There’s a lot to like about the Columbus Blue Jackets right now.
From its young core and strong rookies to an evolving group of defenders backed by a rebounding Sergei Bobrovsky, everything is clicking — including the coaching staff.
Head coach John Tortorella has been a lightning rod for criticism throughout his NHL tenure, but he seems to have found his groove in Columbus just 27 games into his first full season with the club.
“He hurt himself in some ways with temper loss and things, and he admits that fully,” Columbus’ president of hockey operations, John Davidson, told Sportsnet 590 The FAN Wednesday evening.
The club has gone full speed ahead in its youth movement, rocketing into fifth place in the league and third in a hot Metropolitan Division while riding a seven-game win streak.
“It’s him realizing that things should be … done differently, whether it be with the players or with the media or whoever it is. He’s done a great job. The one thing I can tell you is he’s a good coach. He’s a really good coach.”
Tape to Tape talks about the changing style of John Tortorella
And while Tortorella’s temper still makes its appearances — Tuesday’s high-sticking incident in Edmonton comes to mind — we’re seeing another side of the head coach this season.
“He’s a guy that, if people really knew him, they’d like him. What they see on the air, he invites the criticism, and what you see on the air is what you get sometimes, but it’s not the big picture—it’s not the whole thing,” said Davidson.
“I just think that he’s a guy that’s passionate, he’s a heck of a coach, I can tell you that.”
(As for that Oilers outburst, “People probably won’t believe this, but he actually has a very good relationship with the referees … there is a respect factor there, no question,” said Davidson.)
Like the rebounding Blue Jackets, Tortorella himself has bounced back this year after a 27th-place finish in 2015-16 and a poor outing as coach of Team USA’s World Cup of Hockey entry in September.
“With the World Cup team, I’ve talked to people about that whole situation there, and I think it’s unfair the way media have tarred and feathered John Tortorella for everything,” Davidson explained. “The Kaepernick thing, John spoke his mind. John has a son that is in the special forces in the U.S. Army, overseas all the time and right in the middle of this stuff, and John spoke out from his heart. He wasn’t politically correct in some peoples’ minds, but that’s his business. He can say whatever he wants, and we’ll back him a thousand per cent with that.”
The head coach himself told reporters on Tuesday that while they’re seeing success right now, he’s still learning to adapt his coaching on the fly — a mindset that also led him to ditch the morning skate earlier this season.
“We’re still in that area of trying to figure one another out, but we’re much more comfortable,” Tortorella told reporters on Tuesday.
“That’s the neatest thing about coaching, is what you go through with players daily, and how you handle certain situations. I’ll make mistakes, they’ll make mistakes. I just hope we handle them as men and work through it together to become a unit—and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
