella, 65, joined the Flyers in 2022 under previous general manager Chuck Fletcher. Fletcher praised Tortorella's demanding reputation and championship pedigree (Tortorella won a Stanley Cup as head coach of the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004 — they defeated the Flyers in the Eastern Conference Finals that year).
In March 2023, the Flyers underwent significant front office changes by firing Fletcher and naming Briere as interim GM. A month later, Briere was appointed the full-time GM and Keith Jones was hired as president of hockey operations. Briere and Jones kept Tortorella on as head coach, believing he could help rebuild the team's culture.
The Flyers made it known they were rebuilding and were building a "new era of orange." In their second season under Tortorella, the orange and black showed improvements on the ice with several young players taking steps forward.
But in Year 3, the Flyers have taken a significant step back. The latest came Tuesday night with a 7-2 loss to the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team's sixth straight loss and 12 in its last 14 games.
After the game, Tortorella took the blame but said he wasn't "really interested in learning how to coach" in this type of environment.
"This falls on me," Tortorella told reporters. "I'm not really interested in learning how to coach 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."
Briere acknowledged Thursday that Tortorella's comments in Toronto were among a "series of things that have happened" over the past three weeks that led to his decision to fire Tortorella.
"It's one of the things that happened along the way," Briere said. "That's not the specific reason, and there's not one specific reason. It's one of the things that has happened along the way. There's been different ones. Don't just focus on that. I'm not going to get into the specifics of what we've dealt with. That's not fair to Torts. We both have opinions. That doesn't mean mine is better than his.
"I don't want to get into that," he added. "We just had different opinions on different things."
Briere said with the firing of Tortorella, the Flyers are "stepping into a different phase of the rebuild."
The Flyers went 97-107-33 during Tortorella's 237 games coached — or a win percentage of .479.
As for what the Flyers want in the next head coach, Briere said whoever it is will have to be someone who can teach, but the front office hasn't begun looking yet.
"We're not there," Briere said. "This happened really quick in the last few days."
Philadelphia is 28-36-9 this season with nine games left to play. They sit in last place in the Metropolitan Division with 65 points.
