The Vegas Golden Knights found a way to surprise everyone, even as the team is known for rolling the dice and taking the gamble (or insert casino game here). They fired Bruce Cassidy with a few weeks left in the season and hired John Tortorella.
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Anyone who follows hockey has two questions and not a lot of good answers for them. Why now? Why Tortorella? And why Tortorella now?
Why The Golden Knights Made This Move Now?
Everyone likes a new coach bump or that fresh car smell. The Golden Knights can see what the Columbus Blue Jackets did when they hired Rick Bowness, going on a run to put themselves into a playoff spot.
The thing is that a new coach bump only lasts so long. For the Golden Knights, all they need are a few strong weeks. It’s been a rough season, and presumably, Cassidy would have been fired at the end of the season. They couldn’t wait that long, and with the team still in a playoff spot, they had to make the change now. So, Tortorella was brought in now to save the day.
Why Tortorella?
It’s easy to look at Tortorella as a coach who hasn’t been successful in a while. He last won a Cup in 2004, and last won a playoff series in 2019. He’s coached a lot of bad teams in between and worn out his welcome a few years into every spot he’s been.
In his defense, he’s coached a lot of struggling and rebuilding teams. The Columbus Blue Jackets weren’t the same team after their star players left in the 2019 offseason, and the Philadelphia Flyers started their rebuild when Daniel Briere took over in 2023, with Tortorella only half a season into his tenure with the team.
Tortorella is finally coaching a team that will make the playoffs in the Golden Knights. They are a team that needs that extra spark but unlike Cassidy, who focused on the defense, they need a coach who leans on the star players and the skill of the forwards. Tortorella can provide that spark for a playoff run for a team that’s only hiring him for this one run. It probably won’t work out but suddenly, there are some exciting teams out west.
What Kind of Impact Can Porter Martone Have on the Flyers?
In 2019, the Colorado Avalanche were the last team in as a Western Conference wild card and faced the heavily favored Calgary Flames. But they had a college prospect, ironically, from Calgary, who was ready to burst on the scene. Cale Makar not only fit right in but was dominant in the series, and the rest is history.
Everyone wants their version of Makar, a prospect who joins the team late in the season from the college or junior ranks and is a star from day one. The Philadelphia Flyers are hoping that’s the case with Porter Martone, who will make his NHL debut on Tuesday, three days after his Michigan State team lost in the Frozen Four.
Martone is a top prospect, and the hype around him is enormous. The 6th pick in the 2025 draft exceeded expectations in college and has all the skills to step into the NHL and make an immediate impact. The question is whether he will?
He’s a power forward with plenty of skill, and the Flyers have lacked that presence in their lineup. With the team making a push for the playoffs, the assumption is they’ll lean on him to get them over the hump. It’s unlikely that it happens, and the Flyers don’t need him to be the savior either, considering they’ve played well without him.
It’s also worth adding that Rick Tocchet doesn’t lean on one line in particular, and with the youth movement in full swing, that will be the case down the stretch. Tocchet wants to get Martone on the ice but he also wants to see what he has in Alex Bump, Denver Barkey, Nikita Grebenkin, and the other young players. In the big picture, this stretch is pivotal for a Flyers team trying to exit the rebuild. They know they have a young core. The question is, what do they have in these young players?
Quick Hits
The Toronto Maple Leafs fired Brad Treliving while this article was being written. Treliving’s tenure with the Maple Leafs, and with teams in general, looks a lot like a head coach with a short shelf life. He gives teams that bump, and then things implode. The Calgary Flames went through the same things with him and had to clean up the mess afterwards. Now the Maple Leafs have a mess to clean up.
The question is, who does it? Everyone is going to throw out a bunch of names from established general managers (GMs) to young up-and-coming names. When the Maple Leafs and Kyle Dubas parted ways, they moved in the opposite direction, hiring an older, more established Treliving. It would be interesting to see them go back in the opposite direction, and a name they should consider is Jason Spezza, who was with the Maple Leafs under Dubas and is now the GM of the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins in the American Hockey League (AHL).
Treliving reflects a GM tenure that failed, and many are wondering if the same thing is happening with Steve Yzerman. The Yzerplan is losing confidence in Detroit, with the fans growing impatient, considering not only how long it’s taken but all the teams that have passed the Detroit Red Wings by with their rebuilds. The question is what the team can do when they have a franchise icon in charge? The move that makes the most sense is having Yzerman “fail upward” or promote him to president while bringing in a GM.
In the Western Conference, the final wild card spot is up for grabs, yet nobody wants it. From a storyline perspective, the fun team to grab it would be the San Jose Sharks. Aside from being a terrible team defensively that would provide multiple 6-5 playoff games, it would build up the Macklin Celebrini Hart Trophy narrative and make the award watch a close one.
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Tagged: Brad Treliving, John Tortorella, Porter Martone